Tell me a story

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie. I’d read the book several years ago and had mixed feelings about it. While I enjoyed joining the characters on their travels, there were stretches of their journey that I found tedious, and at times I had to force myself to keep reading. So I was definitely interested in seeing if I would enjoy the movie. Would they capture what I enjoyed so much about the book, namely the excitement of living moment to moment inside a moving car? Would the more economic nature of film help shorten some of the more protracted moments of the story? I’ll say it was a mixed success.

The movie is about Sal Paradise (played by Sam Riley) and how meeting legendary wild man Dean Moriarty (played by Garrett Hedlund) changes his life. Sal is a writer. He lives in New York with his mother and hangs out with other writers. Then one night he meets Dean. Dean is a man whose name precedes him. He’ magnetic and charismatic. He feels no embarrassment nor any shame. He lives in the moment. He loves music and parties and alcohol and sex and drugs and life. Sal describes him as a man whose every muscle twitches to live and go. That’s not Sal. He’s more measured, more thoughtful, and he gets immediately sucked in by Dean’s gravity. So when Dean leaves New York for Denver with his sixteen year old wife Marylou (played by Kristen Stewart) and mutual friend Carlo (played by Tom Sturridge), it’s not long before Sal shambles after them (as he always does with people that interest him) in his first cross country trip.

Most of the movie takes place on the road, as you’d expect, with Sal and Dean traveling back and forth between Denver, San Francisco, New Mexico, and New York. They move based on their whims and on whatever circumstances they find themselves in, generally having a good time through it all. Yet at the same time, we witness Dean destroying just about every relationship he has. He may be a fun guy, but he’s not the kind of man you build a lasting relationship with. He bores so easily. There’s a reason that Sal describes him as a “roman candle.” You could no more form a stable relationship with him than a firework. Somehow he and Sal manage to form a bond that proves unusually thick, but even with that you begin to wonder just how long Dean will be able to respect that friendship.

Like Sal, the movie kind of shambles forward, driven not by plot but by characters. If I wasn’t already somewhat familiar with the story, I’m sure I would have found myself wondering more than once where the movie was going and when it would get there (even though it does move so much faster than the book). I understand that that is part of the point though; as it is with the characters, as it is with life, the journey is more important than the destination. But that can be hard to pull off in a movie. The characters have to be really strong and interesting to make an audience want to follow them wherever they go. I was willing to follow these characters. I don’t know how much I wanted to follow them.

It’s not that I didn’t like them; I did. I just couldn’t help but compare the characters to the ones in the book, particularly Dean’s character. I found Garrett Hedlund’s performance to be an okay one, but he’s not the Dean I imagined while reading. Right or wrong, I was picturing someone closer to Jude Law’s character in The Talented Mr. Ripley, someone older and more charismatic and more charming with a bit more gravitas. So it was difficult for me to appreciate Hedlund’s Dean as I was constantly comparing him to the Dean in my head. But so it goes.

I liked Sam Riley as Sal. You could see the admiration on his face every time he looked at Dean. He also managed to bring something to the story that the book never could have done, which is his voice. He’s got a great husky, kind of scratchy voice that just adds so much coolness to Kerouac’s words. I’d love to listen to him reading an audiobook of On the Road.

I also enjoyed Tom Sturridge’s performance as Carlo. He was a funny and sad little character that stole my attention every time he was on screen. Surprisingly I also enjoyed Kirsten Dunst as Camille. I never really thought of her as a great actress before, mostly because of my dislike of her as Mary Jane Watson in the Spiderman movies, but she brings weight to her role, especially in comparison to Kristen Stewart. I had a hard time seeing Stewart as Marylou. I just kept seeing Kristen Stewart. It’s partly my own fault. I’ve heard too much about her personal life to separate it from her characters. But part of it is also I that she’s not that great of an actor (which I hate to say because, really, could I do any better? Absolutely not). There’s a scene where she’s yelling at Dean, and I just didn’t buy the anger she was supposed to be feeling.

Tom Sturridge as Carlo

Kirsten Dunst as Camille

Kristen Stewart as Marylou

The movie moves faster than the book obviously, mostly to good effect, but one area where I wish it had slowed down was the actual on the road moments. I wanted to take a closer look at what it’s like living on the road. Where do they sleep? How do they sleep? Is it quality rest? How often do they get angry or irritated? How much time do they spend marveling at the natural beauty surrounding them? As they’re traveling from place to place do they wonder about all the people that live in between? I believe the book better answered those questions.

But of course the movie can’t capture everything from the book. It completely leaves out Dean’s third wife, Inez. Old Bull Lee (played by Viggo Mortensen) shows up, but it’s never really explained who his character is, making his sudden appearance confusing. In the the movie Sal meets Dean soon after his father died, as opposed to soon after he and his wife splitting up. As far as we know in the movie Sal’s never been married. The ending is also different, and I won’t spoil that here, except to say that I think the movie makes it sadder.

I think if I were to see the movie again, I’d probably like it more. I think I’ve gotten all the comparisons out of my head this time around, so I would better be able to focus on the story the next time. So for now I’m giving it three stars with the expectation that it’ll change to four stars down the road. Now it’s your turn. Did you see the movie? What did you think? I’m particularly curious to know what those who haven’t read the book think.

My Rating

On the Road
Director: Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries, Dark Water, Paris, je t’aime — “Loin du 16e”)
Writer: Jose Rivera (Diff’rent Strokes, Family Matters, Eerie Indiana, The Motorcycle Diaries, Letters to Juliet), Jack Kerouac (On the Road [novel])