On the Road (Walter Salles, 2012)

[Jeff]

Good piece on the production history, including details of the documentary and of Roman Coppola's involvement in the scripting process at The Playlist.

Ian shared the great news that this has been picked up by IFC over here.

[ianungstad]

Not much but the first review from the French magazine Premiere (roughly translated into English) . Their rating system actually goes from 0-4 stars and On the Road scored the second highest rating of the handful of Cannes titles they've been able to review in advance of the festival. (Others being Rust and Bone, Moonrise Kingdom and Cosmopolis) :

Rated 3 out of 4 stars

After the death of his father in the beginning of the 50’s, Sal Paradise, young writer, go with his friend Dean Moriarty for a liberating odyssey on US roads. On the menu : sex, drugs and be-bop. At the end, a mythic novel.

Even if it has been quoted a thousand times in theater, Jack Kerouac’s novel, manifesto of the Beat Generation, had never been adapted. Walter Salles did it, with the experience he gained thanks to The Motorcycle Diaries, another road movie-biography happening in the 50’s. Good news : the Brazilian director did pretty well, imposing to its movie the same jazzy rhythm as the one who inspired the young writer years before.

Eric Gauthier is behind the camera, and the fact that he shoots with the camera on his shoulder conveys the permanent movement of the characters, who by changing their points of view, managed to have a better comprehension of the world.

In front of the perfect Sam Riley, witness and actor at the same time, Garrett Hedlund make us forget the disappointing ‘’Tron-Legacy’’ by playing with endless energy the charismatic Dean Moriarty, insatiable explorer of new vehicles, above all in love, – he was training every position, with one or several people at the same time, swinging both ways. Kirsten Dunst and above all Kristen Stewart are very good playing girlfriends always up for it, but inevitably disappointed when they discover that fidelity is not compatible with freedom.

In hindsight, the travel of these pioneers can be seen as limited if we compare it to more radicals experiences of following decades, but it has the merit to be the first, and the actors succeed in sharing with us the excitement of the discovery.

[Jeff]

Sounds like lots of "meh" so far, but I'm curious to see a broader spectrum of opinions.

Two full reviews:

Salles may have pulled off the achievement of faithfully adapting Kerouac's novel, but as episodes blur and bleed between each other with scenery as punctuation, you might find yourself wishing for a little less literary fidelity and a little more cinematic storytelling.

The film is characterised by quick and frenetic storytelling, an energetic jazz soundtrack, a free and unobtrusive attitude to sex and drugs and performances that are zesty and immediate. Yet still 'On the Road' entombs its era's zeitgeist more than it lives it.

Tweets:

On the Road screens at Cannes. Stylish, tiresome loop of pretty faces & chambray romanticism. But oh, Viggo Mortensen is terrific

ON THE ROAD: Yasss, yasss... Salles gets Sal, Dean, Marylou & Kerouac & all the madness & sadness & angels sur la route. ‪

ON THE ROAD is like watching the video rushes of someone else's beatnik-themed stag party.

ON THE ROAD (C-) Others' freedom: as dull as others' dreams. Loyal and Fodor's-handsome, but where's the context for a straight adaptation?

Beautiful but dull: Walter Salles's ON THE ROAD is a mid-West all of its own, failing to make the sex and drugs ride compelling ‪

[ianungstad]

That's really unfortunate. I suppose the writing should have been on the wall when it was acquired by IFC films. In spite of their partnership with the Criterion Collection, this is a company that for the most part releases middling to very shitty films.

[Finch]

The presence of Kristen Stewart should have been a warning. She diminishes everything she's in, including Panic Room. Terrible actress.

[ianungstad]

Well the reviews aren't awful, just underwhelming. I'm sure that part of it is that expectations were far too high going in to the screening. Hopefully Salles shot enough footage that he can take the feedback from Cannes and come up with a few tweaks that will result in a stronger edit. Sounds like Mungiu could probably take the same advice.

[Professor Wagstaff]

The presence of Kristen Stewart should have been a warning. She diminishes everything she's in, including Panic Room. Terrible actress.

I've mostly dismissed her work, but I rather liked her in Into the Wild and I think Greg Mottola capitalized on a lot of her limitations in Adventureland.

[Matt]

Did no one else think that the moment the film went south was when Walter Salles was attached to it? Has he done anything of note beyond some nicely shot middlebrow dramas? Were people excited for this film just because of the source material?

[Yojimbo]

Did no one else think that the moment the film went south was when Walter Salles was attached to it? Has he done anything of note beyond some nicely shot middlebrow dramas? Were people excited for this film just because of the source material?

I like 'Central Station', but is it possible the producers of 'On The Road' selected Salles because he had made a good road movie?
Surely that shouldn't have been the only criterion
I've never read 'On The Road': I picked up a dog-eared copy in a second-hand bookshop, almost 40 years ago, and always intended to read it,......

[mfunk9786]

Adapting a book to-the-letter isn't always a smart choice. It sounds like this should have been more fleshed out or pared down or altered in areas and Rivera and Salles weren't prepared to do what was necessary to adapt what is a pretty uncinematic novel.

[domino harvey]

[ianungstad]

From an interview with Jonathan Sehring on indiewire:

The response at Cannes was that some people loved it and some people were respectful of it, like some people loved the book. And Walter took a lot of that to heart. He’s gone back, and we’re unveiling a new cut in Toronto, which is about 15 minutes shorter. It’s a little over two hours now. He’s added certain things that weren’t in the cut that was in Cannes. He has been in New York and Rio and L.A. working on it the past couple of months, and it’s going to be very wet when it gets to Toronto. We’re locked, but they’re finishing the mix up right now. We’re very, very excited about it.

[zedz]

From an interview with Jonathan Sehring on indiewire:

The response at Cannes was that some people loved it and some people were respectful of it. . .

Seems to me that there were a large number of other viewers that have been conveniently elided!

[ianungstad]

It's certainly not a good sign if Salles is making significant changes to the film. This rarely ends up working to the film's benefit. Sounds more like nervous producers/distributors worrying about their bottom lines. We'll see what kind of reviews the new cut gets out of Toronto. The whole project seems like it's kind of a mess which is disheartening. This was one of my more anticipated films of the year.

[Jeff]

No surprise, but Criterion has, apparently, passed on the film. MPI will be releasing the DVD and Blu-ray on July 30.

[inneyp]

It's been a little while now, and while I did find the film "respectable", that was probably its biggest weakness. It was truthful to the book in a way that ignored its spirit; the mad, frenzied stream of consciousness that was its beating heart. It tried to imitate that for sure, depict it, but it did so in a failingly self conscious manner.The way Kerouac wrote about his ideas for the movie makes me think he envisioned something closer to Breathless than to the Motorcycle Diaries, and while Kerouac is dead and Salles is welcome to his own vision, I think that would've been much more interesting. In fact I don't think there was much of a vision due to the deference paid to simply portraying events in the book as truly as possible. I'm more and more convinced that adaptations, especially of classics, should be bold and depart in some major way from the original text. I'm hugely excited for Gatsby for that reason. I think Criterion was right to pass on this one.