Watch Zabriskie Point For Free

That was an excellent one.

Really Surprised!

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

In the 1960s, the director Michaelangelo Antonioni left his native Italy for a series of a films abroad. BLOW-UP, shot in 1966, captured Swinging London at the dawn of the Sixties counterculture when radical new fashion and music served as the nexus of youth innovation. But as Antonioni moved to the United States and began shooting ZABRISKIE POINT, ultimately released in February 1970, he now captured a counterculture that was tougher and politically radical, with Black liberation movements and university students advocating in-your-face or downright violent methods for effecting social change.In southern California, a young man named Mark (Mark Frechette) flees a university sit-in after shooting at one of the riot police besieging it. A young lady named Daria (Daria Halprin), who works as a secretary for a large real estate developer building out in the desert, is driving to Phoenix for a meeting. They cross paths when Mark, who proves to have some training as a pilot, steals a light plane from an airfield for a little joyride. He buzzes her car for laughs. When he finally lands, Daria quickly overcomes her fear at this aerial taunting and falls for him. They spent an afternoon together in the desert, at the eponymous point in Death Valley. Yet while these two young people in love enjoy this brief splendour far away from it all, they must eventually return to civilization, and then things come to a head.ZABRISKIE POINT was a critical failure when it was first released, and I was expecting to dislike it. However, the film's flaws are few and, among everything else the film offers, forgivable. One of those flaws is the acting during the relatively brief portion when the two leads meet. Frechette and Halprin are extremely photogenic and fashionable -- it's hard to believe they weren't established Hollywood bombshells, but rather amateurs and they had actual counterculture credentials. However, as much as they provide the film visually in moments they appear alone, during their brief time together they have zero chemistry and the dialogue they exchange is delivered clunkily.The other flaw is the characterization of Mark: by the end of the film, Daria has seen things that stir her to anger and lead her to question the conventional society in which she works. However, the script (a collaboration between Antonioni, longtime collaborator Tonino Guerra, and Sam Shepherd) never explains why Mark is so bent on destruction. The audience just feels that he's a delinquent with emotional problems, and that makes it difficult to sympathize with him.Yet in spite of those weaknesses, this is not at all an unenjoyable film. Forget the stupid interaction of Mark and Daria. Instead, just soak in Antonioni's visual poetry as captured by cinematographer Alfio Contini. The Italians must have been delighted by what they found far away from their native land. California of this era is revealed in all its peculiar grandeur, both the urban sprawl of Los Angeles (already utterly hostile to pedestrians) and the unforgiving but strangely beautiful desert. Most of Antonioni's trademark mise-en-scene from the Italian films is preserved here in this foreign location. Unexpected, however, is the savage ending -- sometimes dubbed "the violent scene" -- where the film makes its strongest blow against complacent bourgeois culture. One wonders if Antonioni had seen Jean-Luc Godard's 2 OU 3 CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE, with its capstone unveiling of consumer products, and thought "I can one-up that." The result is a feast for the eyes.It's curious too how the passage of time can endow a film with poignant resonances beyond what the filmmaker could have intended. Antonioni shot this film in 1968-69 when the counterculture was a brave new world, but audiences today will see it as a vivid document of a past now half a century gone, and the thought that all this colour, idealism, fashion and design is long dead smarts.Antonioni's loose trilogy consisting of L'AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE and L'ECCLISE might be the best introduction to this filmmaker, but I am glad I have explored his other work, and while ZABRISKIE POINT is notably flawed compared to its predecessors, it has haunted my thoughts in the weeks after I screened it, and that says a lot to its credit.

