Word: antonioni
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Stunningly introduced, running breathlessly toward the camera in a frame worthy of romantically-inclined Hitchcock, Daria (Daria Halprin) represents for Antonioni semi-dormant awareness of the imperfect world she inhabits. A hippie girl who condescends to establishment employment when she "needs bread," this Antonioni heroine is a creature of fashion: she smokes grass (in contrast with Mark's ascetic "reality trip"), plays music on her radio rather than strike bulletins, and tends to pacify her frustrations and desires by retreating into claborate fantasies. An occasional line suggests that these fantasies are standard-operating-procedure. Mark speaks of the group...
...second half leads to a martyrdom which jolts Daria into a more responsible state of consciousness. Presumably she exits the film with enough commitment to end her complicity with a destructive society, an involvement symbolized by her attachment to the, businessman, Rod Taylor. Again, her basic reflexes are sound. Antonioni suggesting that she is capable of reaching a decision to resist forces' Antonioni condemns. In a brief meeting with some beautiful deranged children, corrupt as the angelic demons that end Fellini's Toby Dammit and La Dolce Vita, Daria is threatened by infantile gang rape and escapes fast, horrified...
...reported that Antonioni didn't care what his amateur players said to each other during these scenes. Any security generated by that decision probably grew from a conviction that character development was dependent entirely on scripted behavior and action, a constant regardless of dialogue. If Frechette and Halprin drew on their own lives for some of the dialogue, as Antonioni apparently encouraged them to do, then they are in part responsible for character inconsistencies that cloud the basic narrative thrust of the film. A twenty-one-year-old carpenter from Mel Lyman's Fort Hill commune, allowed to fuse...
...latter sequence, initially a strong and primeval love scene, goes wrong with the addition of Open Theatre couples miming sex, a curious semiclothed series of tongue exercises and reptilian advances, sort of mutually-indulged masterbation. Tone is destroyed more than central focus and Antonioni is forced to cut quickly-Mark and Daria after fucking turned chalk-white like the desert away from his logical climactic image earth-to a more conventional wide-angle pull-back of dozens of lovers dotting the landscape. Antonioni cuts to three panoramic long shots of desert terrain. The third shows: Mark and Daria...
...Zabriskie Point structurally (and wisely) resembles Eclipse more than Blow-Up. Probably fearful of juggling both American Youth and radical advances in construction and style, Antonioni returns to a familiar formula: the people are cipher-like, of less consequence to the film than Hemmings in Blow-Up or Monica Vitti in Red Desert. and are often unsecing guidse through elusive situations in abstract environments. Also, we can parallel the student strike footage with the stock market scene in Eclipse: like the earlier film, Zabriskie Point balances personal travelogue with formally spectacular set pieces. The scenes of Daria driving through...