When “Easy Rider” hit the screens it created a new wave of counter culture bikers out of young college students. There was a rise in the purchase of motorcycles and everyone wanted a chopper to ride around the country, careless and free. To this day “Easy Rider” is considered to be the best depiction of the hippy and counter culture.
If you have seen this film you will know that there isn't a solid plot line in this film. But, it feels like the camera is following these two bikers in their journey. Its like Wong Kar Wai’s “ Chunking Express”, there are characters and there's a journey. The only reason you are watching these kind of films is for the anticipation of something will happen. Many of the early Martin Scorsese’s film was like this.
I think it's because the movie doesn't want to focus on the plot. Because, it wants the audience to feel what it is like to go on a long bike trip across the country and that it does perfectly. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda are playing the typical introvert-extrovert friends who just got some money off of a coke deal and are spending it on their travel.
There are few things in this film that is really interesting. The transition from one scene to another by blinking a few times, it has a special quality to it. Its feels like the editor was trying to recreate what happens in our mind when we think of a place or remembering a situation. First it comes like flashes and slowly it becomes a full image. This is something you have to look in to.
The other interesting factor of this film is that the central characters the two bikers are very much lost in themselves. This allows the audience to step inside their shoes and experience the film. Their experiences will become yours. When they go to the hippy settlement the audience are made to discover the place on their own instead of the characters. It does it by keeping the camera at the eye level.
