Zabriskie Point

American capitalism goes kaboom in Zabriskie Point

I caught the last thirty minutes or so of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point while attending a double feature during my teenage years. I was nonplussed by what I saw and it has taken me forty years and a lot more viewings of Antonioni's films to work up any desire to see the whole thing and I was fairly happy I did.

The film's flaws were obvious at the time of its release (1970) and still are. The two leads are leaden and don't provoke much interest, even when discarding their clothes to make supposedly hot love in the desert sands. Antonioni's Marxist platitudes are tedious, especially in the opening rap session featuring Kathleen Cleaver. He comes off as a tourist without much feel for the culture or its citizenry. Rod Taylor as Antonioni's version of a capitalist oppressor is wasted.

However, Antonioni's eye for land and cityscapes redeems this patchy epic. The beauty of the American Southwest is captured here, as is Antonioni's pop sensibility in a memorable montage of road signs. Andrew Sarris typed Antonioni as half mod and half Marxist and Zabriskie Point captures that duality for better and worse. The closing sequence of slow motion explosions, capturing his female protagonist's disgust with America's capitalist culture and desire for violent revolt, failed as prophecy, but succeeds cinematically.

Ultimately, Zabriskie Point can be grouped with a motley group of films such as Jacques Demy's The Model Shop. Agnes Varda's Lions Love, and Milos Forman's Taking Off which display European directors coming to grips with America amidst the tumult of the 60s.