Such a frustrating disappointment

Memorable, crazy movie

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Mark is bored with the continuing student strike on campus. His friends get arrested and he goes to bail them out of jail. Instead, he is arrested. He is released and buys guns with his friend. During a campus protest, a policeman is shot. Mark flees the scene and steals a small plane. He's flying over the desert and Daria driving her car. He lands and joins her.It's a little too free form and amateurish especially considering Michelangelo Antonioni as its director. It could trim some of the first half. Sometimes, it looks like a student film. It's almost halfway before Mark and Daria get together. The leads do more or less student level acting. They are hippie-rama and the embodiment of that newfound free-spirit. It's fine to have a road trip through the desert and suddenly, there is a hippie sex orgy in the dusty landscape. As a narrative film, it is a meandering slow jog. It's not surreal enough to be a hippie psychedelic fantasy. I wouldn't say it's beautifully filmed but the desert setting is compelling. At least, that's better than the real estate office. The explosions montage as a finale only serves to punctuate how lackluster most of the movie is. The box office was an unmitigated financial disaster. It's a little better than that.

Michelangelo Antonioni's American film has become a classic study of alienated youth despite the fact that it's not really a very good movie. It's muddled, poorly acted and awkwardly paced. It's challenging to be sure but there are also a lot of in-your-face imagery (endless signs of the consumerism the US embraces, police shooting AT rioting students) that help to form Antonioni's decidedly anti-American slant. Casting non-actors in the leads doesn't help. Combined, Daria Halprin & Mark Frechette have the charisma of a rock. Following two story lines (one involving Frechette and student revolutionaries, the other involving Haplprin and her boss/lover Rod Taylor) that lead to a highly explosive ending, the film is a beautifully photographed bore. It's dull rather than compelling. The rock songs that pepper the film (by the likes of Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead) add little. The screenplay was worked by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra along with Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard and Clare Peploe, but there's really very little here. As Frechette says early on in the film, "I'm willing to die...but not from boredom." If you feel that way, stay away from this one.

it could be, in same measure, an experiment and a masterpiece. a honest confession and a manifesto. at first sigh, picture of a generation sense search, it is not only a legendary title or a revolutionary piece but its importance remains in its universal message. a film about love, hate and romanticism out of classical stereotypes. a couple and a project. revolution as puzzle. and purity as usual victim. the mixture between emotion and cold reflection is its basic virtue. a film about "70's spirit who can be about present days. because the scene,the precision of Antonion to reflect essence of a sick society is the same. only the desert becomes to far.

Before having seen this I had seen six other Antonioni movies ("The Passenger" being my favorite). Each of the six had some merit, so I was unprepared for this unfortunate effort.The movie starts off well enough with a fictionalized account of a student protest. I was a young man at the time of the student protests against "the establishment" in the late 1960s, and I think the specific account presented here is not far from some actual events at the time. From a distance of forty years hence, it might seem that the group discussion that opens the film among young activists arguing about tactics, and what makes one a true revolutionary, is far-fetched, but such meetings were not uncommon. I remember people I knew at the time would talk about "when the revolution comes," rather than "if the revolution comes," without any consideration of the fact that there wasn't going to be a revolution, at least not one in the style that they perceived.Once the main character, Mark, gets fed up with what he is seeing and hearing and takes off on a personal odyssey the movie leaves the realm of reality. There are too many plot holes to enumerate. Could Mark sneak onto an airport in broad daylight, appropriate a single engine plane (with the keys in it no less) and take off on his journey? And he tuns out to be a stunt pilot too? I think it can be stipulated that the movie is not concerned about appealing to the logically inclined, which does not necessarily make it a bad movie, but there is little to appeal to any frame of mind I think. The two lead actors are embarrassingly bad, even for non-professionals, and Rod Taylor gives his usual wooden performance. Maybe director Antonioni chose the unknown Mark Frechette to play the role of Mark since he has some physical and personality traits similar to Peter Fonda and Antonioni envisioned himself making his own "Easy Rider." I suppose the audience is being encouraged to identify with the free spirited and spontaneous Mark as opposed to the crass, materialistic, oppressive society that is presented, but the two extremes are drawn in such a heavy-handed manner that I felt bludgeoned by the message. Then there is the dialog that is so flat that I can't remember a single line. Apparently Sam Shepard shares some of the blame for that. There are some nude sex scenes which I guess are tossed in as a sop to the free love movement that was advanced by the counterculture of the 1960s. The scenes of young people rolling around in the desert having sex just felt odd to me. I think maybe Antonioni realized he was making a dog of a movie and some soft core porn might help at the box office. Or maybe in late middle-age this is how Antonioni contrived to be around some naked youngsters.The only positive in this for me was the beautiful cinematography of the Death Valley California landscapes. At least Antonioni's talent for the use of color is in evidence in the landscape scenes, as well as in the final explosion shots. I would have better appreciated Antonioni's making a travelogue than this thing.A good part of this movie takes place in Death Valley which contains the lowest point in the United States. This is fitting since I think this movie must also mark the lowest point in Antonioni's career.For a good understanding of the major themes of the 1960s in the United States, see the documentary "Berkeley in the Sixties."