Zabriskie Point

Thank god Michelangelo Antonioni has a profound cinematic imagination, for if it weren't for the many purely cinematic pleasures of Zabriskie Point, there would be almost no reason to talk about the movie. The dialogue of the two main protagonists careens between the incoherent and inane. We might generously call this living-in-the-moment speech, for neither character is written as though even the most minimal consensual bounds to conversation are to be accepted. It is as though after the "revolutionary meeting" free for all in which whites, blacks, men, and women talked over one another, Antonioni just wants to see how far two symbols of pure will and imagination can take us. (And, of course, until the last glorious bit of wishful thinking in which the female lead imposes her will upon the elite's desert getaway house, it is a man who is willful and a woman who is imaginative.) And that's a shame, for Daria’s (Daria Halprin) counterculture idealism and Mark’s (Mark Frechette) post-liberal any means necessary desperation deserve better than what they get here. (For a far more astute treatment of these late sixties groups and issues and a radically different depiction of California's deserts, run immediately and rent Peter Watkins' Punishment Park.) But if Antonioni and the other screenwriters can't seem to think outside of clichés about students and elites, at least Antonioni can perform a series of wonder works with the camera. I am particularly fond of an early section when Mark is driving through the city and Antonioni masterfully plays with space, reflections, close-ups, different film speeds, and editing. During this scene he also uses the soundtrack to amp up the alienating omnipresence of capitalism as a built urban environment of endless advertisements. The utopic libido-fest in the desert is justly famous – it’s a joyous wish-fulfillment of physical intimacy and delight, with Jerry Garcia’s lyrical close-reading providing poignancy and extra verve to the entire affair. While Antonioni’s camera is more static in this long scene, he still has a keen eye for gesture and touch and the right editing moment. (I think there are problems with his valorization of the desert, but I believe the incarnation of eros escapes the organizing and mechanistic dialectic which Antonioni seems to want to articulate between the desert and the city.) There is a long tracking-in camera movement over the desert towards Daria and that old Buick that deserves mention. Antonioni has the camera glide in on Mark and Daria. He gets fairly close to the car, then we hear Daria laughingly say to Mark “stop it.” At that moment Daria and Mark start to giggle and Antonioni slowly pulls away from the car, letting it move on towards Zabriskie Point. The on the wind tracking shot here is distant and yet tenderly playful. While I can’t say that the last scenes of destruction are a stunning rebuke of all things capitalism -- it’s almost like Antonioni had a rather large budget and said, Fuck It, let’s destroy a really large something or other, and the first half of the Pink Floyd-scored second half of the destruction (writing school, must go to writing school) is just too ethereal and mesmerizing to be thought of as any sort of critique of capitalism or consumerism -- I gotta admit that when the Floyd starts screaming, I want to kick down some doors with Daria.