Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms: The avant-garde as tragedy?

What is it about?

In 1970, Michelangelo Antonioni took the viewers of Zabriskie Point into the Californian desert, where he – with sympathy – explored the much-observed avantgarde correlation between transgression and emancipation. Thirty-three years later, the viewers of Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms (2003) were taken on a similar journey, but now Antonioni’s emancipatory optimism had been replaced by selfdestructive violence. This article examines the relation between Dumont’s film and the avant-garde, and it argues that the power of Twentynine Palms lies in attempting to force a way from transgression to emancipation – and in failing to reach this goal.

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