Screened as part of NZIFF 2012

On the Road 2012

Directed by Walter Salles

“Jack Kerouac’s peerless anthem to the romance of youthful freedom and experience has finally made it to the screen with its virtues and spirit intact.” — LA Times. Direct from Cannes.

Brazil / France In English
137 minutes CinemaScope / DCP

Director

Producers

Nathanaël Karmitz
,
Charles Gillibert
,
Rebecca Yeldham
,
Roman Coppola

Screenplay

Jose Rivera. Delete Based on the novel by Jack Kerouac

Photography

Éric Gautier

Editor

François Gedigier

Production designer

Carlos Conti

Costume designer

Danny Glicker

Music

Gustavo Santaolalla

With

Garrett Hedlund (Dean Moriarty)
,
Sam Riley (Sal Paradise)
,
Kristen Stewart (Marylou)
,
Amy Adams (Jane)
,
Tom Sturridge (Carlo Marx)
,
Danny Morgan (Ed Dunkel)
,
Alice Braga (Terry)
,
Elisabeth Moss (Galatea Dunkel)
,
Kirsten Dunst (Camille)
,
Viggo Mortensen (Old Bull Lee)

Festivals

Cannes (In Competition) 2012

Kristen Stewart and Garret Hedlund are the stand-outs in Walter Salles’ faithful account of the proto-60s youth liberation classic, straight from Competition at Cannes.

“Jack Kerouac’s On the Road has been heralded for decades: an important novel, a cultural signifier, a sociological landmark, a cracking good read. It’s also been considered ‘unfilmable’ – but now Walter Salles brings the novel to the screen, and his The Motorcycle Diaries turns out to be a pretty good template for understanding how Salles has shot his adaptation. On the Road, like Diaries, is scenic and episodic, full of youth’s passion but with a shade of the future yet to come dimming the brightness of its vision, as a charismatic young man travels with another young man, saying little but watching everything along the way…

Sam Riley is Sal Paradise, Kerouac’s stand-in for himself in the novel; Garret Hedlund is Dean Moriarty, based on Neal Cassady, the freewheeling and irresponsible sensation-seeker who pulls Sal into his wake. Riley has to carry the burden of being the viewpoint character… But as Hedlund’s previous work has demonstrated, he’s a young actor with charisma and skill, making Dean both engaging and reprehensible.

Kristen Stewart is Dean’s paramour Marylou, and seeing her liberated from the silly straitjacket of servile moping she has to perform in the Twilight films is a huge relief… And Viggo Mortensen and Amy Adams play the book’s stand-ins for William S. Burroughs and Jane Vollmer with drugged-up grit and gravel, a cautionary tale about to happen.” — James Rocchi, The Playlist