It gives you a whole new way about looking at the day!
Fifty years ago, Pete Fonda and Dennis Hopper closed off the tumultuous stormy decade that was the sixties with a flick that encapsulated the purple haze clouded, grass smoking counterculture that arose. Not only that, but the success of this little road trip movie of bikers and drug deals paved the way for the New Hollywood of the seventies, with its Spielbergs and Sorceses. But, past the iconic Steppenwolf-touched soundtrack and the Old Glory-striped bikes, how does it hold up?
It's definitely still an interesting watch, albeit in a different way than the filmmakers probably intended. Half a century removed, it becomes less a contemporary look at counterculture and more a frame in time to that exact moment in America's history. This was the moment when pot was the drug everyone was talking about, as opposed to just being standard college supplies. This was the moment when struggling desert communes still persisted, and when you could talk seriously about Venusian civilizations. Honestly, the historical value to me sort of overshadows most of the film itself.
The story is a meandering road trip as you would expect; Hopper (decades before nineties kids knew him as every other bad guy on film) and Fonda embark from California to New Orleans basically for the hell of it, flush from cocaine money. On the way, they meet city kids trying to create utopia in the arid plains of the south-west, to more than a few unfriendly rednecks taking offence to the seeming horrors of long hair. And, yes, twenty years before Batman, Jack Nicholson appears in the role that put him on the map. He's not actually in the film as much as you might expect or hope, but even at this young age, his wiseass demeanour proves one of the most memorable parts about it. Hell, there's even a scene where he rambles at length about UFOs and covered up alien civilizations--which I think is worth a watch just in and of itself.
Beyond that, we have the sixties acid trip sequences at a point or two as you might hope, but there's enough interesting musings to keep you watching--be it about the contradictions of a supposedly individualistic society reacting the way it does to seeming rebels as our bikers, or really what America itself is all bout. Fifty years on? A fair amount of it still rings true.
Still, it's not all going to make you pine for the days when Ringo Starr still had a full head of hair; you still have frank discussions on the hypocrisies and injustices of the time--many of which, as before, still haven't really gone away--and, well, it doesn't have the rosiest of endings. Nevertheless, just for what it captured, I say it's still worth a watch--you might need to be in the right mood, or hankering for some historical curiosity, but for some sixties slow-burn, it don't get more classic than this.
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