![]() They fund their getaway, which they idealise as a spiritual quest to find their true selves, through a hold-up, soundtracked by chart-topper Nicki Minaj's " Moment 4 Life". Bored in their history class on protest movements and freedom, a bunch of teenage girls pass notes about their vacation. Where are the mad and free misfits of US indie today? Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine's surreal fever-haze vision might be the most subversive take we have on outlaw dreams of current times. That counter-culture's been co-opted and commodified so much now, after all, that the once gloriously renegade "hipster" has mutated into the ultimate insult of try-hard fashion victim conformity. After sleeping outdoors as even low-rent motels refuse to harbour them in their unkempt get-ups, shotgun-toting hillbillies ensure that their party is unequivocally over.Īnd now? A resurgence in nostalgia for the '50s and '60s counterculture – if we can put a recent spate of Beat film adaptations such as On the Roadand the BFI's Hopper retrospective down to that – might mean we're missing its thirst for glittering, unbounded experience in today's cynical, ironic landscape. Ultimately, they live in a nation unwilling to grant them a place. A female voice recites prayers about crucifixion as the ghosts of their past mix with the mystical tears of New Orleans. ![]() ![]() Louis Cemetery, as they ride out a bad trip on strong LSD with two prostitutes. The feeling that things aren't right peaks for our anti-heroes amongst the ramshackle crypts and biblical statues of St. A guy they've picked up on the road points out there are Native Americans buried under them – a heart and experiential history of the US the powers that be would rather cut off access to.īut the film is far from a celebration this is the counterculture dream shown as it is fading. ![]() "It's a weird place, man," Fonda observes on a night camped out under the stars, as he notices tiny bugs jumping around. Shots of the desert in a purple-streaked sunset turn our attention to the atmospheric quality of the sky and details of nature that an acid trip would also orient one to – sensory experience as an end in itself and defamiliarisation as a source of knowledge that were ideals of this hallucinogen-influenced era. Hopper said of using natural light when filming that God is a great gaffer. Its sequence with Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" has been so quoted and parodied it's now impossible to watch with fresh eyes. In its many scenes of open-road riding, the loosely structured, music-driven film captured a sense of that rebellion. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it." He laments that while Americans talk a lot about the value of freedom, they're scared of anyone who actually exhibits it. George (Jack Nicholson), the lawyer and out-and-out drunk they team up with overnight in jail, says: "This used to be a hell of a good country. Rather than making his bikers violent fiends, Hopper's tale plays out with a hippie twist, with the real savagery stemming from local rednecks unwilling to accept the challenge to conformity the bikers so blatantly represent. Outlaw biker movies were a staple of low-budget exploitation filmmaking in the '60s, and Kenneth Anger had even fetishised the aesthetic in underground homo-erotic classic Scorpio Rising (1964). As London's BFI launches a season celebrating late renegade Hopper with a screening of Easy Rider on Wednesday, we consider its legacy in US filmmaking. Made for under half a million dollars, it was the first independent movie to be distributed by a major studio – the start of the true "indie" being co-opted by commercial interests realising they could make a buck. Hopper also penned and directed the film, and the raw energy of his misfit vision helped spark a New Hollywood era of revitalised filmmaking. Flush with cash after a coke deal that frees them from the grind of regular work, they're crossing the wide-open Southwest on high-handled motorbikes toward Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper star as Captain America and Billy the Kid – two modern-day outlaws. If there's a single film that sums up US counterculture dreams and disillusionment, it has to be 1969 road movie Easy Rider.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |