[critical] Zabriskie Point

Los Angeles, 1969. The challenge grows in academic circles. Mark, a lonely young man, who is ready to die for the revolution but he refuses to die of boredom. Outraged by the arbitrary arrests, he buys a gun to protect themselves. Witness of a shooting in which a black student is shot by a police officer, he prepares to risposter when suddenly the police officer is shot and killed. Fearing to be prosecuted for a crime he did not commit, he fled into the desert aboard a stolen plane…

Author’s Note

[rating:9/10]

• Release Date : April 14, 1970

• Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

• Film american

• With Rod Taylor, Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin

• Duration : 1h 45min

• Trailer :

ARVE Error: id and provider shortcodes attributes are mandatory for old shortcodes. It is recommended to switch to new shortcodes that need only url

After the London of Blow-Up in 1966, Antonioni continues to film, such as a reporter virtuoso who does not have cold eyes, the reality of his time. With Zabriskie Point, this genius of the stage hand to shoot the american society of the 70’s.

Here, the Italian director offers a vision of America that transcends by staging original and aesthetic. Found in Zabriskie Point all the elements of the poetics of the author: color saturation, the superiority of the sun on the lighting, alternating classical compositions and the abstraction dazzling camera movements, etc are all processes that propulsèrent Antonioni in the pantheon of the great filmmakers of this world.

Zabriskie Point is a film about the student revolution, a youth who appears lost and dreams of an elsewhere that the company is not permitted to reach only by the imagination, and the item To actually experiencing this elsewhere, which is nothing else than a mixture of life, love, and freedom, Daria and Mark chose to escape from society and go to the desert. It is during this wandering hypnotic in the middle of a desert magnified by the camera of Antonioni, the outbreak of one of the most beautiful love scenes of the film, a scene at a poetry vibrant to the extreme and a final which still today provides us with thrills second to none with a scene of explosion, which is nothing else than the vision of fantasy of the author of the explosion of the company, transcended by the musical universe of Pink Floyd.

Side casting, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin are unforgettable. Without them, Zabriskie Point would not have had this unforgettable flavor, taste fragrant, which alert our senses and leaves us more, this feeling of ecstasy and freedom which makes all the charm of this film. A couple magnified on the screen, a tremendous torque that can not be forgotten. For the little story, Zabriskie Point will be the sole and unique role of Daria Halprin and the last role of Mark Frechettewas found dead in his prison (his throat was crushed by a dumbbell) after trying to break the bank.

Certainly worship and timeless, Zabriskie Point is a film that will forever remain etched in the memories. An ode to love, tolerance, hope, transcribed perfectly by Antonioni sparkling. At the exit of the projection, a single word comes to mind : Freedom !