logo

The night before was the one everyone had feared they had coming for quite sometime now. Global warming, atomic holocaust, communal violence, civil strife… the reasons had multiplied and there was some awareness and intuitions but nobody wants to the spoil the show when the going’s great. “Look here,” said the clown,” How would you like a hamburger?” The clown isn’t laughing anymore. Maybe it is. You’d never know with the head missing. Blown clean off. As the turbulent night collapses into the unnatural quiet of the new day, the city sees itself for what it has become. It has turned into a bum- a washed out, ramshackle, good-for-nothing. Cars turned upside-down-inside-out, concrete structures gone hollow and charred, garbage everywhere and everything garbage. One figure appears among the desolate, rancid cityscape. Her chic stilettos crunch the broken glass and ruffle the paper and plastic. Whatever is left of the city is reflected on her enormous sunglasses. Her gaudily painted lips blow on her equally flashy color coordinated fingernails trying to make the color stick. A fashionably elegant handbag slings with natural ease over her shoulders as if her shoulder blades evolved into imitation leather and embroidery over the years. She thinks of her credit card inside and her head lifts on her wrinkled neck with purpose and jingling her ethnic earrings just a little.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may we present,

The Last Shopper on the Face of the Earth. The Final Consumer.

(Applause, applause)

Until then:-

If I saw something like clever coffee table sin the shape of a yin and yang, I had to have it. Like the Johanneshov armchair in the Strinne green stripe pattern… Or the Rislampa wire lamps of environmentally-friendly unbleached paper. Even the Vild hall clock of galvanized steel, resting on the Klipsk shelving unit. I would flip through catalogs and wonder, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” I used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection. I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the
honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.

-Fight Club

Zabriskie Point: Zabriskie Point is a part of Amargosa Range located in Death Valley National Park in the United States noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago — long before Death Valley came into existence. The name Zabriskie comes from Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, who in the early 20th century was the vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, whose famous twenty mule teams were used to transport borax from the company’s mining operations in Death Valley.

Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Zabriskie Point’ finds an infamous mention in a list of films that include Bernardo Bertolluci’s period drama ‘1900′, David Lynch’s sci-fi romp ‘Dune’, recently Manoj N. Shyamalan’s new age fantasy ‘Lady in the Water’ all the way to the zenith/nadir of the rarely occurring suicidal combination of an auteur gone decadent with self-indulgence and an impotent studio left wringing its hands- Michael Cimino’s ‘Heaven’s Gate’ which all but totaled United Artists, at that time an over 60 year old studio of no small consequence and founded by a quartet that included no less than Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Mary Pickford.

Antonioni earned his carte blanche fair and square. With his acclaimed and heavily debated upon ‘incommunicability’ trilogy (L’Avventura, L’Eclisse, La Notte) and courting controversy by attempting to move away from prevalent Italian school of neo-realism with a rigorous, beguiling and some say, literary style all his own, he had established his art house credentials as auteur-provocateur. Then, ‘BlowUp’ Happened. Antonioni left native Italy for the London of the swinging sixties and crafted a heavily stylized, colorful, modern, enigmatic, sex-drugs-rock-n-roll portrayal. It was a case of the right picture at the right place at the right time. With Herbie Hancock and The Yardbirds on the soundtrack, frank portrayals of sex and drug use, a dashing lead performance by David Hemmings as the cynical photographer, trippy visuals and a mindbending storyline that could be called high-concept art house ‘BlowUp’ was embraced by the sophisticates and the druggy generation that was just learning to tune in, turn on and drop out. And obviously, the critical adulations and the Palm D’Or didn’t hurt either. ‘BlowUp’ was an unprecedented international success, an art house blockbuster, every studio’s wet dream- a prestige film and a money maker.

Circa 1969, America had seen a homegrown version of that rare breed with the independently financed hippie-chic-road-movie-head-trip ‘Easy Rider’. The success of the Dennis Hopper film alerted the studios of a potentially huge and largely untapped resource in the late teen- young adult demographic. But how do you replicate ‘Easy Rider’- a rambling, extempore, no-direction-home exercise. The formula was there is no formula. How do you start with that? Bigger questions loomed. Who were this new generation? What were they thinking? What were they talking about? They had a lingo all their own. They seemed to have a new consciousness, a new degree of awareness yet were essentially ignorant. Their value systems were to say the least, different. Their heroes were too. They seemed to talk of revolutions and music and sex and politics like they were all the same. They seemed to be waiting for something? What? Was it something the studios could come up with? Top level management shakedowns were enforced, the weirdest movies were financed in the name of ‘Easy Rider’ but while some efforts yielded middling successes, most were futile.

At this juncture if Michelangelo Antonioni were to come up to you straight off ‘BlowUp’ with a vision for this new generation that at least conceptually seems to have everything going for it, what do you say?

You say- Carte Blanche. Final Cut.

‘Zabriskie Point’ begins with a montage of close-ups of college students gathering for a meeting of some sort. Against blurred foregrounds and a sepia tint that gradually turns into flower power technicolor, Antonioni quietly observes the look and behavior of the generation to a tune that starts spare and industrial before turning psychedelic and confused interspersed with distorted sound clips culled from perhaps the news and public service announcements.

