Easy Rider Review

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...