Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni)

Free love.

At the height of the American counterculture scene, a certain auteur named Michelangelo Antonioni, because of contractual obligations with producer Carlo Ponti and MGM, has set out to create "Zabriskie Point", an anti-consumerist film about the tattered fabrics of late '60s Americana. As we all know, the film, after being a critical and commercial disaster upon its initial release, has since amassed, among viewers, a silent cult following.

     

For a film about counterculture (or, to a certain extent, even entirely counter-American), such 360-degree turn in terms of audience perception is just rebelliously perfect. In a way, it's as if the film, after being initially misunderstood, has emerged victorious against an improbable adversary. Antonioni, an artistic outsider merely dipping his fingers in a culture he does not fully understand, is an image of elegant audacity. But because of his perennially indifferent approach to emotions and a tad too reserved an execution, "Zabriskie Point" does not quite reach the utmost potential it most certainly has.

     

Nevertheless, the film, for what it is worth both in the context of American culture and in the context of Antonioni's pulse as a filmmaker, is still quite a unique triumph. In a tumultuous time when demonstrations and cries of protests were brash and recklessly loud, "Zabriskie Point" is a film of quiet anger. And in the pages of Antonioni's cinematic play book, this is a most definitive approach.

     

Depending highly on symbolic visual manifestations (the imagined mass orgy representing sexual liberation; the film's destruction of consumerist products captured in slow-motion) rather than on obvious imagery and contrived scenarios, the film feels fresh and, typical to Antonioni, alien.

     

For the record, "Zabriskie Point" is never the definitive, all-American counterculture film. Instead, what the film actually represents, on Antonioni's part, is something personal and culturally detached. This is, after all, Antonioni's sarcastic love poem to America. By often framing his characters in front of commercial billboards displaying sandwich spread products and corporation names, Michaelangelo Antonioni was able to enforce his critique of the American 'way' without looking forced and too satirical. So "Zabriskie Point", in a way, is less a film than it is a state of mind.

     

Typical to Antonioni's thematic style, the film wallows less on the nuances of humanity but more on why people are slowly losing it. In this film's case, 'capitalism' and 'mass consumerism' are the main culprits. But before everything goes too far, I do not think that the film is entirely political or even completely radical. If anything else, "Zabriskie Point" purely wallows on the futility of activism. That after all, making an anti-establishment film is just like writing an anti-glacier book (kudos to Kurt Vonnegut). Alas, Antonioni's indifferent brand of cinema, which has earned him both fans and detractors alike throughout the years, has worked yet again, and quite fascinating at that. Through the use of on-screen movements rather than words and dialogues, he was able to convincingly capture the essence of 'free love' during the time.

     

The great example for this is the scene when our two protagonists, one a beautiful anthropology student (riding a car) and the other a rebellious young man (riding a small plane), show their subtle endearment to each other by way of "North by Northwest-esque" aerial communication. As touching as it is strange, Antonioni has made use of two very American manufactured products (the car and the plane) and turned them into objects that bridge human connection. And then of course, there's that famous orgy scene, performed with dream-like abandon by the Open Theatre and beautified by Pink Floyd's transcendental music. Moreover, the film, by highlighting both the barren landscapes of the empty, titular part of Death Valley and the hustle and bustle life within the product-emblazoned corners of mainstream America, is also a textbook exercise in great visual contrast.

     

Generally speaking, "Zabriskie Point's" reputation was indeed highly damaged by the notoriety of its initial reception. For the film's producer and distributor, such failure spiels apocalyptic repercussions. But for a director like Antonioni, a man who is never new to countless boos and walk-outs (the Cannes screening of "L'avventura" comes to mind), such reaction is not a blemish to his ego nor his career but a mere solidification of his utterly divisive and infuriating power as a filmmaker.

     

For some directors, a picture of "Zabriskie Point's" quality can already be considered as a pinnacle. But for Antonioni, it's a mere frolic within the western movie system that he despises the most, and the joke's on them.

FINAL RATING

Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh)

"3 days of peace and music". This has been the phrase that has been most associated with the monumental music event that is "Woodstock". But this documentary film itself, aside from being able to highlight just that in an epic (it runs for a staggering 3 hours and 50 minutes) and almost hypnotic kind of way, is a definitive benchmark in documentary filmmaking.

Today, it can be particularly debated that what happened in "Woodstock" is but a niche manifestation of an obscure state of mind not representative of what America really was at the time. There's also some who may argue that the far out, violence-free miracle that has occurred at that vast dairy farm at Bethel, New York is merely a temporary illusion of transcendental happiness completely demystified by what happened at Altamont Speedway (see "Gimme Shelter") when the Rolling Stones held a free concert there less than four months later; a tragically sobering event (one homicide and 3 other deaths) that is commonly regarded as the "Anti-Woodstock".

But still, after more than 40 years since the figurative birth of this 'hippie' counterculture generation at this legendary music festival, "Woodstock" the documentary is truly potent and also often times genuinely powerful and moving in its truly flawless documentation of both a fragment of social history and a particular highlight not just of pot-induced rock and roll but the unparalleled sway of music in general.

Director Michael Wadleigh, supported in editing and directing by the likes of Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese (both were then-unknown), who painstakingly covered the whole festival with an unbounded passion and goal to cinematically present and capture "Woodstock" not simply as one of those rock concert documentaries that usually come and go but as a simulated experience of what it could have been to walk through mud and smoke some weed at the time, has pulled off the nearly impossible by way of how he has put this massive Aquarian assemblage into a cohesive cinematic whole without sacrificing the minute details of almost everything that has happened there. So, although "Woodstock" the documentary is a solidly realistic time capsule of a film that has finely preserved the era itself, it has also transformed, after all these years, into a timeless film that is as much a thing of envy for free willing, flower-minded folks today as much as it is a perfectly documented curiosity piece for present social scientists.

But aside from being limited into what it merely is (a documentary film), what this documentary can be specifically proud of aside from the very content itself is its utter display of great cinematography and skillful editing. Jumping back and forth between simple interview footages and complex multi-image coverage of every musical performances ranging from that of Richie Havens' to that of Janis Joplin's and Jimi Hendrix's (all spine-chillingly great performances, mind you) that seemingly converge in a trance-inducing visual feast, the film, as it progresses, slowly changes form from being your usual documentary feature into a full-fledged experience; from your usual cinematic collage into a kaleidoscopic wonderland.

As equally fascinating as the musical performances themselves are the slices of existence during the 3-day event that were finely captured by Wadleigh and company's ever-observant lenses with poignant subtlety, which is what makes it a documentary film that is on the league of its own. Just like the great "Gimme Shelter", "Woodstock" is also devoid of any post-production voice-overs or narrations that may simply render the whole film as thematically contrived and emotionally artificial. Instead, the film lets the whole event and all the people speak for themselves in a quasi-surrealistic presentation of images and music that has been masterfully put together to create a potent statement on its own with little to no spoken words.

Commonly branded as the definitive rock concert documentary, I think it's much more than that. For many people including myself, "Woodstock" is not just a simple music festival. Boundless in its audacity and rich in love, it is a cultural revolution that has thankfully found its place in the annals of socio-cultural history, much the same way as how this film has deservedly found where it truly belongs: in the shortlist of the most important documentary films ever made.

FINAL RATING