Zabriskie Point (1970)

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Producer: Carlo Ponti

Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni, Fred Gardner, SamShepard,

                    Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe

Cinematographer: Alfio Contini

Actors: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor

Music: Pink Floyd, Jerry Garcia

Rated: R

Running time: 110 mins.

  L.A., metaphor for a desert

        In the late 1960s it looked like the United States was about to implode. Ghetto rage led to riots that were burning down our cities, assassinations were bringing down our social and political leaders, an unwanted war was alienating and radicalizing our youth. The country’s future did not seem promising.

      The nation and Western society in general with it, was facing a serious crisis.   Hollywood, which since the advent of television had its own crisis to deal with, was not blind to what was going down around it; it saw it as an opportunity to become relevant again. Several classic movies of the time dealt with this apparent social breakdown then afflicting America. The Graduate (1967), Easy Rider (1969) and Medium Cool (1970), to mention just three, tackled different aspects of what had been happening here in the years following the assassination of President Kennedy and the arrival of the Beatles: youth lost in a consumeristic, sexually liberated society; the rise of countercultures and the hostility to it; and police brutality and the crushing of dissent.

            Enter leftist Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura (1960), Blowup (1966). Antonioni was enlisted by MGM to contribute his take on the crisis. The result was Zabriskie Point--- a movie that would turn out to be a disaster both for MGM and Antonioni. It would take another several years for him to regain his reputation with The Passenger (1976).

             Zabriskie Point tells a story about a young university suspendee, Mark,who is suspected of shooting a policeman during a student confrontation, steals a plane, and winds up in Death Valley where he meets Daria, a young secretary and possible mistress to a real estate development corporate head, who’s on her way to Phoenix to attend a business conference her boss has set up with some big investors.

             Mark and Daria make love in the desert, and Mark then decides to return the plane to Hawthorne Airport--- after having painted it over with peace slogans and sexually suggestive graffiti. On arriving back in L.A. Mark is shot and killed by the police, and Daria, upon hearing the news on the radio, sabotages her boss’s business deal--- and fantasizes about blowing up his desert hideaway (multiple times!). That’s the story. It’s hard to believe that so many talented people could not create a more fleshed out storyline!

            The real story, however, is the film itself and what it says about Antonioni, 1960s America--- and Los Angeles, the city where half of it takes place. Antonioni was a European leftist, and the anti-capitalist symbolism is very heavy-handedly strewn throughout the film. L.A. is depicted as a city of billboards and freeways, selling everything from pork to condos. Shots of Lee Allen (Rod Taylor), the real estate developer and principal capitalist in the movie, always seem to include a prominent American flag behind him! The people Mark and Daria come in contact with--- police, bar patrons and everyday citizens seem semi-lobotomized or dumb, and there are even two “typical” yokel American tourists types Daria encounters at Zabriskie Point. These were common European stereotypical views of Americans at the time, and I don’t think this view has changed much in the last forty years, except maybe American tourists are little more highly regarded now than then.

             In the sharp contrast between the barren blight of the city and barren beauty of  Death Valley, Antonioni tries to emphasize the corruption of corporate America versus the pristine innocence of the desert. The bizarre sexual fantasy scene at Zabriskie Point with multiple hippie couples copulating at the same time is definitely interesting to view (and quite artistically shot), but adds nothing to the story and only seems like an attention grabber for the audience. The message Antonioni was trying to make was probably a valid one then, as it is now, but it could have been presented a little more subtly to be effective. The Graduate, Easy Rider, and Medium Cool did a better job of it.

             To give it credit, Zabriskie Point is a beautifully filmed movie. The cinematography, especially the desert sequences, is superb; as is the music score, with names like Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, Roy Orbison among others contributing. But the storyline is weak and un-engaging, and the acting is flat and unemotional. Antonioni cast non-actors in the principal roles, and (with a few exceptions e.g. Rod

Taylor) throughout the film. This weak script, bad acting, and bumptious symbolism is what turned off the critics--- and the public with them.

             Compare this movie with Jacques Demy’s Model Shop made at the same time and dealing with similar subject matter--- the L.A. youth scene--- and you see how  two European filmmakers of genius looked at Los Angeles in 1968 and came away with two diametrically opposed views. I wonder what they would say today!