Ehi, qualcuno è morto dopo tutto
Il fumo è in aumento
Sì, è così
E' pietoso
se si tratta di una persona giovane ...
... invece di qualcuno vecchio
Sì, ma una nuova vita ...
... successivamente sostituisce quella
che muore
sì
Quanto bene funziona la natura
Yasujiro Ozu, L'autunno della famiglia Kohayagawa (小早川家の秋 Kohayagawa-ke no aki)
The
psychedelic period of the late 1960s/early 1970s produced a number of movies
that sought to incorporate youth music with film. From the elegiac tragedy ofEasy
Riderto the
Monkees’ Day-Glo comedyHead, the best of these represented and reflected the
era’s curious mix of turbulence and naïveté.
And then
there wasZachariah. This head-scratcher from 1971
was directed by George Englund (who’d previously worked with Marlon Brando on
1963’sThe Ugly American) and featured a script by cult US
comedy troupeThe Firesign Theatre, with a storyline loosely based on Herman Hesse’s hippy-pleasing novel of
spiritual discoverySiddhartha. It tells the tale of the improbably beautiful and
white-toothed Zachariah (played by John Rubinstein) who, with his equally
dreamy young friend, Matthew (a 21-year-old Don Johnson, later ofMiami
Vicefame), sets
out to pursue the glamorous life of a gunfighter. Clearly, the film broadly
falls into the genre of Acid Western, alongside classics such as Peter Fonda’sThe Hired Hand, released the same year, and Sam Peckinpah’sPat
Garret and Billy the Kidfrom 1973: movies that attempted to address
countercultural concerns (Zachariah and Matthew’s first scene together has them
sharing a joint), within the Western milieu. But, while most films of this
genre explored serious themes and maintained an element of verisimilitude,Zachariahblasts off somewhere else entirely.
Almost singlehandedly creating a new genre, the publicity blurb excitedly
trumpeted it as ‘the first and only Electric Western.’
In this
instance, ‘electric’ essentially means ‘psychedelic rock.’ Theopening scenecaptures power trio The James Gang rocking-out in the desert with huge amps
plugged right into the sand, while Zachariah runs around firing a pistol into
the air. It’s the kind of temporal incongruity you might find in Thomas
Pynchon’s epic Western novelAgainst the Day, in which dynamite-chucking
anarchists get bombed on peyote and hallucinogenic explosive putty. ButZachariahbecomes still more disorientating as
its protagonists’ adventures lead them into surprising encounters with a range
of real-life musicians. San Francisco’s psychedelic pioneers, Country Joe and
the Fish, playThe Crackers– a gang of inept outlaws whose
performances induce unrestrained go-go dancing in respectably attired
frontierswomen; fiddler Doug Kershaw – aka The Ragin’ Cajun – makes a lightning
cameo with a yodelling piece of plot exposition; and, strangest of all, Elvin
Jones, arguably the greatest jazz drummer of all time and veteran of the late
John Coltrane’s Classic Quartet, turns up as the suave gunslinger, Job Cain,
shooting a man dead before bashing out a drum solo.
The result
is oddly surreal – but not in the way that Jodorowsky’s nightmarish Western
allegory,El Topo(released
in 1970) is surreal. In tone and execution,Zachariahseems closer to the closing scenes
from Mel Brooks’ screwball Western spoof, 1974’sBlazing Saddles, in which the cast spills off the
set and into the bustling streets of downtown 1970s Burbank.Zachariah’s fairly negligible storyline makes
a half-hearted lunge at profundity – clumsily advocating pacifism and
brotherhood – but it’s so flimsy that, in the end, all that’s left is the
music: an eclectic mix of rock, pop, folk and jazz that fails to hang together
with the conviction of the equally wide-ranging soundtrack to Antonioni’s 1970
countercultural lamentZabriskie Point.
Ultimately,
the fact that the soundtrack toZachariahhas been out of print and
unavailable for so many years hardly seems to matter. You probably had to be
there.
La visione di Zachariah
(1971) di George Englund fa ergersi nella mente del mangiatore di film tutta una serie di accostamenti con altre opere
cinematografiche sue contemporanee o
anteriori. Esse abbracciano lavori di autori intellettuali europei come di
abili commercianti hollywoodiani. Ma questo dato è comune a tutti i film della
counterculture sia che venissero
realizzati nella coste west o east statunitensi. Zachariah
è pressoché inedito in Italia. Non attirò dapprima i distributori italici come successivamente
i canali televisivi. Per fortuna c’è il “ vostro/nostro tubo “.
Per alzare il tono gli autori fanno ricorso a Herman Hesse, scrittore
molto in voga tra i giovani di allora. Zachariah cerca l’avventura e il rischio
per colpa della sua pistola comprata per corrispondenza, finendo col meditare
sulla vacuità e vanità degli uomini.
Oggi a noi interessa l’aspetto musicale del film che si amalgama bene
col progressivo svolgimento delle immagini, facendo uso ora di partiture originali di Jimmie
Haskel, ora di musica roots alla maniera di Dug Kershaw, ora di un
arrangiamento velocizzato dell’overture del Guglielmo
rossiniano, ora della folk-psichedelia di Country Joe and the Fish,
dell’acid rock della James Gang e, infine, data la presenza del bronzeo Elvin
Jones esecutore di un tellurico assolo di tamburi, del jazz
d’annata. Non poteva essere altrimenti data la mole di contaminazioni dissipate
nell’opera da parte di chi ha scritto e sceneggiato Zachariah.
