"Cult Video Hall" is Uncle Zhao's viewing notes
Interpretation of selected classic cult films of film history
Help everyone understand its story and the culture behind it
America in the 1960s.
White and Billy, a pair of free bikers.
After a drug deal, they took money and rode Harleys from Los Angeles to New Orleans for a local carnival.
In this way, the road movie "Easy Rider" , which had a profound impact on the world's popular culture, began.
(Spoilers below)
Along the way, White and Billy enjoyed the view.
If you are hungry, you will find a good-hearted person to eat, and if you are sleepy, you will knock on the door of a cheap hotel.
When you're bored, just light a marijuana cigarette and feel at ease and at ease.
However, young people who are doing nothing like them are despised by mainstream society.
So there are setbacks along the way.
For example, a hotel owner turned them away just because of how they looked.
Infiltrated into the cheerful parade, but was imprisoned by the police in the name of "illegal parade".
In a restaurant full of conservatives, their long hair was mocked, forcing them to fail.
After all these bad things, they finally caught up with the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
After the carnival, they found two more women and went to the cemetery to drink medicine.
White and Billy lived a really cool life, except for the drugs, everything else was enviable.
But after he finished, White said to Billy with a dejected expression: We screwed up.
Released in 1969, Easy Rider is a classic American film and an important commentary on American culture in the 1960s and 1970s.
Its appearance gave birth to the "road movie" genre and officially opened the "New Hollywood" era.
In the following 10 years, there have been many hard-edged works in Hollywood, such as "The Godfather", "Taxi Driver", "Apocalypse Now", etc., showing a style of freedom, restlessness, violence and realism .
New Hollywood films have become an important part of American film history and even world film history.
Why does "Easy Rider" and the "New Hollywood" that it opened have such a temperament?
This is related to the social environment in the United States at that time.
In the 1960s, the United States fell into a series of social crises.
Such as the Kennedy assassination and a series of political murders.
Unjust Vietnam War.
economic crisis caused by the war.
Black American Movement and more.
These social upheavals have awakened American consciousness. They no longer believe in government and are eager to change society and regain their freedom.
In this environment, films that express mainstream values have become synonymous with hypocrisy.
Audiences want to see something sharp, and new Hollywood movies are born.
"Easy Rider" is full of liberal, anti-mainstream content.
For example, before White and Billy set off, they threw away their watches.
It means that they are determined to break away from society, and time has no meaning for them.
On the way, they stayed in a hippie neighborhood.
The film also uses a lot of space to depict the life of hippies.
As we all know, "hippie" is a famous counterculture movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the film, there is even a picture of questioning faith in the illusion of drugs, which is very deviant.
The good thing is that "Easy Rider" doesn't just preach freedom, but objectively points out that freedom has a price.
The main characters in the film did not end well.
Hansen (Jack Nicholson), a lawyer whom White and Billy meet halfway through, is a sane man with a unique perspective on freedom.
But his fate was that he was beaten to death by haters in the middle of the night.
White and Billy were also shot and killed by a malicious truck driver on their way home, simply because the truck driver hated their long hair.
Although this plot is exaggerated, it outlines the true attitude of people to freedom.
That is, people keep saying that they love freedom, but when freedom really comes, they will refuse or even hate it.
As Hansen said in the film:
"Talking about freedom and achieving freedom are two different things."
In reality, although hippies have had an impact on world culture, they have become a breeding ground for crimes because they have not contributed to the functioning of society, and ultimately they cannot escape the fate of decline.
In today's public opinion environment, people seem to no longer believe in freedom, but more believe in self-discipline, hoping to rely on self-discipline to gain a foothold in society and achieve success.
Freedom has become something illusory and useless.
Perhaps, the question of freedom will always be unsolved, but that doesn't stop me from liking "Easy Rider".
Because it tells me that there was once a group of people who pursued the answer with the mentality of getting to the bottom of it.
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