Running time: 137 minutes
Director: Walter Salles
Rating: 4/5 stars
Had ‘On The Road’ been published in 2013, and not 1957, Jack Kerouac’s free-flowing, lyrical narrative and controversial subject matter may have been met with a “Seen it, done it . . . many times” yawn. Kind of like the reaction the movie version of ‘On the Road’ is getting. The film is thus far a box-office failure, grossing just over $6 million world-wide since its December 2012 release. This is unfortunate because director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) has made a film that while redundant in places is beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted and exquisitely scored by Gustavo Santaolalla.
If you are offended by movies that feature near constant drug use, straight/gay sex galore and general debauchery, then ‘On The Road’ will only waste your time. There likely will not be this much pot or tobacco smoked in any movie this year. I guarantee no other movie will feature Benzedrine cocktails. Or such freely expressed, and often blatant, sexuality that everyone seems to really enjoy. I had the wrong idea about the late 1940s. Could this really have been how it was back then? Ah, but it was – for Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, their lovers and their friends. The spokespersons for the Beat Generation. Lucky bastards.
Or were they really that lucky? Living in New York with his mother, Sal Paradise/Kerouac (Sam Riley) proclaims at the beginning of the movie, “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, … “ No one is more desirous of heaps of everything than Sal’s best friend, Dean Moriarty/Cassady (Garrett Hedlund). Moriarty is on the mad prowl for excitement and he usually finds it. Women, drugs, jazz, cars, and the accompanying thrills are to Moriarty what leisurely walks in the park were to everybody else in 1947. Along with Carlo Marx/Ginsberg (Tom Sturridge), madly in love with Moriarty, the three also madly pursue life as drug abusing artists live it. Some might argue that they don’t really do anything except talk pretty, party and take long car rides. But along the way, Sal is chronicling everything in his notebooks, on hotel stationery, in the spaces of already word-filled paper. He is definitely doing something: taking copious notes in preparation for typing his masterpiece on that now famous 120-foot roll of paper.
As befitting a movie about life on the road, the best parts are when Sal, Dean and their drug buddies are, well, on the road. Whether hitchhiking or barreling across the US in Dean’s Hudson
or Cadillac, these folks live the Kerouac creed: “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” The scenery along the blue highway is gorgeous, especially when Sal and Dean take the craziness tour to Mexico and the free, plentiful marijuana and fun-loving whores there. We meet Dean’s 16-year old wife, Marylou (Kristen Stewart). Stewart burns especially bright here as a young woman who desperately wants to believe in Moriarty. Even after Moriarty earnestly suggests he spend his days with Camille/Carolyn Cassady (Kirsten Dunst), pregnant mother of his infant daughter, and his nights with Marylou. Finally, Marylou leaves Moriarty for good, and Camille, disillusioned and heartbroken, kicks him out.
Viggo Mortensen plays Old Bull/Burroughs about as well as anyone else has depicted him on film. Nobody played Burroughs like Burroughs – check out ‘Drugstore Cowboy’ for proof. Old Bull is a heroin addict who nevertheless is a doting father. His wife, Jane (Amy Adams), drug-addled on speed and heroin, scrubs the wood floors of their Louisiana home incessantly when she’s not sweeping lizards out the trees in their yard. It makes for a bizarre scene that does not seem all that bizarre after everything else we have witnessed.
The movie flies by in a torrent of poetic dialogue and ever-changing scenery. Salles has admirably done what no other director seemed capable of doing: capturing on film what Kerouac masterfully constructed on paper. Even executive producer Francis Ford Coppola abandoned his plans after he repeatedly failed at converting Kerouac’s swirling, vivid commentary into a screenplay. This ‘road’ deserves to be ridden.
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For More Information Visit:
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http://www.movieweb.com/movie/on-the-road
http://www.ontheroad-themovie.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337692/combined
