Produced by Nathanael Karmitz, Charles Gillibert, Rebecca Yeldham
Screenplay by Jose Rivera
Based on On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Starring Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Alice Braga, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen
Sundance Selects / Rated R
I’m not going to lie. I had really low expectations of On the Road. I knew that Kristen Stewart was in it. I knew that dude from Tron: Legacy was in it. I can honestly say I was shocked, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.
On the Road, an adaption of Jack Kerouac’s novel, is about Salvatore "Sal" Paradise, a philosophical depressive who is searching for his life’s purpose and material for his novel-in-progress during the late forties. After meeting carefree vagabond, Dean Moriarty, Sal finds himself inspired to travel across the country collecting stories and experiencing the exciting life of the “beat generation.”
The director, Walter Salles, guides us along beautiful roads of America through rain, sunshine, and snowstorms. While I didn’t live in the late forties I had a very strong sense of nostalgia watching this film. Perhaps it was the narration of the main character delivered fluidly throughout the film. Perhaps it was the uneasy camera that stayed close to the faces of each character capturing their drug-induced happiness, sexual highs, and ultimate emotional turmoil. The voices, the cinematography, it doesn’t matter, I was unexpectedly mesmerized.
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