Year: 2012
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Starring: Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart
Director: Walter Salles
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Review: There are very few works of 20th century American literature that can be called indispensable for understanding our culture. And one of those few is Jack Kerouac's On the Road. As everyone knows, is the thinly veiled autobiographical account of Kerouac and his friends in their adventure meaningless, but expands across America. For 50 years, its been waiting to be made into a film. Last.So Now, everyone already knows the story? Well, no, chances are if you are like me, you read the book and I still remember almost nothing from history. Book burning through their pieces of the story as if it were simply tinder for the fire of his energy, is the actual fuel rate, even with full redundancy. It is the impulse that pushes us toward chaos world of Kerouac breath. Come impressed with the energy, content.Film no doubt could have been used to enhance this effect, but this is not the movies. Instead, we have a more conventional therapy, which focuses on character development. It is a beautiful production, with an attractive cast. But history comes very different from the experience of the book. The script was rewritten to add breath and objectivity. We Sal Paradise, only half-formed at the beginning of the story, which act together to become a serious writer. We are infinitely lush Dean Moriarty finally come to grips with the progressive self-destruction attributed his immorality, and suffering. This may be a reasonable reading of the final Kerouac feelings about this part of your life, but that is not the feeling that Kerouac share with us in the book. We have lost our innocence, our last chance to return to it, even for a few hours, take away.Im not go to anger against this new conception of history, however, because it makes other changes from the book, there can be improvements. More episodes were censored in the book recreated in the film. (Some discussions about this in http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/easyrider/data/BeatEros.htm). So the film is historically accurate, and more sexually explicit than the book. (It may also explain its late launch USA). In a touching scene, Karl Marx (Allen Ginsberg) Sal whining about how vulnerable she feels bad because his love for Dean returned. To my best recollection, the conversation was not in the book (please tell me if you think otherwise), but was expressed in a private letter from Ginsberg to Kerouac many years after the fact. That kind of thing changes the emotional power of the story, no doubt, but that adds depth, too.Few of us really like nostalgia for the gritty overindulgences Beats. But remember, it came at a time when society was completely saturated with the message that everyone should be normal, safe and predictable. Without the small minority of attacks Beats messages and specifically not on the way to attack chronic, would be the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s has been aú No more difficult than it was, and perhaps less effective. Good, bad or ugly, we must accept this story.
