Easy Rider [MA]

Two men, nicknamed Captain America and Billy, become loaded after a selling a load of drugs they bought in Mexico. With some of the dough, they buy some motorbikes and embark on a cross-country ambition to travel to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they stop in on an accommodating hippie commune, pick up an ‘alternative society’ empathiser who gets them out of jail, and suffer the prejudices of being hippies travelling through conservative towns. 

Easy Rider is one of those films that continue to influence or have its mark in contemporary popular culture. Even if you’ve never seen it, you recognise things from it e.g. the not-so-subtle homage to it in the biker scene from Starsky & Hutch or even Douglas Kirkland’s famous portrait of Ann-Margret on a chopper in the desert wearing a Miss America costume. This is a film that is really icon: it’s not just a great directorial debut from Dennis Hopper, it’s not just a piece of cinema that has been put together in an interesting way, it’s a movie that has gained gravitas and appreciation and incredible relevance through the ages as well as being a movie that is so indicative of the culture surrounding it at the time of production. 

On the surface it really doesn’t look like much, a weak storyline brought to life through a central cast of relatively unknown actors (who all deliver great performances mind you), made on a budget of approximate $45000, with locals as characters and a considerably minimal script (aside from the moments of incredible clarity and philosophy which Jack Nichols provides). But there is something unspoken and unseen in this movie that just keeps your attention on the screen, some sort of mesmerising element or hypnoses. 

The opening sequence goes along with practically no dialogue, whatever words are spoken are in Spanish, and after ten minutes the opening credits are rolling and the ‘heroes’ are flying across America on their choppers. I think the appealing thing about minimal dialogue is that it plays on your desire, as an audience, to find things out, which usually only happens when characters openly explain it. What forms the consistent hook of this movie is that we never actually know anything about the characters that we are following. Captain America and Billy are nomads as far as we know; they have no history, are not fully formed characters, and their back story as well as their forward story is never really explained. But we continue watching because we want to know about these guys! 

As it is, the major appeal and power of this movie comes in the form of it being one of the first films to put the ‘alternative society’ (hippie culture) onto the screen. Jack Nicholson’s character has the very significant like “this used to be one helluva country” and that line alone is a major comment on the world that surrounded this movie in 1969. A cinematic social commentary on the schism between generations during the Vietnam War, Easy Rider is more an influential film rather than a cinematically pragmatic one. What I mean by that is the film itself as a film in terms of form isn’t anything groundbreaking, but what feelings the film evokes, what content it features, the events that it chronicles, and the harsh truths that is strips naked are what give it its cinematic longevity. It’s actually a very hard film to talk about because the complexity and the brilliance of it really only works if you are familiar with the context in which it flourished: American society and even the histories of both Fonda and Hopper in making the film as well as personal histories. 

On the cinematic side, the editing is something annoying/interesting, consisting of repeated quick flash cuts to and from scenes, giving the entire film this amateurish-documentary type feel. This movie is all about the senses rather than what is seen or heard: another example of its incredible power. 

Starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Antonio Mendoza, Phil Spector, Mac Mashourian, Warren Finnerty, Tita Colorado, Luke Askew, Luana Andrews, Sabrina Scharf, Robert Walker Jr., Sandy Wyeth, Robert Ball, Carmen Phillips, Ellie Wood Walker, and Jack Nicholson, Easy Rider is a great movie, but it’s really hard to articulate exactly why it’s great. Filled with shocks, travelogue, action, freedom, prejudice, drama, and comedy, it’s one of those films that will stay with you and you won’t know why.