The primary difficulty in adapting Kerouac’s On the Road to the screen is the tendency for prosaic debauchery to become simple debauchery. Unfortunately, this is what happens to the rest of the film as the sexual tension between Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) and Marylou (Kristen Stewart) is released. However, prior to this, the film a surprising satisfying rendition of Kerouac’s novel.
As a disclaimer: it is NOT the novel. It can’t be. The novel is an American classic, replete with disjointed narratives, poetic ramblings, and deep, ironic self-explorations.
The movie doesn’t try to accomplish all of these things. The narrative is organized, focusing mostly on the thoughts and angst of Paradise (Kerouac’s pseudonym in the novel). And yes, there are drugs. It would certainly be hard to make a film about the Beat Generation without them, but the movie is not replete with drugs and alcohol – at least, not until the last twenty minutes or so. In other words, you are not in for a stoner’s paradise, where artists are miraculously enlightened by marijuana. If anything, the movie shows the fine line that drugs establish between escape and imprisonment.
But the film also shows restraint, not wanting to create some sort of pedantic “drugs are bad,” “the system is broken,” “find your true self” sort of lecture. There are no overly exposited metaphors and ideologies. Much like Paradise, we are caught in limbo, trying to determine the film’s value, much like Paradise is determining his own value.
On the Road, like the novel, explores the journey and the binaries that come with it. Mobility is both freedom and restriction. Paradise is without a permanent job and nagging boss, but his travels necessitate money, so he often takes positions as an underpaid dayworker, used an abused as a human assembly line. It’s pleasure and pain. Paradise seeks out the less-touched America but encounters the acne of advertisements, billboards, and imminent suburban sprawl. It’s the embrace of youth and the fear of getting older.
None of these are openly exposited as Sal, Dean (Neal Cassady’s pseudonym, played by Garrett Hedlund), and often Marylou (LuAnne Henderson’s pseudonym), travel back and forth across the country, from New York to San Francisco with frequent stops in Denver. (Dean married the sixteen-year old Marylou, only to fall in love with Camille in San Francisco, marry her, but divorce and carry on various flings with the former.) Instead, we see the groundlessness of each character as they wait in abeyance, at times acknowledging their desires to settle down but ultimately afraid or unprepared to settle.
This connects to my appreciation for the film Throughout, Paradise is the Kerouacian protagonist that persists through his novels. There’s an ego and a desire to find inspiration in a mundane world, but this is ultimately a front for a callow individual caught between proper and improper, mobility and stagnancy, ambition and acquiescence. It took a long while for me to appreciate Kerouac. It took a number of readings through On the Road, Dharma Bums, et al., but the beauty of his prose is only penultimate to the man who knows that he’s full of shit and the journey he lets us take through his self-deprecating and revealing journeys.
And, perhaps the film falls short of excitement, which it should insomuch as the novel isn’t exciting, but it stays true to the character. There is no metamorphosis into heroic protagonist. Instead, there’s a guy who’s a bit more likable than the guy he often travels with. They’re bot “con men, conning each other,” and there’s no need to change this. More importantly, this is a marked difference in adapting literary figures onto the screen. Hunter S. Thompson comes to mind as a man who has become both a part of the literary canon and a caricature.
Here, the filmmakers stay true to their subjects. There is no namedropping in this film because there doesn’t need to be. The mannerisms of Carlo (a representation of Ginsberg) are telling, but not exaggerated. Viggo Mortenson as Old Bull Lee (a representation of William S. Burroughs) is uncanny. His voice is near spot on to any recording you’ll find of Burroughs, as are his movements. And this is given to us without ceremony and backstory of the influence Burroughs had on this cadre of poets and the revelatory poems that Ginsberg will write – although there is a geeky allusion to Ginsberg’s inspiration for Howl.
Pehaps my fascination with these writers, this time period, and their work has biased me in favor of this movie, and perhaps my familiarity with the source material prepared me for what was coming. There wouldn’t be action; there is very little change; the end is very similar to the beginning, but at least it’s faithful.