The meeting has been convened to decide on the nature of an impending strike/protest on campus in solidarity to the unjustly maligned and ghettoized black people. Antonioni is vague about the specifics of the issue but what he is acutely interested in the interaction with two young black activists presiding over a roomful of white students. The talk is continuous and almost everyone has an opinion. Amidst so much youthful fervor, noise and confusion, Antonioni reserves his trademark detachment and pretty soon the cracks appear and the wry, refreshing cynicism that possessed ‘BlowUp’ comes into play.

In a short video on one of the Vietnam War protests in England, The Deviants frontman Mick Farren owns up truthfully on how in the midst of the protest, just as the action was heating up, the primary aim of the collective was replaced by personal fantasies of heroism. As Antonioni follows dialogue after dialogue among the group, he not only elucidates Farren’s view as the students come up with ridiculous strategies and spout hollow secondhand dictums but goes further and as a student espouses the idea of banding together protesters in a policing squad of sorts, makes an uncomfortable observation that perhaps the victims are not so different from the oppressors, just shortchanged. As the group starts talk of sacrifice and death being an intricate part of the revolution, one boy walks off saying that he’s ready to die but “not out of boredom” only to be booed by the others and told that even anarchists spent most of their time at meetings.

Antonioni starts by taking a round pot-shot at the target demographic themselves and then gives them someone to root for. That boy, Mark is the hero.

A girl tells the watchman that she has to go back up the building she came down from because she has forgotten a book. “Which book?” ,asks the watchman with fierce suspicion like it were a bomb and not a book she had to retrieve or perhaps he believes books to be just as dangerous. At his desk are CCT screens with which he keeps a watchful eye over the premises, not unlike Big Brother. A corporate looking guy is on his way towards them and the watchman refers her to him. She tells him that she is looking for a secretarial job. The Man asks her if the job interests her and she replies that she doesn’t ‘dig’ it but then she has to earn her bread and butter.

The corporate element is gently introduced along with an underlying element of paranoia and the girl who we find out is named Daria is the heroine.

Later, Antonioni brutally skews and satirizes the corporate and takes on the entire right wing in a television commercial that the company which employs Daria comes up with to promote their newest piece of luxury real estate. Antonioni literally substitutes eerie blank faced wide eyed puppets for humans as the voiceover with a grating and forceful cheerfulness extols the joy of a life where ‘you can take your son quail hunting and who knows you may get yourself a mountain lion’. The USP for the women obviously is a spacious kitchen where they can cook sumptuous all American breakfasts for their loving husband and sons. Antonioni is clearly miffed with the fundamental principles and ethics of the corporate structure but judging by the anger in ‘Zabriskie Point’, nothing gets his grouse like the spectacle of advertising.

Vulgar screaming placards. The junk of the earth. Shameless materialistic parades. Unnatural. Idiotic. Repulsive. Irresponsible. Manipulative. Lies. A waste of space and consciousness. He not just questions the need for its all pervasive existence in public and private space but seems to ask if the human eye and mind is so weak as to consume and accept it inspite of it being so blatantly fake. He constructs a powerful montage of signboards zooming into your face with greater and greater velocity till it becomes one continuous blur of metal as the soundtrack lets out a mechanical scream. As the hero’s pick-up turns into a tree-lined street the montage eases only for the camera to zoom into a traffic signal turn red. Without stopping, he zooms past.

Nobody asked him anything and now, he’s not asking anybody.

Identifying the corporate and its mechanisms as enemy number one, Antonioni assigns a close second to the state and its oppressive systems. It is represented by the police, referred to in this movie, more often that not, as ‘pigs’. With rare unilateralism Antonioni ridicules the police reducing them to common fools drunk on too much pride, power and weapons. When Mark is pulled into custody on the flimsiest of pretexts and asked what his name is, he replies,” Karl Marx” only to be asked to spell it out. “M-A-R-X,” says Mark and the policeman types and then continues to the first name column that he dutifully fills out as “Carl”. Later, as the university protest is in progress Antonioni frames a policeman with a gasmask on in the amazing likeness of a pig and with a boiling passive aggression observes them at their brutality as they rampage against the defenseless students. Mark pulls out a gun he had brought along from its hiding place in his socks. A bullet is heard. A policeman falls. Mark runs himself out breathless, reaches a private runway and in a ploy that tests your suspension of disbelief, manages to steal a plane and fly away out of the city.

Meanwhile Daria, driving across the desert to Phoenix on office duty makes a detour along the way to stop at a small town that she was informed was perfect for ‘meditating’. Here Antonioni takes another ambiguous dig at both generations, the old and the young, as he draws out perhaps an eerie allegory of the Manson family- a case of the generation gone into excess and wrong. Daria keeps moving, her car cruising with vintage beauty across an increasingly barren and sun beaten landscape her radio alternating between the news of the university strikes and some terrific music. Mark’s plane catches sight of her flying overhead and what follows is a prolonged sequence of him sweeping down dangerously, impetuously over the girl’s car in a strange bit of teasing/surreal bird-like mating ritual/Hitchcock tribute(??). Next they abandon the plane at a middle of the desert garage-something and head off in the towards Death Valley- an ancient landscape of gypsum and borax whose intriguing otherworldly structure bears testament to the forces of nature.

