On the Road...was it worth the trip?

I have to be honest; the book of ‘On the Road’ means more to me than any other book around (other than the Bible, obviously). It shook my world up when I was travelling the states in 2008, and its message and meditations have stayed with me to this day, and I'm confident they'll resonate with me until the time old age steals the memory of it from me!

So bearing this in mind, it's only fair I mention that I might be a touch over-sensitive when it comes to reviewing the long-awaited film adaptation. But that's what I'm here to do, so on we press...

Let me start by acknowledging that Walter Salles is an accomplished director and has tackled weighty projects with skill, precision and success before now. Motorcycle Diaries, for instance, was another book to film adaptation and provided a captivating film in which the considered narrative, the complex emotions and the journey of Ernesto and Alberto were all handled with delicacy and dexterity. But when it came to wrestling and wrangling the long and winding Road, I can't help but feel the enormity of the project proved too much.

But this isn't an indictment on Salles’ abilities – it’s arguably impossible to transform the frenetic impulsiveness implicit in every page of On the Road into a single cinematic portrayal. But that doesn't mean that the film's short-fallings were any less crushing, and it saddens me to say there were multiple of these. Let me start with the most identifiable feature of Kerouac (Sal Paradise)'s novel; the language and dialogue.

In On The Road (1957), Kerouac recounts his adventures and escapades with the sort of wild, raw, unkempt energy that ismatched only by the eloquence of the text and the sumptuous sensation the words creates while rolling off of your tongue...

"All the magic names of the valley unrolled - Manteca,

Madera, all the rest. Soon it got dusk, a grapey dusk,

a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields;

the sun the colour of love and Spanish mysteries."

Beautiful, no?

And while he depicts his journey so delicately, he is careful to describe with real love and dedication even the smallest of meetings he made along the way, because after all, these are the people who interested and fascinated Kerouac and among whom he found shelter and solace when the American night drew around him. These are as much the focus and stars of the journey as Cassady or Kerouac himself.

But these gems, these wonderful insights into life on the road are all but entirely absent from the film. Why? I can onlysuggest the ‘restrictions of time' but even then, the mind boggles.

Instead, we rush through scenes with the same haste that lead Kerouac to dash out of his house and up to Bear Mountain in the hope of jumping on Route 6 straight into Nevada, where in actual fact he wound up trying to hitch a ride West in the "rain that came down in buckets and with thunderclaps that put the fear of God" into him (a scenario also omitted from the film). But just like Kerouac wasleft crying and swearing and socking himself for his foolish haste, the film's impatience leaves us ruing the missing gems of the author's scroll as we stand there in the cinematic rain without any time to take the road in; to savour what is passing and who is coming up on the roadside.

Interestingly – albeit unfortunately – the loneliness Kerouac felt on that ‘damn mountain’ is arguably a more acute sense of the distance felt between Sal and Dean et al and the cinema's audience. Why? Because we're simply not given any chance to dive into the people we're watching. Something’s missing. Intimacy.

The intimacy between characters in the book is infinitely more intense and vivid and tangible, whereas in the film we're offered mere snippets of the depth of understanding that ebbs and flows between Kerouac and Cassady and Ginsberg and any of the countless Beats they meet along the way...

By my count, there are maybe three scenes of real understanding and intimacy – one with Kerouac and his meme (mother); one with Cassady and his young wife Carolyn as they lose themselves in dance; and one between Kerouac and Cassady themselves which is saved until the very end, but goes at least some way to capturing the intricacies of their intimacy, because after all, these weren't just ‘buddies’ – they were brothers! In Cassady Kerouac found the answer to the lost soul of his deceased brother, and yet it is only at the end of the film do we see any real emotion between them. That being said, when the intimacy is evident on screen, it is handled wonderfully and you see beyond the sex, drugs and jazz, and you see hopeful boys excited about going on an adventure – not the road, but life!

Finally, it would be remiss of me to not touch upon the matter of 'speed' – a theme inherent within the book in all forms...in Kerouac’s text, Cassady is a strung out ball of natural (and unnatural) energy – people gravitated to him and the world orbited around him, such was his eye-popping, sweat-beading energy...here was a man who was "mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time!"; a man who yelled "Ah! God! Life! Yes! Whee!" while beating his hands on the steering wheel in un-caged excitement and exuberance!!! And yet in Garrett Hedlund’s portrayal, he's wound down to a slow-drawling cat who looks too polished, too ‘Hollywood’ for a man with the lust for life that saw him held up as the singular most vivid embodiment of the entire Beat generation!

But my bitching aside, the performances (out of the context of the original text) are excellent – Kristen Stewart surprises in her role as 'Marylou' and the ever excellent Viggo Mortensen is coolly assured as Kerouac's confidante and sage, Old Bull Lee (William Burroughs).

And besides, the most important thing is that through this film, yet more people will be encouraged to read Kerouac's inspirational prose, and to take to their own roads in the search of life, love (or lust, depending on what you're after) and understanding of the world that lies out there – so, ultimately, it's hard – and perhaps a tad unfair - to call the 2012 film a '(total) disappointment'.

So for now let me just say; if you've read and loved the book, you're gonna have some axes to grind afterwards. On theother hand, if you're a Kerouac/Beat novice, then dive right in, drive right on and enjoy the ride...

And here's the man himself...