En el camino

For the record, I'm a big Kerouac fan. However, I don't think On the Road was his best work. I like his later, more introspective writing, but I know I'm in the minority here. There's a good reason why we had to wait so long for a screen version of On the Road. Impossible as it may be to believe, some novels are not written with potential movie rights in mind. On the Road is a sometimes rambling, stream of consciousness, string of vignettes without a clear goal in mind. It is a novel about hedonistic-death-driving on America's highways in a quest for life and a run from it. For the members of Kerouac's (Sal Paradise's) group, life is controlled self-destruction because death is preferable to boredom. These attitudes spring from the times in which the reality of potential nuclear disaster hung over the nation and the attitudes so induced found expression in youth who turned the directionlessness of life into life for the moment.

Making a film on such a book requires selection. Kerouac's hedonistic rampage across America, as selected by director Walter Salles, looks more mindless and sex-spiced than it did in the novel. Kerouac, as we see in his later works, was a hedonist with a conscience; a deadly combination which likely led to him drinking himself to death. Director Salles sees what he wants to see, a sex-crazed, drug-crazed, two-dimensional man. If this was truly the man represented in the novel, the novel would not have had the enduring quality that has made it literature.

I liked the way the 1950s was captured in the film. It was as close to perfection as you could get. The importance of jazz with its improvisation mirrors the lives of the travelers. The acting is good but the interaction is not. Maybe that was the point. There is no need for interaction in an age when the highest morality was based on selfishness. The movie may be okay to watch once, but I would prefer not to go down this road again.

The On The Road novel has inspired numerous readers, myself included to take an American road trip. Will the film have the same effect? I sincerely doubt it. And herein lays the problem. Whilst the book takes the reader on an exuberant, spirited journey full of life, the film puzzlingly slows the pace right down and presents a muted, almost depressed version of the same story.

This is best illustrated by the presentation of the character of Dean Moriarty. He should be the driving force of the story, pushing the storyline on with his crazed excitement for the good and bad in life. On the printed page he can barely speak fast enough to get all his thoughts out. However in the film he huffs and puffs his way from one scene to the next, speaking in a laconic drawl, whilst lacking all the charm and charisma that is supposed to make him so alluring. He is the muse for the writer character of Sal, but anyone coming to the film fresh without having read the book, may well struggle to understand why.

The film lacks a rounded sense of the hedonistic side of the journey. The sex is arguably overplayed and whilst there is some drugs and jazz, there is little of the booze. Crucially the characters rarely seem to be having a good time. The film seems to focus on the melodramatic, miserable aspects of the characters lives at the destinations they travel to, but fails to contrast this with wild and exciting times spent on the road. The film does not convey a sense of travelling for the journeys sake; they always just seem to be in the car in order to get to another destination. The only time the film gets anywhere near the free spirited adventure of the book is when the characters reach Mexico in the later stages of the film, but this is too little too late.

I did wonder whether the muted atmosphere of the film was a deliberate ploy of the filmmakers, however the last ten minutes would indicate not. Here we see the character of Sal typing up the notes he has made during the road trips, seemingly franticly typing to capture all the wild, fun, crazy times had on the road. However this does not reflect what the viewer has just witnessed on screen for the past two hours.

Taken on its own terms the film does offer fine cinematography, costume and the look of the time, as well as some decent acting (hence my score of 5 out of 10). However as an adaption of a seminal piece of literature, it deserves to be judged against the source material and in not capturing the true spirit of the book, it is a big fail.

One of the aspects this film really lacked was an understanding of the zeitgeist of Beat America in the late forties and fifties of Post-World War Two America. The conservative middle class that Ronald Reagan defended was in full swing and there were those who did not fit in and did not know where to go, and this is where the Beats fit in. It was L seven heaven square land and people with creative vision didn't have the flavor for materialism. The idea in the mind was just as secure as house in the suburbs. Plus I saw no James Joycean stream of consciousness with the speed, booze and the jazz. Where was the poetry? You see people moving around, dancing, snapping fingers and being "hip" but no expression of what was going on within. The characters I saw were 21st century self-centered users, dopers, and boozers who could not afford a day of tasting wine in Napa Valley, so it's everyone else's fault. The most real character in the film that captures the sense of the time was Viggo Mortensen's Old Bull Lee/William S. Burroughs. That worked. Carlo Marx, the Ginsberg attempt should have been called Harpo Marx. I was howling at the idea that this was suppose to be the person that wrote Howl. The art direction and cinematography did keep me watching instead of leaving. But remember, it does say based on the book On The Road.

I will try to be as short as I can be in my review, but I am just very surprised about the very positive reviews on IMDb. For me this was another huge disappointment. yes there are great landscapes, the photography is nice and the actors surely are OK, the music is often inspiring, but even if the movie basically tells the same events as in the book, I found it pretty boring, and above all the spirit of the book, about freedom etc, was completely gone. Too many scenes are just taken inside hotels rooms, houses etc, isn't this movie entitled on the road? Again, regarding the spirit of freedom, in the book surely wasn't all about sex and multiple partners etc, because that's not at all the freedom Jack Kerouac was talking about when he wrote it, these components have been way too much highlighted. I am sorry but I left the cinema pretty disappointed, if we had to wait all these year for a version of the book, and this is the result, well it would have been better to only have the book.

I agree with the earlier review ..."..our last chance to revisit it, even for a few hours, is taken away..." Yep. I read the book soon after its publication and, like the above reviewer, only remember the intensity, the poetry. My memory is that there was no real story line. But wonderful evocations of crossing the country in the old Hudson, at night...something about the feeling of being in that capsule. Just one of the many quibbles I have with this movie is that it showed us the Hudson speeding across the screen from left to right...an exterior view. Nothing of the romance of being in the car as it hurtled along. Lots of scenes of Dean driving dangerously, but that tells us something about Dean...that isn't what the book was saying about being in the car.

Okay. Anyway..anachronisms...

I graduated high school in 1957. I remember the hair cuts for girls...I was one of them. Marylou did not wear the cut shown in the movie. No long layers. Long hair , yes, but not long layers. That's very contemporary...It's distracting. Ever hear of "pin curls?"

Restaurant servers did not start saying "Enjoy" until at least the 90's. Remember the carefully recreated restaurant toward the end of the movie...the middle aged, somewhat overweight waitress in the red uniform? Never would she have said "enjoy."

I think some of the cars seen rushing from one side of the screen to the other in the early part of the movie were not available in the late 40's. Looked like Chevys from about 1953.

So much was carefully done...the paint peeling in the old Victorians when Victorians were low rent...yes! That very restaurant mentioned above.

Come on, there are lots of us still living. Hire a consultant next time.