If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I found this title listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but I also recall seeing it once in the Wikipedia list of films considered the worst, but I always going to watch it, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse, Blowup). Basically set in the late 1960s, rebellious student Mark (Mark Frechette) is arrested after trying to bail out his roommate, following a mass arrest at the campus during a protest, after he is released he and friend buy firearms from a Los Angeles gun shop, claiming it is for "self-defence". In a downtown Los Angeles office building, successful real estate executive Lee Allen (The Birds' Rod Taylor) is reviewing a commercial for Sunny Dunes, a new resort-like real estate development in the desert. After getting away from a bloody campus confrontation between students and police, Mark walks to Hawthorne Municipal Airport, steals a small Cessna 210 aircraft and flies into the desert. Meanwhile, pot-smoking secretary Daria (Daria Halprin) is driving across the desert towards Phoenix in a 1950s-era Buick automobile to meet her boss Lee, he may or may not also be her lover. Daria is spied from the air by Mark, he flies inches above her car, before she gets out and he wizzes over her lying in the sand, he throws his T-shirt out the window for her to pick up, Daria goes from upset to curious. The meet later, Mark asks Daria for a lift so he can buy fuel for the plane, the two wander to Zabriskie Point, the lowest point of the United States, there they make love, and the site's geological formations seem to have a dusty orgy. Later, a suspicious California patrolman questions Daria, Mark hides behind a portable toilet holding a gun, he aims his weapon, but Daria blocks him, allowing the policeman to drive away. Daria asks Mark if he killed a policeman who was killed in Los Angeles, he admits he wanted to kill him, but someone else shot the officer. Mark and Daria return to the stolen aircraft, painting it with politically-charged slogans and psychedelic colours, Daria begs him to come with her and leave the plane, but Mark is intent on returning it and taking the risks that it involves. Mark flies back to Los Angeles and lands the plane at the airport in Hawthorne, police and radio and television reporters are waiting there for him, he tries to turn the aircraft around across the grass, but Mark is shot to death by one of the policemen. Daria learns about Mark's death on the car radio, she sees three affluent women sunning themselves and chatting around the swimming pool at Lee's desert home, Daria grieves for Mark drenching herself in the house's architectural waterfall. Lee is deeply immersed in the business meeting about the Sunny Dunes development, he spots Daria when taking a break and happily greets her, she finds there is a guest room ready for her, but briefly opening the door, she shuts it again. Daria leaves the house silently and drives away but stops to get out of the car and look back at the house, in her own imagination Daria sees the house repeatedly being blown apart in billows of flames with household items going up with it, she then continues her journey. Also starring Paul Fix as Roadhouse owner, G. D. Spradlin as Lee's associate, Bill Garaway as Morty and Kathleen Cleaver as Kathleen, and an uncredited Harrison Ford as an arrested student. This film has been described as "the worst film ever made by a director of genius", it was an overwhelming commercial failure, and has been panned by critics, no wonder it has gained a cult audience. I don't think it is that bad of a movie, it shows radical activism, rebellion against society, and the breakthrough of modern youth during this significant era, there are certainly a few memorable moments, from the plane flying to the carefree sandy sex scenes, from the road movie vibe to the psychedelic painting of a plane, overall it is a relatively interesting drama. Worth watching!

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.

It was not long after the release of Zabriskie Point that the 'counterculture' of the late 1960s died out, for many reasons, too long to visit in this review. Zabriskie Point is highly symbolic and Antonioni had some premonition of the shape of things to come. It was a time of free love (in some circles), a hope for positive change, an awakening to the degradation of the environment, an awareness of the dismissal of history and local culture, transforming all into a decultured, materialistic mainstream. It also is reminiscent of the films "If…", and "The Ruling Class", a comment of the British class society, not dissimilar their basic conceptual foundations.The film was not perfect by all means, after all, how did Mark know how to fly. There are other non-sequiturs, but then, the film is rooted in the imagination, but with a reference to Cinéma vérité. We should appreciate Zabriskie Point as a sign of those times, and is still highly relevant in its ideas, despite its hopeful romanticism.It is beautifully shot in the desert landscape, and contrasts well with the smog filled atmosphere of sprawling LA.I saw this film in the 70s and admit to only partially understanding it at the time, though its images have always stayed with me. Today, on playing the Rockstar game GTA V (Grand Theft Auto V), virtually travelling through those landscapes made me wish to revisit the film which I was able to view on YouTube once more. GTA takes us into the desert once more, and also looks at the same issues that underpin Zabriskie Point and is even more iconoclastic in its approach to today's problems. No doubt the creators of GTA V take their much of their inspiration from this unusual film.

Call it question in taste (mine or others) or perhaps a message lost over time, but I thought the movie was incredibly boring and biased beyond belief. And I love that Pink Floyd performed original music for the film, but I didn't appreciate the music that they came up with, either. Some of the music sounded like broken guitars trying to remember what melodies were.There was a plot...a thin one...in the style of a movie like "The Trip" but with less drug-taking. It was almost like a late-60's version of the future movie "Natural Born Killers" but less gritty and fantastic. The hours of footage of just driving around in the desert or through the city must have taken an entire year to edit down into a movie.I get it...city and development bustle & The Man VS ideals set up by cavemen (insert hippies or radicals if you feel inclined). There is no growth in our protagonist or this woman he meets, Daria. Speaking of Daria, she's so easily brainwashed by the first radical she meets, and has the most obvious of fantasies about her boss' development in the desert. I'm sure Antonioni wanted cheers to happen in the theaters, but all I had were deep laughs from the bewilderment that this movie was causing within me.It belongs in the archives for people who enjoy political-striking nostalgia of the late-60's and there are a few good tunes from well- known groups on the soundtrack, but it isn't for everyone.