I have a confession to make: when I first entered the room that was about to screen on the Road I wondered if I had really entered the right one. I was with a dear friend of mine and was not fast enough in order to stop myself from asking her if she was sure we hadn’t missed the right door. The people did not look like they were about to watch on the road. Is it awful for me to say this? I guess it is, but oh well, truth ain’t pretty most of the time. So to free my heart of the doubt I asked a girl who was already munching on a huge bowl of popcorn and she hummed her affirmation. We were in the right room after all. So the movie started and the sounds of Sal Paradise filled my ears I was a nervous wreck. I have waited a long time for this day to come, with anxiety and much much fear. I have to admit that Walter Salles credited name on the screen gave me all sorts of national pride goose bump - if there is such a thing. On the road is such an statement of Americaness- for the good and for the bad- that having a Brazilian directing it brought it closer to me.
I was already smiling by the time the characters started singing “sweet sixteen” and the brownish hue of the cinematography was unleashing almost the same melancholy that I felt while reading the yellow pages of my English copy of the book. It is important for me to admit that Salle’s aesthetical choices were nearly too respectful and reverential. By trying to bring as much of the book as he could, he lacked on creating a narrative of his own, most of the time the movie was too clean, too linear, too bright. Those who had read the book will remember that Kerouac did not dwell long on the sex scenes or the drug taking rituals which granted such actions spontaneity, normality. Salles did the same. But when dealing with cinematographic Images, choosing to show a guy on a couch smoking a cigarette while the sounds of some serious banging action is going on on the background seems just like an attempt to maintain a PG-13 rating. While my eyes were glued to the screen, my ears heavenly treated with some great musical score, people started to get up and leave the room, only an hour into the movie.
I was right after all.
Those people were not there to see on the road. My friend and I were just going nuts with Dean Moriarty’s vibe; his crazy youth ways about to explode in rage, love, hope and hopelessness, his mad sad eyes pinning us on our seats. But the room around us was drowned in apathy, sighing with impatience. There was not pop love song going on, no eternal romance, and no car crash. In fact, there was no plot. When the movie was over, just like Sal, I was thinking on Dean Moriarty. I was planning to go back to America as soon as possible, dreaming on crossing the country from Virginia Beach to Frisco; designing the route I wanted to take on my head. But I was not surprised when I read some reviews talking about how dull the “selfish” wandering was, how the characters were pretentious and thought too much of themselves, how pointless the journey seemed. I was not surprised at all. Ours is not the age of free recognition. We have to be doing something, doing something all the time. We have to have a purpose, a goal – we have to improve. We need to get better than whomever. The critics and the people that watched the movie with me did not seem to realize how brave the simple denial was. How revolutionary is to choose to turn your back on the great expectations or to admit that life does not have a reason, that life simply is.
Apparently there is no time for the road no more.
