On The Road

Deb 8        Me 7

Movies like this are kinda scary, that is, seeing things that are near the heart and a tiny bit sacred interpreted by others is a bit scary. I knew from the previews that they edited one of the great passages from On the Road and this set doubt into my mind that was hard to overcome. Before the movie started I decided to forget what I know and just watch what they give me. Forget Cassady's face that has been chiseled into my Rushmore for half a century, forget each phrase that Kerouac has burned into my noggin' and set me on the path. 

So it begins. Immediately I'm a bit surprised it's in color and lit pretty flat. There were a few shots that were artfully done in a sort of film noir style, but I expected it to look more like the films of the 40s and 50s, the time the movie is set in. It didn't and I got over it. The casting was fine, they didn't attempt to go for ringers, which works fine, although the Ginsberg character was easy to pick out. In fact the Ginsberg role was one of the more fully formed people in the movies. 

This wasn't such a movie of the book On the Road, but recreations of the scenes described in the book. I mean, the book was landmark not so much for the stories told, but the innovative way they were told. The scat prose and wonderfully poetic delivery of these events helped make this a cultural phenomenon. There were only hints at Kerouac's creative writing. It really turns out to be sort of a biopic of Kerouac and Cassady and company, with few references to the great talents they possessed; except Ginsberg. What happens with a lot of these movies is they accurately recreate everything, but there's just no heart, very clinical.

In the end it was a fine movie and many of the landmark things in the book are retold but not with Kerouac's beauty and radiance.