I first watched On The Road not long after the Summer of 2012. The film had just got over a serious case of rejected screenplays that nobody wanted to produce, except this did not stop people trying for over half a century. With the eventual coming of an on-screen Dean Moriarty, or is that Neal Cassady? Wait, which On The Road is this? When I consult copies of the original On The Road and the posthumously published On The Road: The Original Scroll, I noticed this isn’t a textbook adaptation.
Based upon his personal experiences on the road, Jack Kerouac famously wrote one long paragraph of spontaneous prose onto a 120-foot scroll during a caffeine-fuelled three weeks in 1951. This legendary scroll was only recently made available in book format because it was originally rejected by publishers for being; too graphic (especially regarding sex), without structure and on the wrong side of libel laws due to the inclusion of real names. On The Road was eventually published in 1957 after multiple revisions. Kerouac always wanted there to be a film adaptation but for generations of actors the opportunity to play Sal or Dean was scuppered by unworthy screenplays. Even Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola conceded after decades of attempts that, "I tried to write a script, but I never knew how to do it. It's hard — it's a period piece. It's very important that it be period. Anything involving period costs a lot of money."
The success of The Motorcycle Diaries in 2004 reinvigorated hype about a possible On The Road movie, due to the fact that like Kerouac’s novel Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s memoir had previously been dubbed ‘un-filmable.’ So in 2010 studios in the USA, Britain and France tasked The Motorcycle Diaries’ director (Walter Salles) and scriptwriter (Jose Riveria) with proving the cynics wrong again.
Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart head the ensemble selected to represent the most famous figures of the ‘Beat Generation.’ Hedlund injects plenty of madness into the character of Dean, giving everyone a good time until he gets bored and moves on for new kicks. Dean dominates his every scene with boundless energy and wild-eyed enthusiasm, sparking immediate affection to all those who see him but stirring brooding resentment when he’s not there. Stewart does a fine job at portraying the freaky chic of Mary Lou, certainly a departure from her Twilight career. However Riley as Sal Paradise is somewhat over-shadowed by Dean to the point that he lacks independence. Dean is certainly a driving force for the book but Sal is capable of having his own adventures which are covered in the film all too briefly.
The book’s scale is the film’s biggest challenge. Several scenes and characters have to be omitted but the basic structure of the journey is followed; hitting the road to-and-from New York, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans while making plenty stops in-between, before heading to Mexico for some dope, bordellos and dysentery. Some characters and scenes are actually fleshed out beyond their novel depiction; Carlo Marx (played by Tom Sturridge) has a little more to give and his sexual frustrations are allowed to come to the fore rather than be obscured by intellectual eccentricity which is largely thanks to the subsequent writings of the man Carlo is based upon, Allen Ginsberg. The film-makers certainly weren’t short of source material which is hardly surprising seeing as how most of the characters were writers in real life! However this actually contributes to a confusing aspect of the film; what is it based upon? Is it the original novel? The scroll? Or extra features from Kerouac’s life? The answer is a liberal dose of all three.
The additional stuff certainly adds new dimensions to the story, intensifying certain aspects of the novel which aren’t as blatant in words. The film is highly sexualised in visuals and in dialogue, offering a substantial juxtaposition to the rather brief descriptions of love-making in the literature. Female characters are also given a voice that is a little more assertive, being allowed to be more open in sharing their hopes, dreams and despairs. Coppola’s point about On The Road needing to be a period piece, seems to be somewhat overlooked bearing in mind that the film is set before the sexual revolution and rise of feminism. The film seems to have a mentality that is a little too influenced by what we know the future will bring. The care-free attitudes exhibited in the novel were something of a revelation in the 1950s because they were a stark contrast to some of the hard facts of life which are diluted in the film to the point that one could almost be forgiven for forgetting a World War and Great Depression had just finished. The requirement to speak to an audience of this generation leads to a distorting of the Beat Generation.
Other aspects of the presentation of the period however are pretty spot on. The wild energy of the parties and gigs certainly make you aware that Jazz was ‘it’ but some enthusiasts may argue that ‘it’ is used a little too sparingly in the soundtrack when you consider that Kerouac’s words read like the improvisational fluidity of Jazz. The cinematography is superb; doing justice to Kerouac’s detailed descriptions and makes you itch for the open road. Salles allows us to enjoy some of the novel’s finer passages either through conversations or via Sal’s narration, to make up for a lack of distinctive dialogue in Kerouac’s works. However this can only occasionally replicate Kerouac’s fluid prose, which made up for the muddled story and kept you on the road, whereas the film can clunk along at times.
I’d briefly like to compare On The Road with two other books that took a long time to get on-screen, The Motorcycle Diaries and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. All three are based around two friends on seemingly aimless journeys that are actually about quests for meaning. I believe that these other stories translate into films better thanks to clearer story structures and having more obvious meaning. The maturation of a young man’s political ideology is easy to spot in Diaries if you have a little bit of knowledge about the revolutionary he’d become, while the drug-driven soul searching of Fear and Loathing leads to discussions about the American Dream and breaking of the counter-culture. What is On The Road about? Masculinity? Maturity? Freedom? Kerouac himself said it "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco, and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD. And once he has found Him, the Godhood of God is forever established and really must not be spoken about." This isn’t an overbearing theme in the book which is why vast array of interpretations will be made by readers but the nature of film can result in some simplifying. In On The Road’s case this is a over-focus on Dean and how he will remain a bum despite being a load of fun; thereby downplaying Sal’s own journey of discovery.
Kerouac was quite a complicated man; despite being referred to as the ‘king of the beat generation’ he stated that "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic." However the film sticks to the sensitive shambler description of Sal rather than looking beyond this like it does with other aspects of the book. Dean embodies a worldwide phenomenon with which many are familiar; mad ones who light up a room but offer nothing beyond that initial exciting spark and eventually fade into memories. While taking nothing away from Hedlund’s brilliant performance, it must be said that Dean is easier to portray and understand which is why Kerouac’s classic story is allowed to become Dean’s decent film.
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