Jack Kerouac’s seminal On the Road is the kind of book best read by da yoof. I haven’t opened it since I was about 20; all I recall is a sense of restless cool, an authentic exuberance long since trampled. Director Walter Salles and screenwriter Jose Rivera (collaborators on The Motorcycle Diaries) totally nail this mood.
On the Road is a series of vignettes filled with deft, enjoyable cameos, as Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) and his reckless buddy Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) seek transcendence through kinetic hedonism. Salles gloriously summons the textures of late-1940s heartland America – sunbleached Californian cotton fields; steamy, unhinged Louisiana; New York tenements and dive bars; Denver slumbering against a stunning alpine backdrop.
An earthy physicality pervades everything: jazz; nude front-seat double-wristies; Dean’s amazing dance scene with his child bride Marylou (a smouldering Kristen Stewart). But not every libertine gets to vroom away; women are seduced, used and abandoned, like Dean’s long-suffering second wife Camille (Kirsten Dunst).
Still, this road trip’s too long. I was like, “Are we there yet?” before Sal and Dean had even set off for Mexico! If we’re meant to leave the cinema feeling beat to our socks, On the Road succeeds.
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