On a Pilgrimage to Zabriskie Point - Antonioni and the Idyll Called USA Cover Image

Pielgrzymując do Zabriskie Point - Antonioni i sielanka zwana USA
On a Pilgrimage to Zabriskie Point - Antonioni and the Idyll Called USA

Author(s): Sławomir Masłoń
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Michelangelo Antonioni; American cinema; counterculture;

Summary/Abstract: Michelangelo Antonioni’s "Zabriskie Point"(1970) – a film about political and cultural unrest in the US in the late 1960s – not only was a commercial failure, but it was also completely destroyed by American (and not only American) critics. Masłoń tries to show that the allegedly simplified representation of American conflicts that the film is accused of showing, is in the "Zabriskie Point" a reflection of ahistorical pastoral ideology, professed by a large part of American society, which Antonioni not only presents, but also analyses. What is more, what critics took for naive and groundless idealization of youth counter-culture, if one looks closely at the film, turns out to be an unbiased and perceptive analysis of the mechanisms of their fantasy and their relationship with the virtual world created by the media.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 107
  • Page Range: 8-23
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish