Film Review I
View the film Easy Rider. Write a 2-3 page film review discussing how this film addresses some of the major issues of American society at the end of the 1960s. Some questions you might consider: How do the writers and director deploy a countercultural critique of American society during the Vietnam War? According to this film, what has happened to the American Dream of the postwar years? What has happened to the consensus of postwar society, or did it never exist at all? Does the film offer any hope for Americans and American society, or does it only offer despair for the future?
You may put this film in conversation with Rebel Without a Cause, and discuss how Easy Rider might be an answer to or repudiation of the questions raised in the earlier film. Feel free to use outside print sources to support your analysis.
Cite the film as follows:
Easy Rider. Directed by Dennis Hopper. Columbia Pictures, 1969.