Mark Frechette

(YouTube Streaming, December 2022) Films like Zabriskie Point defy capsule reviews. It clearly doesn’t appeal to me, considering its director, subject matter and stylistic approach. If you want a fact-based description of the film, it’s something along the lines of “Celebrated European arthouse director tackles an American crime story of lovers on the run at the height of the New Hollywood era, and uses the occasion to look at the counter-cultural movement.”  But that only hints at some of the weirdness of this film. Yes, it’s strange that writer-director Michelangelo Antonioni, best known for languid neorealist dramas, would come to Hollywood to take up a New Hollywood chestnut of star-crossed lovers going on the run following a crime. The neo-realist approach jockeys nervously with the necessity of actually delivering a genre plot, and so Zabriskie Point can both feature a fascinating, overlong look at a student protest planning meeting, and end on a showy Michael-Bay-esque series of explosions blowing apart a house. Both lead actors were nonprofessionals at the time (ironically, male lead Mark Frechette would die following a bank robbery and an arrest just four years later) and Zabriskie Point thrives despite this because it’s executed with the sloppiness of a New Hollywood drama as infused by European neorealism. There’s sex and violence and plot points that barely make sense and that’s the film for you—something that could only have been created in 1970. It’s watchable in bits and pieces (the cinematography isn’t bad once the film moves to the desert) but more out of historical interest in that period of time in American film history than anything else. Hence the more favourable critical assessments of the film now than upon release—it was just weird back then, now it’s weird with a taste of 1970s cultural exploration. Obviously, other writers than me will do a better job explaining what the film is about.