@Dada
Yes, I think the film warrants some discussion, but, unfortunately, my memory of it is pretty hazy. I do remember liking the Death Valley scene, however. Watching it was a strange sensation because one part of me said that the “dancing” was pretty silly looking, but, another part, felt like it worked. I also remember the images of the airplane. Sorry, I’m not much help.
multitude of things to consider; the politics, the choice and function of Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette as actors, the ending, Antonioni on Godard’s turf
The most interesting thing is the politics. It was banned in Australia and might still be so according to wiki
The baby boomers are the largest cohort in the history of the world and that force of confusion scared the elders.
In that regard, I think the film does a great job and in a case of art imitating life, imitating art, Frechette was the right choice.
On August 29, 1973, he and two members of the commune attempted to rob the New England Merchant’s Bank in the in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury, a poor neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts where they had their commune. One of the members of the commune was killed by police and Frechette was arrested and sentenced to the minimum security state prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts. He died under highly suspicious circumstances during an apparent weightlifting accident when a 150-pound bar fell on his neck, choking him to death.
I think the film might have been a BO success if released in 1967.
That previous thread you referred to contains a lot of the discourse you’re looking for. I remember it being pretty substantial (our discussions of Antonioni usually are). It would probably be helpful to revive that thread and continue from where it left off.
@DADA WEATHERMAN Antonioni on Godard’s turf(?)
The problem with Antonioni’s filmic capture of the times is more obvious when compared to Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 La Chinoise.
Zabriskie Point lacks the underlying structure, sub text, ancillary themes for an audience. So it isn’t a good filmic representation, but it does capture the confusion of the times – in essence Zabriskie Point is more ‘true’ than La Chinoise.
Robert Peabody said:
“The most interesting thing is the politics. It was banned in Australia and might still be so according to wiki.”
Ha! News to me! Yeah, this plays repeatedly at the Astor Theatre and has done so for years.
If I were you, Robert, I’d stop using “Wikipedia” as a movie bible and stick to consulting MUBI and IMBD.
The film was banned once in Australia but that was DECADES ago.
“Zabriskie Point” is a film that certainly divides its audience. Some people despise it and others find it just plain boring, whereas those who enjoy it either do so because they have some understanding of its ideas or find it entertaining in a superficial manner. Trust me, I saw this with someone people once and on the way home it was clear at least one of us who enjoyed it was totally separated from the ideas of the film. It’s a pity people can enjoy this movie yet not grasp its strong anti-consumerist overtones, which I think are pretty blatant. It’s not a subtle film but at the same time it’s far from vapid.
@ Mark
I think the wiki said it hasn’t been unbanned – has any film been unbanned?
You should be able to figure that out working at a theater – you could correct the wiki.
@ Bobby – which thread are you talking about?
This is the only tread attached to the film.
I think are pretty blatant. It’s not a subtle film but at the same time it’s far from vapid.
But that reflects the times: blatant and vapid. This is where the film succeeds.
The sex in the sand was the perfect metaphor for the chaotic impulses released in the 1960’s. By the release date of the film, people were already reflecting – that was fun wasn’t it? or was it?
One of the Antonioni threads. I don’t think the thread was dedicated specifically to the film.
I liked “Zabriskie Point” but don’t consider it a masterpiece (I think I was probably the one that called it a great flawed film). Maybe I like it the most out of the Antinioni I’ve seen. It’s a little more imperfect and rough around the edges. The closing sequence is certainly the most interesting thing Ive seen him shoot. However, I prefer “La chinoise”. I don’t see how “Zabriskie” can be “truer”. “La chinoise” had its finger on the pulse and predicted accurately. “Zabriskie” was made after the fact. Plus “La chinoise” has an experimental brilliance and takes more chances than “Zabriskie” does.
Zabriskie Point is truer in the way in which it represents the chaos of the times.
La Chinoise is a completely different film – vastly superior in what a film can do.
But La Chinoise presents the times in a completely ordered way; thus, it is false.
Yet true, in its falsehood.
