Review(s): DVD Easy Rider (35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
"This used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it.",
"A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere" announced the posters that advertised "Easy Rider" (1969). It was a fitting summation of the low-budget film which defied Hollywood traditions and, at the same time, grossed more money than most of the lavish productions of the same year. Although this was the first film either of them had directed, both Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda were very familiar with the youth exploitation films of the Sixties, having appeared in "The Wild Angels" (1966), "The Trip" (1967) and "The Glory Stompers" {1968). They were able to finance their film through Columbia Pictures for $340,000 and it went on to take in more than $50 million at the box-office.
With its spontaneity and sincerity and its roots firmly in Sixties culture, "Easy Rider" established a new trend in movies: the 'road' film. Hollywood was quick to catch on to the idea of films whose characters had no history and traveled for no apparent reason; the journey becoming a metaphor for life, and the adventures on the road an allegory of man's search for himself. It also fostered a new taste in motorcycles-the Harley-Davidson 'Chopper'.
Wyatt and Billy set off across America on their own personal odyssey looking for a way to lead their lives. On the journey they encounter bigotry and hatred from small-town communities who despise and fear their non-conformism. And it is these people who finally kill off the dreams that they do not understand. Although Wyatt and Billy also discover people attempting 'alternative life-styles' who are resisting this narrow-mindedness, there is always a question-mark over the future survival of these drop-out groups. The gentle hippie community who thank God for 'a place to stand' are living their own unreal dream. The rancher and his Mexican wife are hard-pushed to make ends meet. Even LSD turns sour when the trip is a bad one. Death comes to seem the only freedom. It is significant that, in the final scene, the solitary burning bike remains: Wyatt's spirit lives on.
The film's essential philosophy is controversial, if unspoken. Nonetheless, it is eloquently articulated through the pulsating rock soundtrack, the emphasis on dope smoking as a common aspect of life, the loving shots of the rolling scenery as they ride across America, and the equation of motorbikes with freedom rather than with the hooliganism of "The Wild One" (1953) and its successors. It was, perhaps, the only film to portray the new culture from within that culture itself.
"Easy Rider" also works on a number of mythic and symbolic levels. Hopper had recently become engrossed in Thomism (a philosophical system based on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas) and indeed, it has been seen as the story of a modern prophet . . . from the difficulties of getting hotel rooms to the final violent 'crucifixion'. Another interpretation might suggest that Wyatt and Billy are the drop-out versions of their famous Western namesakes, reversing the traditional journey by traveling east on motorbikes rather than west on horses: a rejection of the old Hollywood and its myths and dreams. One further ironical aspect of this view is that Henry Fonda--Peter's father--once played Wyatt Earp in "My Darling Clementine" (1946). But there are no heroes in "Easy Rider"; identification is stimulated by the mood of the film rather than by characters that have no history and are therefore ideal subjects for mythical legend.
The filming process also rejected Hollywood traditions, as the crew themselves followed the same eastward journey, picking up their actors in the towns they passed through-often improvising action and dialogue. One dramatic scene in a diner, for instance, was done in this way: the locals were told that Hopper and Fonda were sexual child-molesters, and the customers reacted appropriately vehemently. One actor not recruited en route was Jack Nicholson, who gained fame and an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the liberal Iawyer who drowns his uncertainties in alcohol.
In itself, "Easy Rider" is a work full of contradictions--including the fact that Hopper took time off from shooting to appear in "True Grit" (1969), a John Wayne film with almost the opposite philosophy. Wyatt and Billy finance their journey from the proceeds of a cocaine sale, a hard drug which does not have the same idealistic connotations as marijuana. After their disappointment at the Mardi Gras, Wyatt acknowledges to Billy that `we blew it'. There had to be another way to search for their freedom, one that was not betrayed from the start.
But despite its depressing message--that America had become so corrupt and bigoted that even those who try to find ways escaping the system will be destroyed by it--the film is an exhilarating celebration of alternatives that the Sixties offered. "Easy Rider" seems to say that if anyone blew it, it was America for not allowing a new and challenging, freer, more personal culture to exist.
The most important comment "Easy Rider" made was to be found in the vast discrepency between the visual beauty in the movie, as captured by Lazlo Kovacs' cinematography, and the ugliness of the climate of life in the late Sixties. "This used to be a free country," Jack Nicholson sighs shortly before his death in the hands of rednecks. "What went wrong?" He may die not knowing but (by the end) "Easy Rider" pointed to the answer. At the time of its release, "Time" Magazine referred to the film as "the little film that killed the big film." The point in fact, the big film did not die at all, but only went into a state of hibernation during the troubled, overlong winter of 1969. Dozens of imitation "Easy Riders" were turned out and, almost invariably, they failed at the box office. One year later, "Airport"--a return to the Ross Hunter all-star extravaganzas-broke box office records.
In 1969, the mood of America was best emplified by "Easy Rider", a year later, temporary converts to hippiedom would throw away their love beads. And Hollywood, after a few false starts, would once again provide the pictures people wanted to see. [filmfactsman]
The "song-track" is disappointing
Well, I hadn't seen this movie in ~20 years, never owned the video OR an earlier DVD, so it was worth purchasing. But I WAS disappointed in the "song-track" (as a previous reviewer so aptly put it), why wasn't the other music from the movie, and especially "Ballad of Easy Rider" (a personal favorite) included? And the book is a little dry for my liking - focused too much on the film-industry aspects and not enough on the times that generated the movie and what it meant to all of us who lived (even partially) during those times.
On the positive side, I'd never seen the documentary about the making of the film, and it was affirming to learn that most of the actors really were stoned out of their minds while they were making the movie...one always wonders about these things.
Overall, I'm happy to have finally added this to my collection, and to be able to share it with all my similar-generation friends.
Rip off or best buy. depends
If you already have the 30th anniversary edition don't buy this one. It's a rip off !! it's the same exact thing that the previous version same menu and same extras. You get a cd SONGtrack not SOUNDtrack so you don't have all the movie's songs and the short book by Lee. So if you don't have a dvd version of Easy Rider go for it you won't regret it and if you already have the 30th version then wait till the 40 th maybe we will have the three full hours uncut or at list part of it.
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