filmthug movies, reviews & rants: On The Road

On The Road

…to Nowhere

In the wake of his father’s death, aspiring New York writer Sal Paradise (Sam Riley as the novel’s Jack Kerouac stand-in) meets and becomes fascinated by the handsome, hedonistic, charming ex-con Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund as Neal Cassady’s alter-ego) and his jailbait wife Marylou (Kristen Stewart). Bonding over a shared love of booze, dope, jazz, sex and a belief in personal freedom, the two friends are determined not to be tied down or constricted by straight life. Hungry for experience, they hit the road together, crisscrossing America in search of adventure and meaning. But it’s during a fateful trip down Mexico way that their friendship will face its greatest test.

How much you get out off Walter Salles’ On The Road will probably depend on your appreciation of the Beats in general and Jack Kerouac’s magnum opus in particular. If you’re a fan, you can probably bump that rating on the right up at least a point. Long considered unfilmable despite cinema’s obsession with road movies, Kerouac’s autobiographical novel is a largely plot-free, aimless meander around ‘40s America in the company of two rather pleased-with-themselves, intense young bucks for whom the journey, not the destination, is what’s important, man! Nothing much happens. Their wanderlust and search for themselves sees them taking shedloads of drugs, driving fast and bumping into the thinly-disguised likes of William Burroughs (the novel’s Old Bull Lee) and Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) before the compromises and sacrifices of adulthood force them to re-evaluate their relationship.

Like his adaptation of Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries, Salles’ On The Road is very pretty but pretty vacuous. There’s spectacular vistas, beautiful landscapes, splendid isolation, the highways and byways of America. But like The Motorcycle Diaries it’s a bit too respectful, too humourless. It lacks energy, has none of the appeal of the book, fails to articulate just why the book and Kerouac should matter 60-odd years down the road. It’s an aimless, joyless cul-de-sac that feels both overlong and too glib, it lacks depth. Never has staying up late, downing bottles of beer and whisky, smoking dope, taking speed, driving classic cars really fast and shagging pretty young ingénues looked quite this bland and tedious.

Hedlund, in a star-making turn, is wonderful as the charming, selfish, frequently naked, Moriarty; a beautiful, rampant appetite made flesh, his boyish innocence undercutting his thoughtless irresponsible self-absorption. Riley’s Paradse however never quite rings true. As essentially Kerouac, Riley feels too old, too arch, too passive. You never get the sense of an inner life, the desire to create, an artistic drive, a lust for experience. Whether he’s taking speed, bar-hopping, tapping at his typewriter or indulging in threesomes, Riley feels too earnest, like he’s constantly trying to remember the advice of his vocal coach even while he’s being wanked off by the little girl from Twilight. Disappointingly, Paradise and Moriarty never act on their homoerotic desire for each other, their sharing of Marylou the closest they get, but had they consummated their love perhaps it might have explained the wide-eyed look of constipated surprise Riley wears for much of the film.

The supporting cast are great. All of the women are shockingly underwritten but as Marylou, Kristen Stewart is a revelation, a tough but vulnerable jailbait siren who bewitches both Moriarty and Paradise while Kirsten Dunst as Moriarty’s second wife Camille comes across not as the shrew she could so easily have been but as a woman pushed to the edge by the selfish manchild she’s indulged. Viggo Mortensen’s Old Bull Lee is a resolutely macho but amusing William Burroughs impersonator, Amy Adams brings a touch of demented genius to her role as Bull’s wife Jane and Steve Buscemi practically walks of with the film as a gay salesman Moriarty hustles.

Perhaps the finest performance of the film however, if you’re not a fan of the Beats or self-absorbed pretty boys, comes from Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss as the straitlaced Galatea, the wife of one of Moriarty and Paradise’s traveling companions who is unceremoniously dumped at the sweaty Louisiana home of smacked out junkies Bull and Jane. Her rage and frustration at her treatment and her lack of tolerance for this pretentious, self-indulgent boy’s club could almost be the audience’s.

Still, if you’re a fan of the novel, love beautiful shots of highways or have always wanted to see the wee girl from Twilight’s tits, you’ll find On The Road a diverting couple of hours.

David Watson

Directed by:

Walter Salles

Written by:

Jack Kerouac and Jose Rivera

Produced by:

Charles Gillibert, Nathanaël Karmitz and Rebecca Yeldham

Starring: