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Zabriskie Point (1970)
In Michelangelo Antonioni's simplistic and failed
view of America:
- the characters of white rebellious youth Mark (Mark
Frechette), a student radical wanted as a suspect for killing a
policeman during a student strike-riot and for hijacking a small
airplane, and Daria (Daria Halprin), the pot-smoking secretary/mistress
of LA real estate tycoon/attorney Mr. Lee Allen (Rod Taylor), who
was helping to build the Sunnydunes development in the desert
- the controversial, hallucinatory, symbolic, dust-swirling
orgy scene filmed in the "no-man's land" of Death Valley
(at Zabriskie Point) - a lovemaking sequence filmed at the lowest
point in the United States - Zabriskie Point) - as the two started
to make love on the desert sand dunes, several dozen other couples
magically appeared, creating a massive 'love-in'
- afterwards, Mark remarked: "I always knew it'd
be like this." Daria asked: "Us?" But he replied: "The
desert"
- in the excessive, explosion-filled finale (another
anarchic wish-fulfillment hallucination or dream of Daria's? as she
drove away from attorney Allen's luxurious, ultra-modern, maze-like
desert dwelling), she stopped, parked, and turned around as the structure
was blown up (seen exploding from almost a dozen angles) as well
as various materialistic consumer items which were seen being destroyed
in slow-motion and in extreme close-up (pool furniture, racks of
clothes, a refrigerator with a cascading and disintegrating loaf
of packaged WONDER bread, a TV, and shelves of books)
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