"Easy Rider" - Film Review

It may not seem as revelatory as it was in 1969, but in its heyday Easy Rider was groundbreaking. Its stripped down, DIY filmmaking style was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnant studio based system. Its en plein air approach to tackling a film opened up the floodgates for films to be made outside on location and not just confined to studio sets.

What the film pulls off better than almost any other film is capturing a particular cultural milieu. This has counterculture written all over it and it’s an endearing, humanistic portrait of two members, Wyatt and Billy (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper - Hopper also directed, and both wrote the script) of a subculture that was definitely not getting much screen time back in the 1960’s. 

Our protagonists set out on motorcycles after scoring big on a drug deal and take a meandering road trip that leads them from LA to New Orleans. Along the way they stop at farms and communes, and camp out in fields and forests (after hotels refused their patronage, mind you). They pick up hitchhikers with similar hippie, free-spirited lifestyles, including Jack Nicholson as a well-educated, drunken Southerner. They take plenty of drugs (there’s a memorable Avant-garde-like sequence where they take acid and go on a wild drug trip), they sleep with prostitutes, and they ride their hogs. 

The soundtrack is incredibly well-chosen. There’s rarely ever been a song in a film as perfectly used as Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”. When it plays as the characters ride their bikes across the vast Southwestern landscape, it establishes the tone of the film impeccably.  

It’s a didactic movie that makes an argument in favor of these characters and their life styles. There’s a great scene where they stop in at a café to eat, and sitting in a nearby booth are a bunch of racist Southerners who make homophobic remarks about them (due to their long haired appearances). They can see the writing on the wall and leave before any trouble is stirred up (though sadly they come back after them in the middle of the night and it ends badly).  

It’s not a perfect film; it’s incredibly uneven, dated at times, and some parts work better than others (the parts with Jack Nicholson stand out, including the aforementioned diner scene and one where his character gets high for the first time and describes his views on aliens). The film always feels a bit livelier and truer to the spirit of the people it’s following when it moves along at a brisk pace, and when it gets sidetracked, that’s when it tends to drag. The ending is also terribly abrupt and comes out of nowhere. But this scraggly, fitful nature goes well with the sensibility of the film and its characters

Even if Easy Rider hadn’t ushered in a new era of film-making, it would be worth watching. A great soundtrack and an unmistakable counter-cultural vibe make Easy Rider an entertaining if occasionally irregular and artefactual experience. 

Grade: B