Uneasy

One of the new offerings that showed up on our Netflix menu this month was Easy Rider, described as a "counter-culture classic". My wife had never seen it, so we thought we'd give it a go.  We were a little surprised by how poorly it was rated by the Netflix audience -- but then we watched it and all became clear.

The movie is a real dog's breakfast.  The first half is basically a hippy travelogue. The dialogue is mostly unscripted, which is not a good thing.  Director Dennis Hopper uses lots of long tracking shots of the magnificent scenery of the US west, with the protagonists (Hopper and Peter Fonda) engaging in mumbled conversations with each other and the various folks they meet.

Things start to take a darker turn when Jack Nicholson enters the "story" as a low-rent lawyer.  Jack is a far better actor than either Hopper or Fonda, and he leers his way through the middle of the movie before meeting a violent end.

Hopper and Fonda make their way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans (that's the "easy" part in the title). Neither the city nor its famous bacchanal looks the least bit appealing here.  Hookers are hired, drugs are consumed and the pretty tableaux of the first half of the movie are replaced by a blurry series of cross-cuts that are evidently intended to simulate the effect of LSD.

And then suddenly we're back on the bikes again, and the movie reaches a sudden and violent conclusion.  It's all wrapped up in just over 90 minutes but it seems much longer.

I don't remember Easy Rider as being this bad when I first saw it and I certainly don't recall the sixties being as tawdry as this.   Still,  at least the music stands the test of time -- well, apart from "If you want to be a bird".