Featured Audience Ratings

• AJ V

  
  Wow, I don't remember this movie at all, I need to watch it again sometime.

• Emil K

  
  It may be flawed and unfocused, but when it comes to hallucinatory images and wonderful soundtrack, then look no further. Zabriskie Point is in many ways director Michelangelo Antonioni's most ambitious work. Producer Carlo Ponti gave him three film deal and artistic freedom, and… More
  It may be flawed and unfocused, but when it comes to hallucinatory images and wonderful soundtrack, then look no further. Zabriskie Point is in many ways director Michelangelo Antonioni's most ambitious work. Producer Carlo Ponti gave him three film deal and artistic freedom, and Zabriskie is second one of those films. Other two are Blow-Up and The Passenger. This film is possbly the best timecapsule of it's era and has influenced many directors since. And last but not least, you should see it for it's mind blowing climax where Antonioni blows capitalism into the sky high. With soundtrack by Pink Floyd this truly is interesting work of a art.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]In "Zabriskie Point", Mark(Mark Frachete) is a campus radical involved in a college strike. He and his pals have had enough with meetings and decide armed resistance is the way to go. During one confrontation with the police, a policeman is killed.… More
  [font=Century Gothic]In "Zabriskie Point", Mark(Mark Frachete) is a campus radical involved in a college strike. He and his pals have had enough with meetings and decide armed resistance is the way to go. During one confrontation with the police, a policeman is killed. Mark flees by stealing an airplane and flies towards the desert. Meanwhile, Daria(Daria Halprin) is driving out to Phoenix via a meditation center she hopes to find...[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]"Zabriskie Point" is a very dated movie about violence in America. The acting is amateurish with the exceptions of Rod Taylor and G.D. Spradlin. Michelangelo Antonioni sure seemed to enjoy photographing billboards. There are a couple of nice sequences, though.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]What is wrong with nonviolent resistance by the way? Granted, I did not like meetings in my college days and I still do not(The subject matter having changed from socialism to capitalism.) but in any kind of movement, you still need some sort of ideology and idea as to what you hope to achieve. [/font]

• George M

  
  Not one of Antonioni's best, that's for sure. But the final sequence with the explosions is BRILLIANT!

• Mike T

  
  Michelangelo Antonioni's approach to this film is challenging but deliberate, and anyone willing to embrace its strangeness will find something to admire in his vision. Poetic in execution and visually inventive, it is a picture of undeniably high production value with… More
  Michelangelo Antonioni's approach to this film is challenging but deliberate, and anyone willing to embrace its strangeness will find something to admire in his vision. Poetic in execution and visually inventive, it is a picture of undeniably high production value with thought-provoking aftereffects. I found it to be mesmerizing, but its borderline surrealism and narrative rule-breaking will be off-putting for a lot of people. This is a film I will revisit.

• Ivan D

  
  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… More
  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.

• Emily B

  
  Was a commercial failure but in it's defence it has beautiful scenery and an amazing ending.

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