I’ve always been on the fence about this film. I agree with Robert that Antonioni captures the confusion of a time, an era in flux, but it also has a whiff of naivety about it from memory. He does show America from an outsider’s point of view, and sometimes that outsider view can be valuable, but i’m not sure how much that is the case here. It’s not as blatantly off as Wenders laughable(imo) ‘The End Of Violence’, but it doesn’t feel totaly right either. If i had to compare it to anything, it would be Jean Baudrillard’s ‘America’, funnily enough. has a similar mixture of naivety and insight.
All in all, it’s one of my least favourite Antonioni films. i even prefer Identification Of A Woman.
This video’s been on my mind a bunch since I first saw it last week, and now’s a fine time to share. Everyone comes off very oddly, but Brooks and Cavett seem the most awkward to me as they crash and burn in a flaming wrecking on consumer unfriendly footage.
I do love it for its depiction of southern California and the southwest at this time period. Watched TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and DUEL from ‘71 this week, and it got me thinking about the documentary elements within all three when you look at them as a showcase for this particular landscape at this time in the US’s history. To those ends, one of my favorite scenes from ZP occurs in the ‘ghostown’ she finds her way into, starting here at around minute 2:30 and operating quite self-contained from the rest of the movie.
Zabriskie Point represents the nadir of Antonioni’s career – as low a point as the Death Valley metaphor in the film. The acting is bad, the pacing is bad, the story very cliched and shallow in conception. It is only memorable at all for the brilliant final shot of the exploding house – which I credit as much to the cinematographer, Alfio Contini, as I do Antonioni’s invention.
This may be the thread Bobby was referring to earlier – I don’t know:
I don’t believe “La chinoise” is ordered. The film is anarchic. As the opening titles note, it’s a film in the making. But I would rather say in a state of decay. It expresses much more uneveness and chaos than “Zabriskie” does, I believe in both form and content.
@ Bobby
La Chinoise
Order:
The students are on break from school – they are reading Mao.
The mise-en-scene is ordered – the relationships are ordered.
The scene in the train is where the ex-revolutionary tries to bring order to the neo-revolutionary; explaining that a revolution must have the support of the people.
Zabriskie Point
Chaos:
They blow up a building in which a guy is losing his ass on real estate deal.
The explosion isn’t the disorder – it is the chaotic emptiness of the gesture.
The mise-en-scene may be ordered but the montage certainly is not. Neither are the relationships. Leaud loves Wiazemsky but she constantly pushes away from him. Kirilov kills himself. The one with the glasses is ejected from their group. As you mention, the professor wants to bring order to them, meaning they exist in a state of chaos.
In “Zabriskie” the only chaotic scenes are the beginning and the end: the explosion and the frenzied student meeting. It’s hard to differentiate between the explosion and the gesture that provokes it. Both are chaotic.
Back to the point: which is a better film, or truer? I feel Godard captures more truth about pre-revolutionary France than Antonioni does about post-revolutionary America. And I feel Godard’s film is more daring stylistically, more energetic and more interesting on so many levels.
Remember the scene in La Chinoise where they are siting at facing desks and she tells him why she doesn’t love him?
There isn’t a comparable scene in Zabriskie Point. There is no understanding of the order of things.
I think Zabriskie Point is the corollary to La Chinoise.
If you don’t have the support of the people, one is just creating chaos.
Frechette is the ‘one’.
“No understanding of the order of things.” I read that as chaotic if you apply it to “La chinoise”. Didn’t Godard state that he made a film about the confusion and disorder these students feel?
Yes, there is confusion in “Zabriskie”. I would certainly agree that is why it can be considered a corollary of “La chinoise”.
How about the final destructive actions of the respective films? The mix-up murder versus the imaginary explosion. Both seem unreal and almost comedic. Are they creating false chaos?
Didn’t Godard state that he made a film about the confusion and disorder these students feel?
Uh yes, but it is the way it is presented that is radically different.
The students are schooled in revolutionary chaos and then try to put it in practice – they have a plan.
We know that the students will eventually go back to school.
Frechette is bystander that becomes part of the revolutionary chaos and then commits chaos.
When I watched Zabriskie Point I kept waiting for a principle to appear – something that would order the chaos.
Why is it different? How does the film style not embrace radicalism and chaos?
