Verdict:
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 movie incorporates themes about societal norms and cultural divides, a lot of it seemingly very specific to United States. The question is, how much of it will an average viewer actually understand or care about?
A number of times, instead of a simple cut between scenes, you get a transition where the new camera shot is flashing its way into the old one. Such a transition invokes extreme contrast or shock, but these two connected scenes do not contain such extremes.
There is a scene from first-person perspective of someone 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 shown in any relatable context. So what the heck, Mr. Dennis Hopper, the director and writer of this thing, what the heck is going on?
You can see that the film is trying to comment on the contemporary American culture and various layers of people and the changing times, but the messages often don’t come across. Maybe you need to have grown up in the 70s to understand. But in that case, the movie has become irrelevant, and it ends up feeling like an avant-garde 70s modern art piece, with more “art” shoved into the film than it can handle.
You just know there will be many people who either say nothing about the movie, because they are afraid of showing that they do not understand it, or many people who will pretend to understand it and praise it.
The music used is iconic, featuring Jimi Hendrix and Steppenwolf, but it should be noted that this music wasn’t written for the film. It’s kind of like, if you made a movie now, and just used your Spotify playlist as the soundtrack. The songs may be awesome, but I can’t exactly give you the credit.
Whatever it is, Easy Rider is at least an interesting head trip. The shots have a diversity in colour and brightness. Jack Nicholson’s performance is captivating. The whole film is kind of captivating, even if you do not get it. I just can’t tell you if the funky scene transitions are innovative or simply nonsensical. I can’t tell you if this is art or if this is Dennis Hopper’s pretentious homebrew student film.