JACK KEROUAC
is back on the beaten track in film version of his iconic 1957 book, On the Road,
For those from a certain generation — OK, us baby boomers — few books resonated as powerfully as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, focusing on the Beat Generation’s search for self, search for soul, search for kicks in postSecond World War America. Kerouac’s novel was loaded with insights into the mindsets of such renowned Beats as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and their fixation, along with that of the author, with the enigmatic Neal Cassady.
Since the book’s publication in 1957, Francis Ford Coppola and Marlon Brando, among many others, had sought to adapt it to the screen. But this is not an easy transfer since the book exists on an almost plotless, stream-of-consciousness plane and its characters are so identifiable and larger than life.
Walter Salles is as good a choice as any to direct. He was at helm of another road odyssey, The Motorcycle Diaries, which set a younger Che Guevara on his path toward fulfilment. The Brazilian director conscripted Motorcycle Diaries writer José Rivera to pen the screenplay for On the Road.
Rivera is as faithful to the Kerouac book as possible. Salles is equally reverent. While dishing out the laurels: Eric Gautier’s cinematography (some of the film was shot in Montreal and the Gatineau region) is spectacular — be it the back alleys of New York, the cornfields and the snow-covered mountains of the mid-West or a ramshackle Mexican brothel. Nor can one complain about a soundtrack loaded with the strains of Charlie Parker and Slim Gaillard.
All the elements seem to be in place, save one of the most important: credibility. The actors are simply unable to bring the book to life. It’s not their fault. They play characters who are cultural icons, characters whose zest for life and adventure almost combust on the pages of the Kerouac book but somehow seem empty here.
Neal Cassady is the glue holding together the novel. His book and film alter ego, Dean Moriarty, is an ex-con, free spirit and hustler who magnetizes the Beat boys, specifically Sal Paradise and Carlo Marx, the Kerouac and Ginsberg characters. But try as he may, hunk actor Garrett Hedlund can’t fill the body and psyche of Cassady.
Nor, for that matter, are Sam Riley and Tom Sturridge able to pass as, respectively, Paradise and Marx. On the other hand, Viggo Mortensen is effective and believable as the guntoting, brilliantly eccentric Old Bull Lee, the Burroughs alter ego.
Rather than serving as an inspiration, Moriarty comes across as troubled, selfish and disloyal here. From his onscreen depiction, it’s hard to see how he could so captivate Paradise and Marx. Paradise, in turn, seems more like a sycophant and Marx, more a hormone-addled teen whose love for Moriarty is largely unrequited.
It’s equally hard to fathom from the film why Moriarty’s two supposed loves, Marylou (Kristen Stewart) and Camille (Kirsten Dunst) would be so smitten with the ever-philandering Moriarty. Yet those relationships are comprehensible in the novel.
The film begins in 1947 with a brooding, chain-smoking Paradise, after the death of his dad in New York. They had a troubled relationship. His father told Paradise before he died that he had “no calluses because you don’t do anything.” Son seems traumatized.
Paradise is also an aspiring novelist, but he simply needs a dynamite subject to help him realize his dream. Enter Moriarty, a forever-stoned petty hood who will stop at nothing for a buck and a fast (rhymes with latter noun).
Moriarty entices Paradise to come on the road with him and Marylou for an education and an experience he’ll never forget. Paradise, in awe and forever taking notes, smokes dope, does Benzedrine and gets blasted on booze with Moriarty. He has sex and witnesses all manner of unorthodox couplings. He picks cotton and loads goods on freight trains for a little cash. He gets to see America, but he also picks up on Moriarty’s duplicitous ways and learns his hero suffers from “compulsive psychosis.”
The message the movie seeks to impart is the romance of the open road. Well and good. But those filmgoers nurtured on time-honoured elements like plot twists and intrigue could well come to the conclusion that this road leads nowhere — as could devotees of the Kerouac book.
Then again, perhaps certain books just weren’t meant to be adapted to the screen. Credit Salles for trying, but the task is simply too daunting.