On the Road (2012)
Directed by Walter Salles
Sal Paradise is a young writer whose life is shaken and ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty, a free-spirited, fearless, fast talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou. Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of “it” -- the pure essence of experience.
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What critics compared On the Road to
Over the past three years there have been no less than four narrative films about the beat generation, starting with “Howl” in September 2010.
It seems that filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman had faced a similar challenge with 2010’s Howl, the creatively daring interpretation of the life and works of Beat artist Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco).
While other adaptations of seminal Beat works, such as Howl (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2010) and Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991) have incorporated biographical detail with the hallucinogenic imagery and experimental approach from the original texts, On the Road is a much more straightforward adaptation.
These memories are prompted, of course, by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's film version of "Howl", which opened here last year, and the Brazilian Walter Salles 's bold, faithful adaptation of On the Road, some five years or more in preparation.
There are also brief black and white dramatic recreations of moments from Ginsberg's life prior to writing the poem, featuring Todd Rotondi and Jason Potter as "On the Road" writer Jack Kerouac and his legendary friend and inspiration, Neal Cassady.
"Kill Your Darlings" is not as kitschy as 2010's " Howl " (with James Franco as Ginsberg) or as dull as director Walter Salles' Kerouac adaptation, " On the Road ," but it's a muddled and silly enterprise that wastes a wonderful central performance by skinny, bespectacled Daniel Radcliffe as the young Ginsberg, whose virginity, bookishness, Jewishness, relative poverty and closeted homosexuality mark him as an outsider even after he is accepted to an exclusive Ivy League school.
Unlike the lusty recent adaptation of “On The Road,” “Kill Your Darlings” has somewhat loftier goals.
But despite its unsure moments, “Kill Your Darlings” has considerable advantages over both Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Howl” and Walter Salles’ ambitious, hit-and-miss adaptation of Kerouac’s iconic “On the Road,” which featured Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart.
"Kill Your Darlings" is a microcosm of Allen Ginsburg's college beginnings, and indeed covers the period in Jack Kerouac's life prior to him writing his most famous piece, "On The Road".
Like Vladimir Nabokov ’s Lolita — the other supreme American road novel of the ’50s — the Kerouac book was a controversial best-seller that Hollywood deemed unfilmable.
An On the Road for and about millennials.
Andrea Arnold’s new film, American Honey, throbs with raw teenage hormones and sheer chutzpah in a 21st-century version of On the Road.
Parts "Death of a Salesman," "On the Road," and "Bonnie and Clyde" — with a pinch of "Glengarry Glen Ross" thrown in — this film feels completely of the moment and also classic.
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Deze hit galmde nog lang na in de popcultuur — zoals Jack Kerouacs On the road volgens William S. Burroughs een miljard Levi’s en een miljoen espressomachines verkocht, zo verkocht Top Gun Ray-Bans en bomberjacks.