Arts & Entertainment

 

 

Italian Cinema in the American Desert:
A Review of “Zabriskie Point”

One-night Screening @ Van City Theater, September 13

Duncan DeLorenzi

Dias Point is a view point
overlooking a vast expanse of ancient
rock formations, pushed up between
barren valleys and ravines in the middle
of Death Valley National Park. The park
is located between the Amargosa Desert
in Nevada and Inyo National forest
in south eastern California. Zabriskie
Point is also the title of the first made-
in-America film from the Late Italian
director Michelangelo Antonioni.
Released in 1970 the film successfully
depicts the era’s youth counterculture
movement.

The opening scene shows a group of
radical College students discussing an
upcoming protest that they are planning
to stage on their campus. Ostensibly,
this protest is all tied into the “Black
Free Rights” movement, but the main
point of debate seems to be whether
or not the black kids should allow the
white kids to participate in the protest.
The blacks feel that only they have been
persecuted and therefore have the sole
justification to be rebellious. The white
kids, however, feel that they are just
as angry at “the man”, their parents,
and society’s injustice as the blacks.
And so the protest kind of morphs into
a mini-movement of its own, against
an imposing moralistic society, over-
bearing authority, and corporate greed.

Events soon turn bloody. After
watching police open fire at a group of
protesters, Mark, a rebellious college
dropout who is participating in his own
way, winds up shooting and killing an
officer. From that point on, the film
follows the young rebel on the run
from the authorities. After successfully
eluding the police on the street, Mark
heads for the airport where he steals a
small airplane and somehow learns to
fly it during takeoff.

Meanwhile, the lovely and
sympathetic Daria (another college
student) is unwillingly working
part-time for some big-ass property
developers. She ventures out to the
desert in her car on an assignment to
assist her slightly devious boss with
his grandiose marketing scheme to
sell sand dunes to people in the city,
marketing them as small pieces of
paradise. Of course Mark—by now
high over the desert—spots her lone
car on the highway and subsequently
carries out a very impressive impromptu
air show, repeatedly dive bombing
her car and scaring the shit out of her.
These are some of the best scenes in
the movie. When these two neophyte

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actors do finally come together (literally
again and again in a long sandy, dust-
covered sex scene), the somewhat bland
character performances remind you that
you’re indeed watching an old orange-
colored 1970s art-deco flick. I half
expected to see a hapless Jim Rockford
appear in a rumpled blazer sipping a
coffee in a mobile trailer in a parking lot
in Malibu.

Despite the somewhat dry
performances, as the film progresses
Antonioni’s filmmaking expertise
really begins to mold and shape the
viewer’s perspective. He uses very
long takes which easily absorb the
viewer, especially as many of these
longer scenes are accompanied by
strange and funky music from bands of
the era, including The Grateful Dead,
The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd
(who actually wrote a song just for this
movie).

After some adventures and frolicking
in the desert, including Daria’s escape
from the ass-grabbing clutches of
a circle of very young boys who
live, apparently, in an abandoned
and overturned bus in the middle of
nowhere, the story ambles on. With
the assistance of a hermit living beside
the highway, Mark and Daria very
creatively repaint the stolen airplane
with bright, psychedelic colors, crafting
anti-establishment symbols and peace
statements over the fuselage. Later,
Mark winds up getting shot and killed
by police after a wobbly landing at
LAX and subsequent attempts to run
the police cars off the runway. After
hearing the news on the radio, Daria

 

escapes to the only safe, comfortable
place she knows—her own make-
believe world— where she visualizes
justice and sweet revenge. Throughout
the film we spend a lot of time
following the nuances and thought
patterns of Daria’s spiritually-guided
but troubled mind. This girl is obviously
a Pisces. Her fantasy turns to implied
reality in the film’s last scene, perhaps
one of the most mesmerizing moments
in the entire film. After it ended, I was
left staring slightly open-mouthed and
dumb, even as the curtain came down.
Antonioni’s distinctive style of
shooting regularly
uses very long
shots and takes,
often lingering on
simple subjects
for long periods of
time. The approach
has prompted both
admiration and
disdain for his films.
Likewise, many of his
films controversially
deal with themes of
social alienation and
middle-class ennui.
His ability to depict
the propensity of a
modern society’s
power in making
people feel guilty and
worthless for pursuing
simple, base pleasures
is an essential part
of his filmic legacy.
Antonioni especially
to convey the sense

 

of purposelessness felt by middle-class
people who have nothing concrete or
worthwhile in their lives to live, fight,
or die for. He was also very effective
in being able to show the human side
of even the most flawed and morally
repugnant characters.

One thing is certain—this particular
Italian filmmaker was an extremely
influential, as well as controversial,
presence for at least several generations,
influencing legions of independent,
non-mainstream filmmakers. Even
Ingmar Bergman, who once remarked
that many of Antonioni’s films were
“boring”, still admitted that some of
them were still quite brilliant.

Antonioni died on July 30 of this year
in Rome, at the age of 94. Strangely,
the influential Swedish filmmaker
Ingmar Bergman, noted above, also
died on the exact same day.

Zabriskie Point, though not one of
Antonioni’s finest films, was perhaps
fitting for a lasting last impression. The
final scene, depicting the young and
lovely Daria’s vision of apocalyptic
destruction in the desert, overtly
conveys the filmmaker’s harsh view
towards the relentless nature of man
to inflate the importance of wealth
and luxury. In the end, he seems to be
saying, we cannot escape the fact that
we are just passing humans after all,
and that our man-made whims and
fantasies are but fleeting clouds of dust,
stinging the eyes and obscuring our
vision momentarily before disappearing
forever.

mo