When Michelangelo Antonioni decided to make his first film away from his native Italy, he did so in London in the middle of the swinging sixties, at a time when the music of the British Invasion was at the height of its influence. Blow-Up (1966) would become the most successful art-house movie of its day and part of the reason for this was that London was the centre of western culture at that moment and the film benefited considerably from surfing that particular wave. So it maybe seemed logical that for his next movie Antonioni would travel to the west coast of America, which by the later 60's had taken the baton from London and was the home of the counter-culture and the new home of all that was cutting edge. The result was Zabriskie Point and it would not only be the only film Antonioni would make in America but also, unlike Blow-Up, a critical and commercial disaster. It was a movie that could only have been made when it was, given that at the time the Hollywood studios were throwing huge sums of money at director-driven art films in an attempt to tap into the counter-culture audience who had shown such an appetite for such left-field fayre in the late 60's. It was the time of New Hollywood and, strange as it seems now, films the likes of Zabriskie Point were par for the course for a short while.In the event, despite all of the above, Zabriskie Point met with hostility seemingly. It was seen as a poorly acted, tedious, silly and self-indulgent fiasco. To be honest, all of Antonioni's films are an acquired taste really, and this one is no different in this respect. Zabriskie Point is quite similar in overall tone and approach to much of his other work but the counter-cultural setting is what sets it apart so jarringly. It's true that it does have a very loose, slow-paced story and awkward dialogue but story has never been Antonioni's main focus and this film is no different. What it is, is a wonderfully strange and visually incredible bit of cinema. The cinematography is frankly stunning throughout with the widescreen compositions a continual delight. The almost documentary-style opening, by contrast, is at odds with the visually spectacular approach used in the rest of the film. This scene thrusts us into the midst of a meeting of student political activists and has a very real feel for these dynamic times. The themes of the story in general looks at the then very current issue of American youth vs the establishment and it does capture the spirit of the counterculture in its admittedly odd way. It almost feels a little prophetic too with its essentially pessimistic story mirroring the reality that the counter-culture was about to come crashing down not long after its release.But perhaps Zabriskie Point is celebrated mostly these days for two things in particular – its soundtrack and its famously explosive finale. The former is a pretty cutting edge selection of music from the likes of Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Roy Orbison, amongst others. In particular the use of 'Careful with that Axe, Eugene' by Pink Floyd in the celebrated explosion sequence is an especially phenomenal combination of sound and vision. This incredible extended sequence is justifiable revered and in all honesty is worth the price of admission alone. And for those who complain about its meaning being 'too obvious', all I can ask is what's wrong with an obvious point when it's delivered so well? This scene is the wishful imaginings of the character Daria as she wills the destruction of the material world of her corporate boss, the other time in the film where we are treated to the inner thoughts of the character's minds on screen is where the barren landscape of the desert suddenly becomes populated by countless young naked people in a mass scene of free love. Again, this is another aesthetically beautiful sequence and another string to Zabriskie Point's bow. We also have a psychedelic aeroplane that dive-bombs really dangerously low, lots of focus on billboards and adverts (that were no doubt intended as a critical view then but look really interesting now, many years later), there's epic scenery, a beautiful young hippy couple and a backdrop of a city rife with police brutality. There will never be another time quite as evocative as late 60's west coast America, it's an endlessly fascinating period full of incident, hope, despair and with a genuinely vibrant new culture playing out in the background. Zabriskie Point is a misunderstood gem of a film that taps into all of these things with the added bonus that it is by the hand of one of the cinematic visual masters of his day. I love this film and always will.

it could be, in same measure, an experiment and a masterpiece. a honest confession and a manifesto. at first sigh, picture of a generation sense search, it is not only a legendary title or a revolutionary piece but its importance remains in its universal message. a film about love, hate and romanticism out of classical stereotypes. a couple and a project. revolution as puzzle. and purity as usual victim. the mixture between emotion and cold reflection is its basic virtue. a film about "70's spirit who can be about present days. because the scene,the precision of Antonion to reflect essence of a sick society is the same. only the desert becomes to far.

It was not long after the release of Zabriskie Point that the 'counterculture' of the late 1960s died out, for many reasons, too long to visit in this review. Zabriskie Point is highly symbolic and Antonioni had some premonition of the shape of things to come. It was a time of free love (in some circles), a hope for positive change, an awakening to the degradation of the environment, an awareness of the dismissal of history and local culture, transforming all into a decultured, materialistic mainstream. It also is reminiscent of the films "If…", and "The Ruling Class", a comment of the British class society, not dissimilar their basic conceptual foundations.The film was not perfect by all means, after all, how did Mark know how to fly. There are other non-sequiturs, but then, the film is rooted in the imagination, but with a reference to Cinéma vérité. We should appreciate Zabriskie Point as a sign of those times, and is still highly relevant in its ideas, despite its hopeful romanticism.It is beautifully shot in the desert landscape, and contrasts well with the smog filled atmosphere of sprawling LA.I saw this film in the 70s and admit to only partially understanding it at the time, though its images have always stayed with me. Today, on playing the Rockstar game GTA V (Grand Theft Auto V), virtually travelling through those landscapes made me wish to revisit the film which I was able to view on YouTube once more. GTA takes us into the desert once more, and also looks at the same issues that underpin Zabriskie Point and is even more iconoclastic in its approach to today's problems. No doubt the creators of GTA V take their much of their inspiration from this unusual film.