The students don’t really have a plan. That’s why the professor chastizes Wiazemsky. She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing (proven by her flawed murder attempt).
Do we know the students will eventually go back to school? Not so simple. Again, one commits suicide. Another commits murder. Those are chaotic actions one can’t turn back from.
Bobby
Did you forget the scene where they decide who is to carry out the plan? when Wiazemsky gets chosen to her complete surprise?
Actually, doesn’t she get chosen by chance? I remember them drawing straws or something. That’s the chaotic action of fate.
Yes. I was trying to avoid using the word fate because it assumes a grand plan for things.
I see. But I think fate can be very chaotic. I don’t always associate it with grand planning, though maybe in some cases. I’m interested in disastrous fate, like that seen in films noir. Where chance spins out of control and only plans to make as much chaos as possible.
I think we can subscribe or find those things in both films.
Moving beyond the ‘what’ to the ‘how’, Zabriskie Point moves a chaotic character through a landscape in a changing and chaotic time.
To interpret the film as Antonioni moralizing about America and consumerism is way off base. Antonioni is not a nostalgist for a particular moral order.
Antonioni likes the modern world. He said this about Giuliana in Il Deserto Rosso.
… It’s too simplistic to say – as many people have done – that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world which oppresses the individuals and leads them to neurosis. My intention… was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful. The line and curves of factories and their chimneys can be more beautiful than the outline of trees, which we are already too accustomed to seeing. It is a rich world, alive and serviceable… The neurosis I sought to describe in Red Desert is above all a matter of adjusting. There are people who do adapt, and others who can’t manage, perhaps because they are too tied to ways of life that are by now out-of-date.
I think in Zabriskie Point he is showing us the chaotic poetry of the times.
which we are already too accustomed to seeing.
We are accustomed to seeing order.
If the film is not perceived to be “good”, it is because people do not perceive chaos as “good”.
Robert:
A jillion films have been unbanned. And rebanned. And maybe even unbanned again.
I know for a fact “Zabriskie Point” is not banned in Australia because I have Astor calendars from the past few years with the film advertised on it. Plus I saw it with my own eyes at said venue.
“Zabriskie Point” was “unbanned” in Australia MANY years ago.
Robert:
I do not work in the theatre. Writing the occasional review for an e-newsletter is not the same as working in a theatre.
To me, the sex in the sand was like the loving, the fertile, the alive springing up from the desolate, the barren, the lifeless—like watching the world born over again. The hippies themselves are genuinely alive human beings trapped inside a soulless, lifeless plastic society, one they wish to deconstruct and reshape to suit their ideal. One could interpret the scene in several ways but that’s what I got from it. I found it to be one of the better parts of the film.
the sex in the sand was like the loving, the fertile, the alive springing up from the desolate, the barren,
Sand denotes “the fertile”?
I had a more materialist view – sand is really annoying to fuck in.
An irrational act (sand fucking), again denoting chaos.
Ironically, this – the alive springing up from the desolate, the barren, the lifeless,
- was exactly what the developer had in mind:
01:38:09 —>
It’s obvious that this area has got lots of development possibilities, such as a beach, a lake, where you can live quietly, as you please… …and comfortably
01:38:18,900 —> 01:38:21,700
I must say that this business makes me enthusiastic, but… Maybe we’ll end up finding
gold on this property, If we find water, we’ll also find gold for sure.
DADA WEATHERMAN
The first portion of the film makes me ready to love it, but(as most feel) once we get down into Death Valley this becomes a chore that is just a lightyear or so too tall. Nevertheless, I think it actually does go back to being mystifying and great once Daria begins heading toward Rod Taylor’s place and it takes on a more classically Antonioni quietude and sensuality. And then of course the ending indelibly redeems the entire thing for me a millionfold. Almost.
Naturally, my feelings about it are more complex than this, but so much so that I am still conflicted in my perception of it. More and more I think this is the archetype for a great flawed film, as it was characterized in a previous thread.
There is a multitude of things to consider; the politics, the choice and function of Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette as actors, the ending, Antonioni on Godard’s turf(?).
What do you think? Arguments, interpretations, general. Great or bad, it deserves some discourse.