“Patchwork and episodic but a rich ensemble with memorable cameos.” Little White Lies magazine
Jack Kerouac’s seminal pseudo-autobiography finally heads to the big screen thanks to director Walter Salles Jr. (The Motorcycle Diaries) and producer Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola sat on the rights for 30 years before finding a partner that he was willing to work with on this, and Salles and his screenwriter Jose Rivera have adapted On the Road with studied reverence. The challenge? To preserve the kinetic iconoclasm of the original text – all youth, a celebration of impermanence, fleeting sex and doomed affaires; deep connections, kindred spirits, sex, jazz and Benzedrine - without it seeming simply nostalgic. Better, perhaps, to accept the film as an elegy.
The tale is semi-based on the author’s trips across America between 1947-50, with fiction intertwining with allegedly real events and mythic characters met along the way. The starring cast includes Kristen Stewart (never better), Sam Riley, and Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortenson.
