Motorist

Part fiction, part documentary essay, this wry, wacky road movie takes a driver (Richard Marcus) through the American Southwest to LA as he delivers a grey '62 Ford Thunderbird to a young Japanese. A Ford man with a respect for Cadillac, Richard talks to himself, the traffic, the radio and the car, lamenting the end of the Mechanical Age, offering an anecdotal history of himself and US dream cars, and commenting on the massive, mythic landscape around him. The few characters he meets - a mystic waitress, a gas attendant with a passion for franchise history - add vivid colour, but it's Richard's droll musings that fuel the film, providing a fascinating, often very funny semiology of '50s car culture to accompany ancient ads and documentary clips. The many references range from Henry Ford and Diego Rivera to McDonald's and UFOs, but the whole thing is lent coherence by Marcus' charismatic presence and Lord's assured control of mood. A small gem of a film.