Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

On the Road (2012)

Director: Walter Salles

Time Out rating

Average user rating

5 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Walter Salles applies the spirited documentary naturalism of 'The Motorcycle Diaries' to this adaptation of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road': the beat writer's early 1950s spin on his late 1940s encounters with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and, above all, his magnetic free-spirited friend Neal Cassady, as they intermittently quit New York and travel around America looking for answers to big questions unknown or undefined.

It's hard to fault the travelogue credentials of Salles's film as Kerouac's alter ego Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) and the Cassady character, Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), voyage from city to desert and scorched cotton field to snowy prairie. They pick up, drop off and drop in on various folks along the way, from Moriarty's two on-off women, Marylou (Kristen Stewart) and Camille (Kirsten Dunst), to Carlo Marx (Tom Sturridge, essentially as Allen Ginsberg) and Old Bull Lee (Viggo Mortensen as William Burroughs).

The film is characterised by quick and frenetic storytelling, an energetic jazz soundtrack, a free and unobtrusive attitude to sex and drugs and performances that are zesty and immediate. Yet still 'On the Road' entombs its era's zeitgeist more than it lives it. It feels long and tedious, as if we've dropped in on someone else's party without knowing or caring who these folks are, knocking back the whisky and barbiturates as regularly as they're knocking off each other.

Partly that's because Salles mutes the in-the-moment mania of 'On the Road' by both relying heavily on Sal Paradise's narration and pulling back often to soak up a good-looking cityscape or landscape (shot beautifully by Eric Gautier). Both tics come at the expense of properly examining Paradise and Moriarty's relationship beyond initial hero worship that fades to reveal a gulf of responsibility and maturity between the two. Hedlund is strong in scenes of musical mania, especially one in which he dances at a club with Stewart, but there's a lot of sturm und drang to his performance and not a great deal of soul. Riley is more passive, and his feels like a character observed rather than explored.

Salles nods to themes of abandoned women and absent fathers, but these feel like late attempts to offset the vanity and recklessness of the characters by saying something more considered about them. A late shot, too, of Kerouac bashing out the manuscript further complicates the tension between the writing of the book and the book itself, and between the attitudes of the time and the benefit of hindsight. The rebel yell of 'On the Road' now sounds muted and even a little embarrassing.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Cannes Film Festival

Email Tweet Share

User reviews of this film

Bacchus said...

Posted on May 29 2012 04:24 Wow, why so many rants?!!
Also, if you have the chance to read Salles's interviews, in which he describes all the movie's step-to-step proccess, you will then see Kerouac's piece was re-alchemized by a real artist & the greatest of teams; instead of yet another copycat version, On the Road was subtly distilled into an enthralling lyrical re-lecturing going against all conventionalisms & clichés... and the whole team spent 8 years completely immersed in kerouac's world, and they literally sank their teeth & fury into the Beat meat so as to distill the best vision from it, instead of coming out with another blabblering carbon copy, as i said above. As for the actors, I really didn't give much attention & or credibility to them until I read their interviews, and they blew me away, which has made me so proud of this film: almost all of them living together for 6 months, then listening to jazz before doing the scenes, going out to explore the streets, bars, poets, all that, then driving across America aboard an old Hudson, for real!
Before shooting any bad intentioned critics, I seriously advise you all to get into the movie's backstage & proccess so you can understand why it ended up coming out like that; you will see it is totally unsettling, unpredictable & COOL, like a jazz improvisation; or better, go make the film yourself & tell us if it's possible to transform all of its contents into a 2 hour film!!!! impossible!
Ah, I remember On the Road (the book), before becoming both a smashing success & the storm of its generation, being treated as one of the most disgusting bad-written scrolls of all time!!!

Report as inappropriate
Bacchus said...

Posted on May 29 2012 04:22 What a movie - stunningly lyrical & unpredictable !!
Walter Salles is such an enlightened guy..., so clever & classy, besides being totally spontaneous; Paris, May 26: he talked for 1 hour or so before an audience of people of all ages & from all generations over On the Road, Kerouac & Beat, continents, shamans, how much he had sunk his teeth & fury into all that Beat meat so as to distil the best vision from it, and also how so many travels & films have caused him to constantly “re-define” his outlook & sensibility towards the world & himself… But the afternoon’s highlight was when a paraplegic woman (doomed to a wheelchair, evidently) & holding a copy of On the Road to be signed started crying, and Salles whispered something to her, and that moment was just beautiful, I mean the contrast between her own limiting condition as an “incapacitated” person & the very sense of Freedom Kerouac’s works; I could see then very clearly the power of Art & its importance to the redefining of our lives on all levels, and all that Road’s meaning to that young woman in a wheelchair…
Also, if you have the chance to read Salles's interviews, in which he describes all the movie's step-to-step proccess, you will then see Kerouac's piece was re-alchemized by a real artist & the greatest of teams; instead of yet another copycat version, On the Road was subtly distilled into an enthralling lyrical re-lecturing going against all conventionalisms & clichés... and the whole team spent 8 years completely immersed in kerouac's world, and they literally sank their teeth & fury into the Beat meat so as to distill the best vision from it, instead of coming out with another blabblering carbon copy, as i said above. As for the actors, I really didn't give much attention & or credibility to them until I read their interviews, and they blew me away, which has made me so proud of this film: almost all of them living together for 6 months, then listening to jazz before doing the scenes, going out to explore the streets, bars, poets, all that, then driving across America aboard an old Hudson, for real!
Before shooting any bad intentioned critics, I seriously advise you all to get into the movie's backstage & proccess so you can understand why it ended up coming out like that; you will see it is totally unsettling, unpredictable & COOL, like a jazz improvisation; or better, go make the film yourself & tell us if it's possible to transform all of its contents into a 2 hour film!!!! impossible!
Ah, I remember On the Road (the book), before becoming both a smashing success & the storm of its generation, being treated as one of the most disgusting bad-written scrolls of all time!!!

Report as inappropriate
Stephen said...

Posted on May 27 2012 04:54 Oh, and the main picture for this film with all of them in the car looks like an American Eagle Ad. So, i dont get the bashing of the critics who point out the obvious.

Report as inappropriate
stephen said...

Posted on May 27 2012 04:52 Hey, Critics can be harsh but whats the point if they arent? They are critics. I personally like to hear someones negative perspective of a film I may want to watch myself. No film is perfect for the most part and critics are a breath of fresh air in respects to actors and movie makers who do par work in yet still get to hog up all of the spotlight and self congradulate themselves alll the while being blindly adored by crowds as if they are gods. Please. I dont mind the review. lol

Report as inappropriate
Keith said...

Posted on May 24 2012 15:11 I'm amazed at the main criticism of this movie running through the first batch of reviews - it looks too good,the cast is too pretty and the movie rambles. Salles clearly got it right in a movie about a generational search for "it" and themselves and critics are advertising their laziness, inadequacy and pretentiousness.

Report as inappropriate