There aren’t many films that encapsulate an era as perfectly as Easy Rider.
It was released in 1969, the final year in one of the most important decades for American culture.
It was a time of great social reform, with campaigns such as the civil rights movement and second-wave feminism finally achieving the legislative and cultural victories they had been searching for.
The increasingly counterculture youth — spurred on by musicians like Bob Dylan and filmmakers like Arthur Penn — sought to upheave centuries-old notions they deemed unfit for a modernizing world, and with the charismatic John F.
Kennedy leading the charge, it seemed they were going to get everything they wanted.
But dreams are easier dreamt than realized, and the decade’s final years were besmudged by upheaval and unrest, brought on by an escalating war in Vietnam and the assassination of many of its great leaders.
What started with the
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