Dennis Hopper
Easy Rider

"Well, how about we take a look at these supermotos we've heard so much about?".

It's not the first on-the-road movie in the history of cinema, but it is certainly the most famous.

"Easy Rider" is a punch of hope, freedom, fear, and chopper motorcycles. A journey around America, a handful of drugs sold to materialize the Dream, the allure of New Orleans and death, which cheats at the game and shatters hopes.

A symbolic film, an essential opus for all those who dream of freedom and love America. One of the most hallucinatory (and hallucinated) journeys in the history of cinema, more drugged than LSD and more nauseating than the vomit you throw on the asphalt. It's all about the hippie culture typical of the late '60s, with Peter Fonda in the role of Captain America (who will be, for the young minds of '68, what John Wayne's Ringo Kid was for their fathers), it contains the liberal and libertarian ideals of those years, and there's music, the common thread of a long and tortuous journey that never seems to give any points of reference. Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf. All here.

And there's Jack Nicholson, in his first major role. He's George Hanson, a drunken lawyer, who babbles and drinks, launching into a long bizarre speech about Venusians. "Easy Rider" is all this, but it's also an interesting revisitation of the American western (which hardly existed anymore). Not for nothing, Peter Fonda, nicknamed Captain America, plays the role of Wyatt, referring to the legendary myth of Wyatt Earp (a classic figure of the Western Frontier, also honored by John Ford), while Dennis Hopper, director and lead actor, is Billy, like Billy the Kid. There are no more cows, sheriffs, bandits, and Indians, but there are motorcycles, hippies, police, and judges.

A drugged film, but not pretending, for real. The drugs seen in the film were actually consumed by the protagonists, and Jack Nicholson wasn't pretending to drink. Everything is truer than true. But "Easy Rider" is a film from 1969, reflecting the society of those years, it's within its era, and like all films "shot for the era and told for the era" it has aged very badly. If, for instance, you compare this film with "Modern Times" you realize that the Chaplin film, despite being older (it's from 1936!), still seems very relevant today. Because the topic addressed (slavery at work) is universal, it will always be relevant because it has a wider range of "action", while the themes of "Easy Rider", seem today older than they really are. Too laden with those moral and social issues, too political to be credible. Apart from the value of freedom (which is indeed universal) the film has little left: the hippie culture, made of heavy drugs, behavioral sloppiness, and a sense of adventure now seems ridiculous, surpassed by decades of struggles, emancipations, and referendums. The gradual bourgeoisification of society (debatable, just as the hippie culture was debatable: harmful, dangerous, or libertarian and revolutionary?) has demolished all the meaning of the film, making Captain America and his friends seem like amusing museum artifacts, perhaps fascinating, but still outdated.

From a purely cinematic point of view, the film's strengths lie in the charismatic and "historical" performances of the protagonists. Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda are worthy of applause. The disappointments are the unsteady screenplay (which was rewritten day by day, according to the moods of the protagonists) and a inconclusive direction, not particularly revolutionary, attributable to Dennis Hopper's lack of experience.

Angry and high, P. Fonda and D. Hopper cross America and bourgeois culture with their motorcycles (and the claim to shake the world), with one eye on James Dean and another on British free cinema. But their eye is on the present. And today, we are already in the future. Consequently, dated.