I have no passion for New Hollywood or any of it's so called "timeless" classics(world history didn't start at the 60s and Woodstock is not the story of Adam and Eve). I will try to talk about the movie from now on.
If I could put Easy Rider on any category it would be on montage/David Lynch movie. I heard it was severely edited and it shows. Jump cuts, time shifts, a sole flash forward which makes you wonder if there was supposed to have some supernatural element, a camera who seems to be tripping on itself sometimes, fractured narrative. Hey, did Michael Bay got inspired by this? It would explain a lot.
The plot is a road trip and, well, it's more like a lot conjoined pieces. Peter Fonda don't like southern americans, neither does Dennis Hopper, so redneck stereotypes, engage! That is basically the only constant about the movie. The eastern things get, things go south. And our heroes are criminals at the end of the day, so going to the police would get them arrested even as extremely bad things happen to them.
Despite the fact clearly hippies aren't portrayed on a positive light, I can't help but feel the movie is still an exercise on stereotypical aggression. Anti-heroes are still better than outright villains.
And then there's the parts which don't make sense, like Wyatt talking about his mom. We know too little about those characters to make any sense of this.
Would I say "wow, watch this movie"? No no, way. I like things with plots with beginning, middle, and end. I don't like stereotypes. And believe me, I know the difference between a villain belonging to a certain ethnical group being evil and "environmental evil", when the people involved in this product really are gunning a target at someone's culture and/or genetics and/or language.
So I'm saying you don't need to watch it. There are things with more sense and less LSD involved. The Brazilian title is right. "Without A Destiny".