Antonioni observes the two bond and for the first time, the picture stops dead in its tracks. Sure one can detect a faint vibe of what the scene is supposed to resonate- the boy as a nihilistic force, the girl as a sort of loving mother goddess and giving quiet balance and enough space for these almost opposite forces to not just coexist but exist together in love, the valley. The desert valley is obviously a counterpoint to the manicured cityscape that was earlier portrayed as unnatural force that dwarfs and effaces humanity and builds systems and prejudices. There is an underlying potency, but the way the scene plays it out it turns up an aw shucks-trip happy-boy girl-meet cute-psychedelic new age-he say she say routine. A most poetic scene falls down on its face and the blame would fall squarely on the two young leads who deliver stunted self-conscious performances thus making the already strange and pretentious dialogue seem even more. Sure Mark Frechette is a dreamboat in a James Dean kinda way and Daria Halprin with her long hair, pretty eyes and curves a yak sweater couldn’t hide is the quintessential flower child but that is as deep as it gets. Their superficiality takes it a heavy toll on the movie.

Just as you face the prospect of spending the rest of the film with these two making tangential conversation Antonioni gets things interesting as the couple smoke a joint and proceed for some post-marijuana sex. It is no quickie in the desert sun but a haunting erotic psychedelic set piece. The breeze blows in with the desert sand, Grateful Dead strums on the soundtrack, it is not just one boy and a girl, it is a hallucinatory orgy, young bodies twist into each other, one-two-three-more in a bunch, the desert reclaims their body, their race, their color, all they need is love. There is much to be cynical about this sequence. For one it doesn’t answer the primary critique of the sexual revolution- ‘who will fuck the ugly?’ It may seem too simplistic but Antonioni for once surrenders his detachment and imbues the scene with a genuine warmth and heart over the visual decadence. Also he is aware that this moment is not the answer at best it is a fleeting joy. He ends this scene with the shot of a cliff and two human heads sprouting like buds from the stony facade. A transcendent return to nature.

It is all downhill from up there.

The boy decides that he should be returning the plane he has borrowed and promises to join the girl back in Phoenix once he is done. The city offers no redemption, tragedy occurs, disillusion sets in and love is cornered and tamed, Antonioni finds his final image of hope in absolute nihilism. It is searing striking militant vision that plays out in the end and everything goes- houses, furniture, food, books, clothes, excess and goes with a literal bang. Explosion, flames, slow motion, destruction, annihilation, victory, hope. All this to the tune of ‘Careful With that Axe Eugene’ by Pink Floyd.

The End

In a film of decidedly uncharismatic leads, Alfio Contini’s striking hallucinatory cinematography ultimately turns out to be the maindraw, the star attraction. Antonioni has a penchant for rigorous telling mis-en-scene and Contini frames them with style, intelligence and irreverence. Just a simple scene of the real estate developer in his sterile cabin stands out with symmetry and heavy symbolism- the skyscraper and the American flag share the view from outside his glass window while beside his table a potted tamed cactus sits as an item of pure decoration in a pot while a TV screen fixed on the wall shows time from across the world in a sedate loop. When the movie hits the boring patch it is Contini who saves the day as he captures nature with awe and unfettered freedom

For the soundtrack of the film, Antonioni employed the services of Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead and samples songs from Patti Page, The Rolling Stones, The Kaleidoscope, The Youngbloods among others. That The Doors’ ‘L’America’ later included in their seminal album L.A. Woman was an soundtrack reject alone testifies to its decadence.

Another all-star collaboration on the film happened in the writing stages where Franco Rosetti who wrote the ultra-violent spaghetti western ‘Django’, all-American Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Sam Shepard, Clare Pepole who would later go on to direct ‘Triumph of Love’ and collaborate with marry Bertolucci, frequent Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra who’s repertoire includes Fellini and Tarkovsky among others- all join the Italian auteur behind the scene. It only makes it a damn shame that Frechette and Halprin just couldn’t get it right.

All said and done, ‘Zabriskie Point’ is still Antonioni lite. I was surprised to discover that it was made after ‘Red Desert’, an absolute masterpiece that concerns itself with some similar concerns where the master was more ambiguous and definitely more poetic. But what is interesting is that here he seems to surrender his legendary detachment. He may yet come across as reserved but he has clearly picked a side and sometimes exercises finger pointing anger.

By the time the movie released, the ‘revolution’ was on its wane. But Antonioni believes or maybe he wants to believe. He trades passivity for participation and that the ending is given a human and emotional context in Daria is proof. ‘Zabriskie Point’ reveals Antonioni as human and as flawed as humans can be.

It need not be perfect, it need not be great, it need only to exist as a testament.

(Post Dedicated to Moon In The Gutter)
(3d cubes by PhotoCube3d, info by wikipedia, imdb, kim newman at RTObscura)