watershed

Zabriskie Point (1970)
3 Stars
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

If Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider had a love child, its name would be Zabriskie Point.

At first, I didn't know what to make of it; it's more like a cross between documentary and music video than narrative fiction. Released in the same year as Finzi-Continis (also directed by an Italian), this also has a drifting, pointless story and half-drawn characters. But Zabriskie shines in its cinematography — which alone is almost enough reason to watch it — and in its period-perfect soundtrack courtesy of Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia.

IMHO, this, and not Easy Rider, is the ultimate counterculture movie, encompassing as it does the student revolts and the ghost of the Manson Family. After the Tate-LaBianca Murders, which took place after Easy Rider and before Zabriskie Point was released, part of the Manson Family holed up at Barker Ranch, also in Death Valley. Taking place in the Hollywood Hills, the murders were, I believe, the turning point of the counterculture, ushering in, at least in Hollywood, the nihilist, dysfunctional cynicism of 70s cinema.

And yet, this was a studio production: no less than MGM, traditionally the most stodgy of the big studios, took a gamble on Antonioni. I said it before, and I'll say it again: nobody does the American West like the Europeans.