Dennis Hopper Case

Easy Rider

By Dennis Hopper

Easy Rider is obviously a road movie and, knowing this characteristic, we understand quickly that the setting will not be explained much. At the very beginning of the movie, we just know that the two bikers, Wyatt and Billy, sold drugs and are about to take the road to New Orleans in order to take part in Mardi Gras there. The exact purpose is not revealed but, anyway, it is not important to understand the message underlying this kind of movie. The trip starts in Mexico and is supposed to end in New Orleans after a week on the roads of the United States. Nothing is directly explained because, as we watch the story from an objective "camera eye" point of view, we learn what we can from what the main characters explain. As they are not very talkative for this kind of information, we can only make hypothesis about them. At the beginning of the movie, we can assume that the road will be a kind of third main character because the trip should be quite long and it is always shown as an infinite way where the two characters go. We cannot answer the most simple questions like "who are they?" but I think that this superficial situation is sufficient to appreciate the movie. It is the kind of setting I prefer when I watch a road movie because only the goal is important in the quest.

About the two main characters, we don't know much information and, like for the quest, it is not expected to know much about them. On first sight, it seems they are hippies even if we learn when they stop in a hippie camp that they don't really follow this current of thought. In fact, they are nobody particularly because they could be anybody who drives motorbikes, looks like a hippie and consumes much marijuana and LSD. Obviously, they don't represent two particular persons but an ideal. Billy and Wyatt are the symbol of the hippie movement and the symbol of freedom in this period of the history threatened by violent wars and social revolutions in the western countries. That is the reason why the story and the characters fit well in this setting and they shouldn't fit nowadays in Paris for example. Something that I think important to notice is that the two characters never "split up" until the end of the movie when Wyatt says they failed and Billy says they managed just before their death. It may have a signification. Maybe, it is to make the spectators identify with the characters easily. For me, a single biker is a little bit strange or scary but two bikers or more are just cool. What surprised me in this movie is that we can almost personify the road, the two motorbikes and the sky because they remain omnipresent during the entire movie as if they were other main characters. Without them, this movie wouldn't exist any longer. By the way, the motorbikes are not classic motorbikes but custom motorbikes and we can recognize them easily. They could have a name because they are unique that's why the motorbikes are almost personified in this movie.

The intrigue is introduced in a simple but meaningful way. It takes two minutes for Wyatt and Billy to buy cocaine and they are already on the road. The fact the director shows twice the process to test the goods makes us understand well that they are drug dealers. Then, a single conversation and we know they are on the road of New Orleans in order to have fun. It is exactly the opposite in The Straight Story (David Lynch), a road movie that I appreciate very much. In this second movie, things are well explained. We know exactly why Alvin Straight wants to take the road and how he manages to find a vehicle but it takes a significant part of the movie to explain that. Here, we don't know much information but it takes a very short time to explain. We know everything in 3 minutes.

The filmmakers used two different technologies in this movie. For the most part of the movie, the filmmakers used a classic professional movie camera and tried to film in interesting ways. On the road, they followed the bikers and tried to restore the beauty of the landscapes by filming on the sides of the car. They always tried to give an impression of movement. They tried a lot of movements with the cameras like turning it perpendicular to the road while following the bikers, like making a 360o movement in the middle of the group of hippies praying for good crops... I noticed they never tried aerial views maybe because they couldn't afford it. I guess they hadn't the money to do that but, with the mountains, it is sometimes possible to find a place upstream to the bikers. The images from the car last a long time but we also have static sequences