"The curious problem with "The Last Movie" is that it is unlikely to speak directly or congenially to any particular audience. Its network of religious and literary symbol and its hectically non-linear structure push the film altogether out of bounds for the mass popular audience, while its almost gleeful preoccupation with Pirandellian puzzles of appearance and reality and its studied concept of life imitating art are likely to seem undigested and sophomoric to informed audiences. But don't estimate Dennis Hopper. He creates images that sticks." - Foster Hirsch, New Your Times, October 24, 1971.
At 34, Dennis Hopper is known in Hollywood as a sullen renegade who talks revolution, settles arguments with karate, goes to bed with groupies and has taken trips on everything you can swallow or shoot. On the other hand, in the salons and galleries of Los Angeles and New York he is recognized as a talented poet, painter, sculptor, photographer and as a leading collector of pop art. He is also, after eight years on the movie industry's blacklists, the hottest director in Hollywood. EASY RIDER, which cost only $370,000, is rapidly approaching a projected $50 million gross. In the process it has polarized a new film audience of under-30s, generated a new school of talented young directors such as Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Rush and Melvin Van Peebles, and established the style of a New Hollywood in which producers wear love beads instead of diamond stick pins and blow grass when they used to chew Coronas. Yet to Dennis Hopper, "Easy Rider" was just a childish toddle in the direction he intends his movies to take. "My next picture," he has promised his friends, "is really going to be heavy, man."
As the film progresses, however, the various levels of reality become hopelessly intertwined and it becomes harder to see anything as real, pure, and free from mythic connotations. The actions of the village filmmakers are clearly patterned after cinematic cliches, but another powerful theatrical influence is in evidence - the Church. The film comes to resemble a religious pageant, and Hopper becomes a Christ figure. When Hopper is arrested by the villagers "for stealing our sets," the stage is set for a classic finale - but to which movie? Kansas is accused of interfering with the villagers in their "filming." As a member of the crew of the Billy the Kid movie, he has stolen their town for a set, giving them in return an education in violence. As an American living off Peru, he is guilty of prostituting Peruvian culture. - Nick Barbaro , The Austin Chronicle, June 4, 2010.