On the Road (2012)
Certified: 18
Duration: 124 minutes
Directed by: Walter Salles
Starring: Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Alice Braga, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Buscemi, Terrence Howard
KRS release

American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac was the voice of the 1950s and of the Beat Generation.

Walter Salles’s adaptation of Kerouac’s masterpiece, On the Road, is reverent without being over-baked and raw without being bare. Most of all, it is packed with a sense of youthfulness and thirst for the meaning of life that transcends the time period in which the events are set.

The Brazilian director has defied the odds because this book was widely seen as un-filmable.

In a way, he has mined well the experience he garnered with his on-the-road movie The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).

The direction style Salles adopts fits well with the spontaneous prose and semi-autobiographical style of the novel. He imbues the film with a sense of spriteliness and liveliness.

The America portrayed is a country going through changes.

Sam Riley is Sal Paradise, who is yearning to be a writer. His father has just died and it is after this event that he meets up with Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund). Kerouac had modelled Moriarty on the Beat Generation hero Neal Cassady.

Dean is a rambler, woman chaser, marijuana smoker and all-round bad boy. He enters the story with his wife Mary Lou (Kristen Stewart).

Tom Sturridge plays Carlo Marx, a poet who is attracted to Dean. This character is based on Allen Ginsberg, one of the most influential poets of the Beat Generation.

Sal ends up being seduced by Dean and accompanies him on his journeys.

The film chronicles Dean’s journey but also his various relationships that include Camille (Kirsten Dunst). At one point, both Sal and Dean get involved with Mary Lou.

The director brings forth moments, titbits and pieces from Kerouac’s novel in an excellent manner without letting the film become a humdrum travelogue. Thus we follow Sal as he travels through San Francisco, New York and even Mexico, showing a very different side to America than what is usually depicted on the TV screens.

One of the film’s strengths lies in its versatile cast. Mortensen and Sturridge are simply excellent: they are the cinematic visualisation of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg on whom their characters are based.

However, the winner has to be Hedlund, whose performance is not based on his handsome looks and sees him graduating with top marks from the likes of Tron: Legacy (2010).

Meanwhile, the female protagonists, Dunst and Stewart, bring to the film an emotional core.

As the storyteller, Riley fills Kerouac’s shoes well as Sal Paradise, even though I got the feeling he was overshadowed by the more energetic character of Dean.

On the Road is a perfect film in the way it dissects conformity and pretentiousness. It is a depiction of the counter-culture movement as it rallied against the restrictions in place in post-World War II society. It is also about the birth of a new literary movement that was based on raw energy.

On the Road is a strong and courageous film that is as restless in its attitude as the characters that trod this path in real life.