please get his arse out of frame so we can start to think about the cinema once again.
Zabriskie Point is a seven million dollar fantasy that is larger than life in every way—the testament of the industry, the total exploitation of all its technological resources. What a trip just to walk through the swing doors of the Empire and wade through all that lush carpet and gilded space. What comfort as we sit through two hours of naked passion and violence-how do you even begin to talk about such an experience?
Just as Biblical language successfully puts the wages of a day labourer and the love of God onto the same unearthly plane (the kingdom of heaven organised in the same way as despotism earth Point through constantly floating camera (cranes, travelling shots, zooms and aeriel photography fantasises every object, every emotion it touches. A world of superhuman dimensions comes to lifeAntonioni has perfected the methodology illusion. And it is just this perfection that enhances the reality of the images-they come to have a being of their own. They enclose the audience in a panavision world where the only reality is illusion, and the hard work of making the film is translated into the sheer bliss of watching it.
Let's be clear on one point-Zabriskie Point belongs to Antonioni as much as New York belongs to Nelon Rockefeller-they've both got fingers in every pie, but they can claim nothing of their very own. And this is the hallmark of an industry- -never create, process products. And here Antonioni is processing the youth of America, their ideas, aspirations, and weaknesses. His triumph will be the nightmare of millions, for in this awesome reflection of ourselves we can see the glittering facade of a culture we erected against civilisation- -and 11 toppled before a camera, it was contained within a panavision screen. It would be misleading to call Zabriskie Point a 'good' or a 'bad' film—it Is such an important milestone that these simplistic terms of reference are just not enough. For it verified all the assumptions cinemarxism, notably that the industry Is a monolith of chaos, and the cinema as a means of personal expression is alive only outside this industry. Antonioni has racked MGM to its last grasp-those aerial shot which cost maybe thousand dollars a second can no longer be justified neither in economic nor "aesthetic terms. And Antonioni is no fool—he knows he was torturing those cigar-toting execs with his lavish budget —and all for a film of a boy and girl talking.
A subversive film then? Well, it could be said that it is a mim about the Movement. And Antonioni is on record as saying he thinks the students are the only hope for white America.
But even if he supports the youth revolt, of what use is his support? The real radicals don't give a what Antonioni thinks. In fact the only TUCK The statement he makes which carries any weight is what he says about the cinema-his Tota comprehension of the illusory nature of the image makes him the master craftsman of our time. While the content of his craft is the activity of other—in this case student militants Never before has the artist as parasite been so exposed so overwhelmingly. The Movement isn't a fantasy, while Zabriskie Point is—how else do you describe the relationship between the two?
All this rhetoric is bullshit, let's start talking about the film, and not just our reaction to it. But here there's a block. Because to talk about Zabriskie Point as a story is like debating the Vietnam war. We're past puppet charaterisation, we're past artificial dramas, and dialogue like 'when you stop counting on losing then I'll join the Movement. Here are Mark and Daria acting out fantasies dictated by a clumsy script, while all around them the might of technology plays havoc with their destinies and with our perception of their situation. We are sidetracked from the simple boy-girl story by a Relax, and enjoy the revolution"! welter of contradictory forces. They artificially brought together, and artificially separated, and we no longer accept reality on this level. We're past it, Antonioni is past it, film like this, but its impact derives from something more fundamental. It is a peek under the petticoats of revolt—it tantalises, it satisfies without making demands. And as soon as we start straining our ears to catch every word in the opening white radical/black panther debate we've castrated our participatory reflexes.
Antonioni is exploring in filmic terms une enormous tensions at work in the US today. He looks around the streets of LA and sees nothing but slogans, so he makes a movie of slogansvisual slogans that try to outdo the billboards that act as the constant urban backdrop. The Bank of America promotes itself through the poetic vision of a glowing, setting sun, and so does the ending of Zabriskie Point. So we ask what is Antonioni promoting?
It might seem that the city is a visual slogan of domination and submission (pig justice, riot in the streets) while the desert is a slogan of freedom and ecstasy. But we know that the message of slogans is never in the words, but in what the words convey. And translating this into filmic terms-a rigid camera conveys a sense of isolation, a dynamic camera an illusory sense of involvement. The floating camera of Zabriskie Point overpowers us, it detonates emotions in us only artificially related to the events portrayed the screen. The slogan we succumb to is on The paradigm case is where the kids are talking after their love frolic, their heads silhoutted against a blue, blue sky at the top of a cliff What they are saying to each other is moumentally unimportant—but what the camera is saying as it swings up the slope and catches the sun's rays full in the eye, a dazzling rainbow of reflections, is crucial—and almost beyond verbal analysis. It has a mechanical cousin in those heavy cranes that seem to exemplify the special prose quality of westerns-you know, man on horse rides away from camera to fort gate camcra cranes up and man enters compound, under the stars and tripes.
If Zabriskie Point is the last send on medus try techniques, total disembodiment materials and spectators, then the Rolling Stone review seems to be the last word on Zabriskie Point. But not quite, because the reviewer confused the resources of Antonioni with those of the industry employing him. He concentrated on the cliché content of the film, whereas its power comes from its stunning treatment. And even the theme of the Movement is no more alien to Antonioni then anything else he has touched boredom, loss of self-fulfilmentall bourgeois mystifications.
synonymous with Zabriskie Point. We are power very word 'feature 11 TH now less to initiate such perfection, nor do we need to. At last we are forced to stand on a new road-make around, and burn them. OWE While MGM can look movies. show them for more Antonionis.
The Black Dwarf 23rd March 1970