Two films that might seem to have absolutely nothing in common are Stanely Kramer\u2019s 1963 zany epic \u201cIt\u2019s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World\u201d and Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s 1970 counterculture offering \u201cZabriskie Point.\u201d After all, what can a massive all-star comedy chase film have with a moody, erotically charged drama of youth rebellion?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But filmmaker Daniel Kramer declares there are wide acreage of common ground between these unlikely works: \u201cThe wide-open spaces, arid terrain, comings and goings, meetings and partings, amateur aviation, rapacious capitalism, modernity gone mad, and panoramic compositions on Scope canvases. All of the expected tropes of the great American road movie. What we’ve got are two films produced the same decade on either side of a now indelible national tragedy, one that destabilized and redefined American life and American self-perception.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kremer\u2019s invigorating feature-length film essay \u201cIt\u2019s a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point\u201d offers some amusing editing that appears to show the buffoonish comic actors of the Kramer film watching with shock and awe at the raw couplings that Antonioni staged in his celebrated Death Valley orgy sequence. He also traces how both films offer unexpected assaults against conformity \u2013 the respectable middle-aged and middle-class characters of Kramer\u2019s comedy turning feral in pursuit of a buried treasure and the young adults in Antonioni balking at the rigid roles that their elders expect them to inherit. Kremer also considers the great vastness of the American desert as a landscape where emotions transform and hemorrhage \u2013 not only in his unlikely pairing but in other classics, most notably in the grisly climax of Erich von Stroheim\u2019s \u201cGreed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In both films, the characters\u2019 attempts to push back against the conformity to their societal roles ends with a descent into violence \u2013 the slapstick variety in Kramer, a more brutal reality in Antonioni.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point\u201d is a refreshing and playful celebration of cinema and the human spirit. This is one of the most invigorating and original independent films of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two films that might seem to have absolutely nothing in common are Stanely Kramer\u2019s 1963 zany epic \u201cIt\u2019s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World\u201d and Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s 1970 counterculture offering \u201cZabriskie Point.\u201d After all, what can a massive all-star comedy chase film have with a moody, erotically charged drama of youth rebellion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":43713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3395,2614,3394,2615,3393],"class_list":["post-43712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-essay","tag-its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-world","tag-michelangelo-antonioni","tag-stanley-kramer","tag-zabriskie-point"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43715,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43712\/revisions\/43715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}