The false promise of the post-war American dream under Harry Truman’s
Fair Deal left a generation of young dreamers searching for a different
joie de vivre on the open highways that stretch like taut arteries from
coast to coast, carrying new blood in no particular direction.
No one captured that sense of urgency, opportunity and impulse better
than Jack Kerouac, whose largely autobiographical 1957 novel (written in
1951) – with its erratic prose and sprawling narrative – became a
beacon of Beat-era nonconformity. Just as the Kerouac backlash has
steadily gained momentum since the novel’s original publication,
however, so a shroud of apprehension has slowly begun to descended on
Walter Salles’ adaptation since filming wrapped in late 2010.
In truth, the journey to bring ‘On the Road’ to the big screen has been
dogged by false starts and mixed fortunes ever since Francis Ford
Coppola bought the rights in 1979. But, now that Garret Hedlund’s wild,
seductive transient, Dean Moriarty, and Sam Riley’s struggling writer
trying to take off, Sal Paradise, have finally arrived, has the wait
been worth it?
Well, as far as Hedlund and Riley are concerned at least, On the Road
ticks a lot of the right boxes. Both possess a magnetic screen aura
that’s essential in sustaining any surface interest in their episodic
cross-country bromance. Yet while their drug- and sex-fuelled sampling
of New York’s jazz cafes, San Fransisco’s counterculture scene and
everything the great American Mid West has to offer in between is
undoubtedly lifted by this dynamic pairing, the novel’s central theme of
challenging 1940s masculinity is criminally lost.
Salles gives arguably the two most important characters, Moriarty’s
on-again-off-again teen bride Marylou and his older, more domesticated
sweetheart Camille, to Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst respectively.
Shrewd casting, but the culturally emblematic roles of these women (one
promiscuous temptress, the other wholesome matriarch) is obscured, and
as a result the catalytic power gains and losses between Sal and the
girls over Dean’s affections seem trivial.
With a romantic like Salles at the wheel we weren’t expecting On the
Road to hold a mirror to today’s disenfranchised American youth. But we
weren’t expecting such a tedious, flat film either. Ultimately that’s
the price for failing to tone down the narcissistic, shallow tendencies
of the characters – although it doesn’t account for just how few
memorable scenes there are (with the exception of K-Stew’s boobies and
Hedlund nailing a sherried Steve Buscemi).
You can keep the Zeitgeist embalmed in myth and nostalgia for as long as
you like, but to truly reinvigorate it you’ll need a whole lot more
than a whiskey-hued lens and a frontseat full of pretty faces.
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