On The Road  (Walter Salles, 2012): France | UK | USA | Brazil

Reviewed by Cia. Viewed at the AFI Fest 2012.

“everything belongs to me because i am poor.”

Jack Kerouac

Most will agree that Jack Kerouac’s novel “On The Road” presents a challenge as an adaption to the screen. On the other hand, film makers have been experimenting with nonlinear, static, unconventional narratives successfully for years.  Think- Bunuel… for starts.
Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycles Diaries) adaptation of On The Road completely misses the tough and edgy soulful, confused and intellectual yearning of a young man, the sheer drive of rebelling against conformity, the search for what’s out there, what’s inside him and an incessant need to write about it. Without this desire to bust out of the holds of society, the characters of Sal Paradise & Dean Moriarty come off shallow, unlikable and extremely stagy.  The total lack of real and raw and burning fuel is heightened by the grand Hollywood feel of the film.
With all the shots of moving pavement placed meaningless throughout the film and lengthy footage of landscape across the the United States, I wonder while I watch the fields through a lens that I don’t identify with, where is Jack Kerouac’s America? With all the obvious suggestions of the time period,  I wonder, where is old US Route 66? Where is Kerouac’s road?

Maybe Salles got it mixed up with these guys.

More important, where is the man who wrote this book? Who is this little school boy chump and his pumped up deep voiced Hollywood buckle of charm buddy? And why have they hugged meaningfully so so so many times? Wait- are we on the road to Brokeback mountain?

Kerouac was born and raised in blue collar Lowell, Massachusetts just outside of Boston. If you listen to his recordings there is a slight Boston accent, just a hint, which combines a clipped city feel with the intentional diction of a man determined to be heard. Kerouac is “manly”. Without doubt his physique and mannerisms are that of a 1950’s version of what “manly” is. He is not academic, nor is he naive. He is clearly his own person. And while Neal Cassady had crazy fast talkin charisma and charm, he didn’t look like one-in-a-line up for the next pretty-boy Hollywood movie star.

The ensemble of strong kick ass female actors, heighten the two male characters weak “performances” but the women are also left hanging in what feels to be beautiful, but empty cinematography (Eric Gautier). With all the hype about Kirsten Stewart, she delivers a fine “performance” though nothing about her character feels driven in the time period. Amy Adams who can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, feels like her character was plopped here and there senselessly giving it a self consciousness that floats and does not work. Kirsten Dunst stands out as her character Camille journeys from Doris Day perfection to an angry single mother abandoned by the restless/selfish Dean Moriarty. (Where’s Jon Hamm/Don Draper when you need him?- just sayin’)

My problem with Salles adaptation is not that it rambles, is static or nonlinear, it’s what it lacks in capturing the drive, the heart, the grit, the beat- the heart beat that inspired the beat generation. It’s that it takes a writer who defies convention and tries to put his work  in a Hollywood mainstream lush-box.

so in the chinese grauman when the lights go down and I sit watching the long, long obvious images and sense all that raw footage that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge that is on the road in so many people’s minds, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now my writer friend Joe who hit the road years ago on a motorcycle from Lowell, Ma. will be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and in NYC my writer friend Randy from Indiana will be pissed (all but the sex scenes- he might forgive those) and in Boston, my good old friend Andrew who passionately knows everything about Jack- who has driven me by Kerouac’s old house in Lowell- more than once- who has sat me down and played recordings of Kerouac readings & interviews- read his favorite passages to me out loud in a train yard in New Orleans, on the cobble stone streets of Boston’s old pier at 3:00 am, in bars and diners- over the phone in the middle of the night in a voice that rang like the liberty bell in a voice that will now be quiet & angered first- then solemn.
the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on Hollywood Boulevard- tonight the stars’ll be out- but none of it matters- nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, so in the chinese grauman throughout my entire visual journey of Salles adaptation of On The Road-  
I think of David O. Russell. I think of David O. Russell. I think of David O. Russell.

“everything doesn’t belong to hollywood because it is rich.”

Cia C.

Produced by Nathanael Karmitz, Charles Gillibert,  Rebecca Yeldham, Screenplay by Jose Rivera Based on On the Road by Jack Kerouac  Cast:  Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge. Danny Morgan, Alice Braga, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen Music by Gustavo Santaolalla Cinematography Éric Gautier Editing by François Gédigier, Studio American Zoetrope  MK2 -Film4- France Télévisions Canal+ Ciné+ France 2 Cinéma