Zabriskie Point

In the 1960s, the director Michaelangelo Antonioni left his native Italy for a series of a films abroad. BLOW-UP, shot in 1966, captured Swinging London at the dawn of the Sixties counterculture when radical new fashion and music served as the nexus of youth innovation. But as Antonioni moved to the United States and began shooting ZABRISKIE POINT, ultimately released in February 1970, he now captured a counterculture that was tougher and politically radical, with Black liberation movements and university students advocating in-your-face or downright violent methods for effecting social change.

In southern California, a young man named Mark (Mark Frechette) flees a university sit-in after shooting at one of the riot police besieging it. A young lady named Daria (Daria Halprin), who works as a secretary for a large real estate developer building out in the desert, is driving to Phoenix for a meeting. They cross paths when Mark, who proves to have some training as a pilot, steals a light plane from an airfield for a little joyride. He buzzes her car for laughs. When he finally lands, Daria quickly overcomes her fear at this aerial taunting and falls for him. They spent an afternoon together in the desert, at the eponymous point in Death Valley. Yet while these two young people in love enjoy this brief splendour far away from it all, they must eventually return to civilization, and then things come to a head.

ZABRISKIE POINT was a critical failure when it was first released, and I was expecting to dislike it. However, the film's flaws are few and, among everything else the film offers, forgivable. One of those flaws is the acting during the relatively brief portion when the two leads meet. Frechette and Halprin are extremely photogenic and fashionable -- it's hard to believe they weren't established Hollywood bombshells, but rather amateurs and they had actual counterculture credentials. However, as much as they provide the film visually in moments they appear al...