http://www.dvdtown.com/review/easy-rider/blu-ray/7466
40th Anniversary Edition (with Booklet)
APPROX. 95 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1969 - MPA RATING: R
Oct 24, 2009
By James Plath
No film evokes the Sixties more than "Easy Rider," and no film from
that period--which historians identify as the years between the
Kennedy assassination and Nixon resignation--has been glamorized as much.
Most reviewers took their cues from publicity that described Captain
America (Peter Fonda) and his chopper-riding sidekick Billy (Dennis
Hopper) as two free spirits seeking freedom or trying to discover
America . . . and what they discover isn't pretty, except when they
encounter other marginal or counterculture types. But watching this
40th anniversary Blu-ray, I was struck by the fact that the film
begins in Mexico (where the pair buys cocaine to sell to someone
across the border) and has a pretty straight trajectory after that.
They're on their way to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and the drug deal
presumably financed their trip. Trying to find themselves, or
America? I think not.
I was a freshman in college when "Easy Rider" was released. In 1969,
people were rediscovering Jack Kerouac's Beat-generation
autobiographical novels On the Road and The Dharma Bums. Hippie-style
road trips became as popular as pot. That year, a bunch of us hopped
freight trains to Tijuana for spring break, and another group made
the popular trek to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. People we knew at
other colleges were doing the same thing. The trip to Mardi Gras
wasn't so much a pilgrimage or a conscious social statement as it was
a drug-addled adventure. And while at the time Timothy Leary and
other professors were encouraging their students to take
hallucinogenic drugs--things like LSD, mescaline, and peyote
buttons--to expand their minds, and pot and hashish were as common as
beer and wine, it was a hardcore group far-removed from the hippies I
knew who did cocaine. Five years later, maybe, but not then. Then it
was all about flower power: sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. And free love.
So I don't see two guys in search of themselves or America when I
watch "Easy Rider." I see two guys financing the same kind of trip
that others took, the only way they knew. I see an accurate portrait
of the hippie drug culture that, for a while, produced as many
drifters as the Depression spawned boxcar adventures. If you were
going to teach a class on the Sixties and could only fit one film
into the syllabus, "Easy Rider" would be an easy choice.
For one thing, there's that free love and drug-sharing thing that
happened as a matter of course. Now, gangs control drugs, and drugs
are so expensive that I can't imagine users sharing as freely. Back
then, a nickel bag literally meant a five-dollar plastic sandwich bag
that contained about three fingers of marijuana. Then, when people
you knew or strangers drifted into town and ran into you, or vice
versa, whoever had whatever kind of drug, it was a shared, communal
thing . . . a kind of portable communion for this crazy new religion
of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Crazy as it sounds, there was a
spiritual aspect to it, and communes that felt like placid oases
weren't all that uncommon. So "Easy Rider" really does capture the
drug and free-love atmosphere of the age.
But the Sixties was also a golden age in music, and I can't think of
another movie in which the soundtrack plays such a dominant role.
It's not just background music. The songs propel the story forward,
taking the place of narrative and dialogue, both of which are fairly
limited. It's not a music video, but you really have to watch this
film to appreciate the importance that music plays. It's a '60s time
capsule: "The Pusher" and "Born to Be Wild," by Steppenwolf; "I
Wasn't Born to Follow," by The Byrds; "The Weight," by The Band; "If
You Want to Be a Bird," by The Holy Modal Rounders; "Don't bogart
(that joint, my friend, pass it over to) Me," by Fraternity of Man;
"If Six Was Nine," by The Jimi Hendrix Experience; "Let's Turkey
Trot," by Little Eva; "Kyrie Eleison," by The Electric Prunes;
"Flash, Bam, Pow," by The Electric Flag"; and "It's Alright Ma" and
"Ballad of Easy Rider," by Roger McGuinn.
As for the statement that this film makes about America in the
Sixties? It doesn't strike me as all that shocking. Just as Captain
America, Billy, and the world's most famous tag-along (a very young
Jack Nicholson) stick their noses inside a bar full of rednecks and
find that for their own safety they'd better skeedaddle, I remember a
time when I was driving home with my New York City friend. I had long
hair and a beard, and he had a soul patch. And when, en route, we
walked into a little bar in Wyoming and asked for a beer, all eyes
were on us. And those eyes were saying that they meant to do us harm.
We drank those beers in record, try-to-look-casual time and then,
once we cleared the door, we ran to the car. As we drove away, men
filled the streets and a shot was fired. We kept going, fast as we
could, to get on the Interstate and speed our way back to
civilization. And ours was not an isolated experience, so even the
novel's social statement rings true. It's just that, unfortunately,
you could make the same kind of statement today. America hasn't
gotten any more tolerant or any less violent. In fact, it's gotten
worse. And that's what makes "Easy Rider" so timeless, unfortunately.
I can't watch this film now without thinking of Matthew Shepard
tortured and left hanging on barbed-wire fence in 1998 Wyoming, just
because he was gay. Whether you're a black who wanders into the wrong
white neighborhood or a white who takes a wrong turn into a black
area, you're not going to be met with a smile and a joint. And that's
the most striking thing about this counterculture film.
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