Zabriskie Point (1970): Desertifying Modernity – A Zabriskie Point of View

For more content on Antonioni, check out my previous video on Blow-Up here: https://youtu.be/PS-6N8iYTfs 

And for another relevant 1960s film which does not rely on contemporary cultural motifs to convey an equally powerful message, check out my analysis of The Graduate here: https://youtu.be/5kUzyew6kpE
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 Zabriskie Point is often interpreted as a film with a political statement, stressing the struggles of 1960s youth and the disconnect between the counterculture and the status quo. But I think the film goes beyond the politics of its time. It’s not strictly about the counterculture as much as it is about the visualisation of contrast and the conceptualisation of conflict – be it student clashes with the police, generational gaps, ideological disagreements, or in the case of this video, the juxtaposition between modernity and the desert.

You're watching Screen View Mirror, I'm your host Emma, and this is my take on Zabriskie Point.

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The thumbnail (which doesn't get much exposure or analysis in this video) is equally important, so I'll briefly describe it here. The billboard with the family on top of the Statue of Liberty reads "United to New York", and beside the statue itself: "Let's get away from it all". 

Ultimately, Zabriskie Point tries to show what "it all" is, and how "it all" feels, and it does so by isolating modernity and directly contrasting it with the opposite (hence my choice of wording for the title of this video). If modernity is everything, the desert is nothing. If modernity is loud, full and grey, the desert is quiet, empty and earth-toned. If modernity is short and quick, the desert is long and slow. These contrasts are evident in the film's production design, cinematography and editing. 

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Additional notes:
5:30 More like 1/5 or 1/6 of the frame? Evidently, I'm not very good at math...
8:51 "Perhaps we should all live as the characters of an Antonioni film, wandering about our lives, trying to understand the 'whats' and 'whys' and 'hows' but ultimately giving up* because we're overwhelmed by the complexity and contrast of it all."
* By "giving up", I am referring to giving up on our attempt to understand these things and instead allow ourselves to confront the absurd. But of course, that's just one (Zabriskie) point of view.
Music: Crumbling Land (Pink Floyd)
Love Scene V.4 (Rick Wright)
Us and Them (Pink Floyd) // side note: this song was originally intended for the soundtrack of Zabriskie Point, but got scrapped by Antonioni. Just 3 years later, Us and Them appeared on The Dark Side of the Moon.

Видео Zabriskie Point (1970): Desertifying Modernity – A Zabriskie Point of View канала Screen View Mirror