Zabriskie Point () is a 1970 American drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, and Rod Taylor. It was widely noted at the time for its setting in the counterculture of the United States. Some of the movie's scenes were filmed on location at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. The movie was an overwhelming commercial failure and was panned by most critics upon release.
It is listed in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time and has been described as "the worst film ever made by a director of genius". However, its critical standing has increased in the decades since.
Plot
In a room at a university campus, white and black students argue about an impending student strike. Mark leaves the meeting after saying he is "willing to die, but not of boredom" for the cause, which draws criticism from the young white radicals. Following a mass arrest at the campus protest, Mark visits a police station hoping to bail his roommate out of jail. He is told to wait but goes to the lock-up area, asks further about bail for his roommate, is rebuffed, calls out to the arrested students and faculty and is arrested. He gives his name as Karl Marx, which a duty officer types as "Carl Marx". After he is released from jail, Mark and another friend buy firearms from a Los Angeles gun shop, saying they need them for "self-defense" to "protect our women."
In a downtown Los Angeles office building, successful real estate executive Lee Allen reviews a television commercial for Sunny Dunes, a new resort-like real estate development in the desert. Instead of actors or models, the slickly produced commercial features casually dressed, smiling mannequins. In the next scene Allen talks with his associate about the greater Los Angeles area's very rapid growth as the two drive through crowded streets.
Mark goes to a bloody campus confrontation between students and police. Some students are tear-gassed and at least one is shot. As Mark reaches for a gun in his boot, a Los Angeles policeman is seen being fatally shot, although it is unclear by whom. Mark flees the campus and rides a city bus to suburban Hawthorne, California, where, after failing to buy a sandwich on credit from a local blue-collar delicatessen, he walks to Hawthorne Municipal Airport, steals a Cessna 210 aircraft and flies into the desert.
Meanwhile, Daria is driving across the desert towards Phoenix in a 1950s-era Buick automobile to meet Lee, her boss, who is implied to possibly be her lover.|group=Note
Later, a California Highway Patrol officer suspiciously questions Daria. Hidden behind a portable toilet meant for tourists, Mark takes aim at the policeman, but Daria stands between the two to block him, apparently saving the policeman's life before he drives away. Daria asks Mark if he was the one who killed the cop in Los Angeles. He states that he wanted to, but someone else shot the officer first and that he "never got off a shot".
Returning to the stolen aircraft, they paint it with politically charged slogans and psychedelic colors. Daria pleads with Mark to ride with her and leave the aircraft, but Mark is intent on returning with it and the risks that it entails. He flies back to Los Angeles and lands the plane at the airport in Hawthorne. The police (along with some radio and television reporters) are waiting for him, and patrol cars chase the aircraft down the runway. Instead of stopping, Mark tries to turn the taxiing aircraft around across the grass and is shot dead by one of the policemen.
Daria learns about Mark's death on the car radio. She drives to Lee's lavish desert home, set high on a rock outcropping near Phoenix, Arizona, where she sees three affluent women sunning themselves and chatting by the swimming pool. She grieves for Mark by drenching herself in the house's architectural waterfall. Lee is deeply immersed in a business meeting having to do with the complex and financially risky Sunny Dunes development. Taking a break, he spots Daria in the house and happily greets her. She goes downstairs alone and finds the guest room that has been set aside for her, but after briefly opening the door, she shuts it again.
Seeing a young Native American housekeeper in the hallway, Daria leaves silently. She drives off, but stops to get out of the car and look back at the house, her own imagination seeing it repeatedly blown apart in billows of orange flame and household items.