"The Great Escapism"

ZABRISKIE POINT

Year: 1970
Country: United States
Language: English
Number: 520
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Starring: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Paul Fix, Bill Garaway
IMDb: 7.0
RT score: 61%

Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point is his second of three pictures he filmed in english. Many critics says Zabriskie Point is his least impressive work. Wow, if this is his least impressive, then Antonioni must be a cinematicall wizard. But I actually this one is his best, even better than Blow Up.

Zabriskie Point takes place in the late 1960s, in the hippie era, in Los Angeles. A bunch of college students has their own radical meeting where they discuss "politics" while they are young and high. In this group there one individual named Mark (Mark Frechette) who's tired of all the conversations, which leading nowhere. He has the same political view as all the others, but he want to go even further, more drastic, use of sharp ammunition against the conformists. He get himself a hand gun. But he rather chose to steal an small air plane and flies it to the Death Valley in southern California where a young pot-smoking secretary named Daria (Daria Halprin) who's on her way to her employers summer house. On a weird coincident both Daria and Mark meets in the middle of the desert, and later make love in a desert formation called Zabriskie Point, where a lot of couples have made love before them. They forget all their worries, all about the world outside, the only thing there is, is love. A place where one could have stayed for ever and ever. But it is possible to actually do that? And I think the answer in obvious.








Zabriskie Point also have some good songs by Pink Floyd, which just fit so great with the events on the screen. One example is the opening scene where we follow the student meetings, where Pink Floyd's music is all we here, and there's no audible dialogues, to symbolize the facts that all of the students are doing drugs, not discuss politics. Another good example with use of Pink Floyd's music is when Daria is imagine that everything in her world is exploding. Zabriskie Point is a wonderful break from reality, as long as it takes us merciless back to earth.


Grade: B+

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