The American road film Italian-style

Michelangelo Antonioni’s genius lies in his mastery of cinematic rhythms. He can be accused of drawing his films out and if you are not in the right state of mind this can cause distraction. But he does it for a purpose and it is all worth it at the end. When I think of great endings in cinema, I think of his magnificent 12 minute panning shot which concludes The Passenger (1975). It was a one take sequence which made me want to hold my breath for its eternity. Zabriskie Point (1970) ends with a truly mind blowing experience, an assault on the senses which brought a physical reaction from me. A recurring explosion that I could feel it reverberating inside me and each moment I thought I was free it would start again. This is the ultimate Freudian return of the repressed – no matter how many times it is played out (each time it returns bigger than the one before), you can never be free of it. The message is not exactly subtle. Antonioni literally blows up symbols of commodity culture (there are clothes flying, fridges exploding and branded products spinning before the camera) but it is the lead up which creates the shock.

As an outsider approaching American culture, Antonioni’s use of landscape and cinematography is brilliant. The focus on the omnipresent billboard is wonderful and symbolic of American consumerism. The billboard infiltrates almost every scene, from the edges of the frame until it invades the whole shot. Everywhere in the city there is excessive branding, like a shadow that cannot be shaken it follows the characters. For example when the boy is using a telephone in a shop and behind him is a wall of logos for different food brands.

As we move into the desert and the billboards literally start to fade and eventually disappear. The claustrophobic condition of the overbuilt LA (some striking birds eye view shots show a city dissected by roads) is contrasted with the amazing expanse of the desert (which is shot magnificently). The vastness of the open space is captured beautifully in shots which demonstrate the epic scale of nature to wildlife. The wilderness, particularly the desert, comes with all sorts of connotations in American film. It is a mythic site of self-discovery regularly utilized by the road flick (think Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise) and before this it represented the last frontier in the Western film - a ‘no space’ if you will, full of threats and possibilities before it is tamed by humanity. There is a freedom evoked by this and Antonioni encompasses this in the character of the girl. She goes from the sterlised environment of the office block (all the shots here have symbols of technology and industrialization cutting up the frame, for example in a shot of a secretary where ¾ of the screen is taken up by the hard industrial vertical lines of the wall) to the freedom of the desert.

The rendezvous the boy and girl and have in the desert is incongruous. A courtship played out between plane and car, possibly ludicrous but no one claims this is realism. The familiarity with which she acts towards him makes it seem like they have known each other forever, not that he’s just dropped out of the sky!

Their frolicking at Zabriskie Point brings with it a child-like innocence. Running down sand hills, play dead, spinning around in circles and screaming as loud as you can knowing no one will hear feels like a way of recapturing the impulsiveness of childhood. There a wonderful vivacity around the girl and her inane conversations. Then of course sexual discovery (what road film would be complete without it!) which turns wonderfully surreal with the groups of people rolling naked in the sand dotted across the landscape.

However like most road films the characters can not remain in this liminal space, they must return to ‘reality’. The boy returns to face his tragic fate and the girl, after seemingly contemplating pushing onward, proceeds to fulfill her work obligations. But how can she accept this world after what she has experienced? For a good ten minutes she walks around the house in a daze, in virtual silence, her sense dulled and yet heightened. It is all about the looks, the noticing of details, where after an amazing experience, nothing seems to exist outside your immediate environment but what does has taken on a momentous significance. I could feel her solitude and the deafening silence. We are lulled into her brooding world and then literally exploded out of it. A rare big screen experience that evokes a physical reaction.