Review of Easy Rider (1969) by Liam C — 12 May 2015

This film starts off very quickly by just introducing our characters doing what they do best, I thought the guy they were sampling with looked like Psy and I thought the person in the car would drop the stuff when a plane went over. The film has a good opening credits sequence and everything was set up very well and it was all setting up to be a classic, it's a shame then that the film drops the ball and, honestly, I'm thankful it was only 91 minutes. The rough cut of this film is debated to be between 4, 4.5 or 5 hours and just thinking about that makes my head hurt. I usually enjoy films that are more of an experience than having a straightforward, cohesive plot, ironic seeing as how this film has a big plot summary on Wikipedia, but this film toys with both ideas and in turn doesn't really know what to do. This film has good themes that I agree with very much and the characters do have good conversations, even if I would have liked more, but it seemed like it only tried to convey them half the time, and even sometimes when they do it feels a little fake. Would people in a restaurant really be so open with their comments? Perhaps they would, especially then, but it just seems like a way to get its theme across. I wasn't really surprised with where the plot goes after they leave that town, even though you'd have expected all of them to get it in some way even though they were scared off by Billy, and overall they generally get the 'Midnight Cowboy' treatment, which, funnily enough, came out the same year. Most of the rest of the time is just spent with our characters just driving from place to place, which isn't necessarily bad as it shows us how the characters interact with one another, while showcasing absolutely beautiful cinematography and an excellent soundtrack that was inventive for its time with using pre-existing songs. I know it is a road movie but continually showing about 4-5 minute scenes of just them driving every so often can get a bit annoying. Funny how the script was nominated when there were a lot of improvised parts and I'm surprised more don't know about the third screenwriter, Terry Southern, he may have only down a few films but his first major film was 'Dr. Strangelove'! I'm glad Fonda was inspired with this idea as it kept Hopper in acting as opposed to his proposed teaching endeavour and kept him a film icon for generations.

I didn't really like where the hitchhiker storyline ended up going, besides it being weird that he said to show some respect over where they were sitting that night, like doing drugs wasn't already disrespectful to do there, if you're going by that logic. It is just that it really didn't go anywhere, everybody starts to act all paranoid to Billy for some reason and then in the next scene they're being nice to Wyatt. We hear the hitchhiker say, 'who sent you?', probably because of how Billy was acting but it was strange. Something funny happened to Billy though, he says he's invincible then he gets hit with a rock or something by either the hitchhiker or Wyatt and it's funny because there was a peace sign behind them. It was odd to see a knife just sitting on the floor, even if it was in the corner and the part where they all stand in that circle was odd just because some characters were looking the other way. I thought Wyatt would have said, 'oh, I like her', when that girl pushed him over.

The acting in the film is very good, this certainly does seem like something Hopper made, and is an ambitious debut, especially because of his character, that felt and looked like an early iteration of the Dude, and it seemed like an early version of the character he played in 'Apocalypse Now', as well. Peter Fonda was very good, he seems to have been the intended focus of the film though, besides having his name above Hopper's which is a nice thing for a director to do, one poster says 'a man' and shows Fonda on the cover but there were two main characters but admittedly everything does seem to be showing from his perspective most of the time. I know this is an odd thing to say but I think his hair should have been a tad longer though, it is what would be generally considered long in that area but it was still well kept, so it was in the in between stage. They're both good and nice characters that aren't judgmental and very accepting, I also really like the inspiration for their names, it is fitting. I thought the first hitchhiker would have been the introduction of Jack Nicolson but the way we are introduced to him is good, this is his big breakout role as well and he is fantastic as ever in this film. It made me laugh when they ask if he has a helmet because Wyatt rarely wears it and I didn't even see Billy with one, but they're just looking out for their fellow man. They also didn't see him smoke a lot of the weed and when he does, Billy says something but it wasn't in relation to that, I thought they would say he was really high for his first time, given how they would have interpreted how he was talking. And I thought Billy would mimic him when he tries his drink. We also never see them eat, besides the scene with the first hitchhiker and you'd have thought they would have been hungry all the time. I didn't really like the fact that after one of the characters exit after the campfire scene, after they go to that town, was pretty much forgotten about. I remember Billy saying something about he would have wanted us to go but even so, it doesn't visibly bother them, except maybe Wyatt later by the campfire scene near the end.

Besides what I have already mentioned, the strangest thing about this film is its editing. The first time it happens when Wyatt dropped his watch, for whatever reason, I had no idea what was happening as the camera was just flying around everywhere. I kept expecting to hear the 'Captain Scarlet' sound effect when they change scene and sometimes the editing does seem kind of startling and it's the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a horror film, to have another scene just start to randomly appear whilst the characters are doing something. This type of editing goes away for a while, only to come roaring back near the end. It also just lingered on characters for no reason for a little bit, at the end of the scene where they take the hitchhiker, we just see a man spinning around for some reason and then it just cuts, I don't know why we were watching him because our characters had already left. It also lingers on two police offers when our two characters leave jail and it looks like they are going to say something because of how the shot lingers, but they don't. There were just some other things as well, a song is playing and it just gets cut off midway through and then another song starts to play at one point. There's an odd part where the characters talk in a restaurant and it keeps cutting between them talking. It also seems odd whenever there were three of them it would always seem to focus on just two whilst they were talking, leaving the other one out of it, for the most part, like the part in the jail when Billy gets a cigarette, Wyatt just seems oddly left out of that, what if he wanted one? Sure I guess he could say something but he wasn't even offered and things like this happen other times too, like the aforementioned scene where Billy tries the drink. I also thought the editing at the end, when everything goes wrong, would switch with whenever the noises in the background were happening, which would fit. I understand what was going on at the end but it was still odd to watch and made the characters very distant, while a memorable sequence, it just started to bug me after a while, especially the over-exposed film.

The ending of this film is very abrupt and it is like the beginning of the film where it just introduces us to the film, it lacks a punch and really conveys its theme very well. Even though those people said they were only going to scare them and when Wyatt goes back, he should have been more prepared. Some say the scene where Wyatt says they blew it would have been a fitting end and while that's true, I think the ending we do get is still excellent. This film is certainly unique, I'll give it that, but while I usually enjoy films like this, I didn't fully get into this as much as I would have liked to. It ends up being one of those films where it is more fun to do what the characters are doing, minus the last few scenes, as opposed to watching other people do it. It is a very influential and important film with great themes and acting, with an excellent soundtrack and visuals but just didn't all connect with me, for some reason.