copyright © Jedo Dre 2011

Easy Rider is trying to send messages. It is a movie showing a road trip of two bikers to Mardi Gras, but that is not what the movie is about. The question is, how much of what it is about will you actually understand or care about? The movie does this thing a number of times where instead of a simple cut between scenes you get a transition where the new scene is flashing its way into the old one. Such a transition invokes drama or shock, but here the scenes do not seem to call for it.


There is a scene from first-person perspective of holding a knife against the background of a woman standing with her back turned. In some context it would have been pretty obvious, but this was not in any relatable context. So what the heck, man, Dennis Hopper, the director and writer of this thing, what the heck? I see it trying to comment on the contemporary American culture and various layers of people and changing times, and sometimes the message is clear but other times I do not know if I see what I am supposed to see. Maybe I needed to have grown up in the 70s to see it more clearly.


It feels like an avant-garde 70s modern art piece. No, I would not call it pretentious, there is definitely some interesting stuff here, but there is way more pushed into the film than it can handle.


I just know there will be a lot of people either not saying anything about the movie because they are afraid of showing they do not understand a lot of it or people who will pretend to understand it and praise it for all their pride is worth.


Whatever it is, Easy Rider is at least an interesting head trip. It has a good variety of colors and brightness. It has good actors, especially Jack Nicholson. It is captivating even if you do not fully get it or it is just too old and obsolete for you.

Easy Rider