Blue Highways: Voices of the Other America

Somewhat misleadingly borrowing the title of William Least Heat-Moon’s life-shifting exploration of American backroads and the collisions thereon between autobiography, perennial first nation wisdoms and late twentieth century disillusionment, this nevertheless delivers well on the lives that find themselves ticking out, more or less calmly, in the melancholy distances of the definitive lost continent. Comfortably seduced by the signage of the territory and its attendant topography of regret and personal revisioning, the directorial duo successfully evoke the mood of the passing miles and miles, dropping in on characters, from Iraq vets to brothel clerks and on, across the country who embody both the quirks of place and the tenor of a nation in transition. A poignant road movie of the urge to be someone, somewhere else.