Themes: Bohemian Life, Fighting the System, Fathers and Daughters
Main Cast: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor, G.D. Spradlin
Release Year: 1970
Country: US
Run Time: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Zabriskie Point, director Michelangelo Antonioni's only American film, is an unusual, visually stunning examination of youthful rebellion against the Establishment. The film, initially presented in quasi-documentary style, presents a group of college activists discussing key issues of their political agenda. Mark (Mark Frechette) steals an airplane and flies over a desert where he meets Daria (Daria Halprin). She is the pot-smoking secretary to businessman Lee Allen (Rod Taylor), while he is a rebel searching for a worthy cause. In the midst of the arid surroundings, Mark and Daria fall in love. Antonioni's nonrealistic approach to American counterculture myths, his loose and sluggish narrative, and the dialogue (credited to Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard, Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe, and Antonioni) caused Zabriskie Point to be poorly received when it was first released. The score features songs from Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Kaleidoscope, The Rolling Stones, John Fahey, The Youngbloods and Patti Page. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
Review
Michelangelo Antonioni's first American film is, in many circles, a legendary debacle, an indulgence of some of the director's worst elliptical, impressionistic, and baldly absurd habits. Taken on another level, however, Zabriskie Point is a sensual, atonal fantasia on the late '60s, a film perhaps not meant to be taken too seriously. At least, one can only hope. Taken from an over-earnest script cobbled together by four writers -- including the young Sam Shepard -- and featuring a blankly attractive cast of amateurs, Antonioni's film is full of ridiculous plot lines and character traits, chief among them a counterculture hero (Mark Frechette) whose means of challenging the establishment includes answering the phone by saying "Goodbye?" But Antonioni is more interested in creating visual non-sequiturs than verbal ones, and in this respect, his film doesn't disappoint. The director's use of barren Southwestern landscapes suggests an oasis from all the urban political turmoil, however improbable, famously exemplified in Zabriskie's sand-swept orgy sequence. And the climactic, Pink Floyd-scored demolition of a bourgeois desert home, while thematically obvious, is still a treat to watch. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
G.D. Spradlin - Lee Allen's Associate; Kathleen Cleaver - Kathleen; Open Theater of Joe Chaikin - Lovemakers in Death Valley; Paul Fix - Cafe Owner; Harrison Ford - Airport worker [uncredited]; Bill Garaway - Morty; Ben Hammer
Credit
Don Hall - Consultant/advisor, Ray Summers - Costume Designer, Robert Rubin - First Assistant Director, Michelangelo Antonioni - Director, Franco Arcalli - Editor, Jim Benson - Editor, Harrison Starr - Executive Producer, David Gilmour - Composer (Music Score), Pink Floyd - Composer (Music Score), Roger Waters - Composer (Music Score), Joe McKinney - Makeup, Dean Tavoularis - Production Designer, Alfio Contini - Cinematographer, Carlo Ponti - Producer, George R. Nelson - Set Designer, Earl McCoy - Special Effects, Michelangelo Antonioni - Screenwriter, Tonino Guerra - Screenwriter, Clare Peploe - Screenwriter, Sam Shepard - Screenwriter, Fred Gardner - Screenwriter, Harrison Starr - Screenwriter
This article refers to the 1970 movie 'Zabriskie Point'. For the soundtrack album see Zabriskie Point (album); for the natural monument, see Zabriskie Point.
Zabriskie Point is a 1970 film by Michelangelo Antonioni that depicts some aspects of the U.S.counterculture movement in the late 1960s. It tells the story of a young couple — an idealistic, free spirited young woman, and an aspiring radical turned fugitive. They meet in the desert under bizarre circumstances, instantly connect with a fearless spirit, and then part with tragic consequences. When the fugitive dies in an attempt to reconcile his minor transgressions with the police his new-found lover's connection to the corporate and government establishment is psychologically and permanently severed when she visualizes the home of her corporate lover/boss exploding in slow motion.
The cult film stars Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, neither of whom had any previous acting experience. The screenplay was written by Antonioni, fellow Italian filmmaker Franco Rossetti, American playwright Sam Shepard, prolific screenwriter Tonino Guerra and Clare Peploe, wife of Bernardo Bertolucci. The film was the second of three English-language films that Antonioni had been contracted to direct for producer Carlo Ponti and to be distributed by MGM. The other two films were Blowup (1966) and The Passenger (1975).
The film's title refers to Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, the location of the film's famous desert love scene, in which members of the Open Theatre perform dust covered mock acts of sexual orgy in the strange geologic formations of Zabriskie Point surrounds.
A heated meeting of students and campus groupies discussing direct political action is attended by Mark (Mark Frechette) who openly declares his willingness to die for the cause while simultaneously alienating himself from the other young radicals. He and a roommate buy hand guns. Later Mark, gun in boot, watches as a Los Angeles policeman is fatally shot by another protester who has been tear-gassed. Mark is seen on television and without apparent premeditation steals a small plane and flies into the desert where he encounters free-loving and tolerant hippie Daria (Daria Halprin). Daria is unexpectedly driving to Phoenix to rendezvous with her boss/lover Lee Allen (Rod Taylor). Before she meets Mark she is looking for a specific, albeit non disclosed, place and person but instead encounters a group of young boys who taunt her with sexual cat calls and deviant provocations. After she escapes the boys she is spied from the air by Mark as she fills water for the car radiator. Mark proceeds to buzz her car at one point flying only three feet over Daria as she lies face down in the desert sand. They eventually meet at the desert shack of an old prospector-type man and then the two new lovers wander the valley, philosophize and make love at Zabriskie Point as the unusual Zabriskie formations erupt in an orgy performed by The Open Theatre (Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead provided the music for this scene).[1] The couple then paint Mark's plane in psychedelic colors in preparation for him to return the plane and resume life in Los Angeles. Daria pleads with Mark to remain a fugitive, travel with her and forget about returning the plane. Mark, projecting that he can return the plane and evade the law successfully, flies back to Los Angeles only to be killed on the runway by a policeman after landing. Daria learns about Marks death on the car radio, drives to Phoenix to the lavish desert home of her boss where she grieves for Mark by leaning into a drenching waterfall. A brief encounter with the Mexican maid in the home crystallizes in Daria's mind the social inequalities Mark had apparently died for. Without hesitation or goodbyes Daria leaves. But as she is driving away she stops to look back and visualize the home exploding in slow motion to the screeching sounds of Pink Floyd. The explosion apparently represents her psychological separation from corporate greed, superficiality, and racial injustice.[2]
Antonioni visited the band The Doors while they were recording the album L.A. Woman, and considered including them in the soundtrack. The Doors recorded the song "L' America" for the film, but in the end it was never used.
Critical response
The film was a notorious box office bomb, attacked by critics and ignored by the counterculture audience MGM was courting. The film cost $7 million to produce and made less than $900,000 in its domestic release. The booklet later released with the CD soundtrack declared unsympathetically,
... critics of all ideologies — establishment, underground, and otherwise — greeted the movie with howls of derision. They savaged the flat, blank performances of Antonioni's handpicked first-time stars, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, and assailed the script's confused, unconvincing mix of hippie-buzzword dialogue, self-righteous, militant debate, and free-love romanticism.
Production
The U.S. Justice Department investigated the film and questioned whether the orgy scene violated the Mann Act in which women were taken across state lines for sexual purposes. However producers pointed out that no sex had actually taken place and that no state line had ever been crossed since Death Valley is in California.[1]
