Movie Review for "Shawshank Redemption" (1994)

Shawshank Redemption

Resignation and Freedom

 What could be seen as the worst of the denials of life, imprisonment is the punishment applied by the power of the State to those who transgress the law, morality and ethics. These qualities, which are historically associated with civilizational concepts that have its foundations in the tradition of religious cultures, curiously as the idea of redemption, the one which gives the title to this film. Something that many modern philosophers consider a mistake, as the influential novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, who argues that the code of good and evil of the man, with the emotional connotations of elevation, enhancement, nobility, reverence, grandeur belong only to universe of human values, which, as the cited author mention, religion has wrongly appropriated.

Fact is, in general terms, perhaps nothing is worse for an individual's life than jail. Even the disease, or poverty, loneliness or even death. Perhaps none of those compares to an experience that, by definition, exclude the possibility of living, the imposition of something that completely negates any chance of freedom, free will or individuality.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is an immensely popular film and survived to the times with praise. It is a classic movie. Worshiped, televised, revisited, frequently on the tops of moviegoers and rated by the public and critics. However, here is a prison movie - the most horrendous and terrible fate that a citizen can have. The plot shows no carnal love, no beautiful landscapes, there are no special effects, and its director, Frank Darabont, says his directing style is the invisible, and his priority is for a narration on the classical narrative structure, in a way that his own style does not overshadow or overlaps the message of his films. Still, what makes this such a popular movie?

It is curious to think about and also realize how dramas that take place in prison, as the claustrophobic Midnight Express (1978), are portraits invariably anxious, sufferable, but which eventually awaken this fascination about incarceration, despite all the compulsory sadism. As a direct opposite of freedom, the prison makes up the other side of something that, in the end, is of the same coin, which is existence. In these films is important to figure out how, in prison, it is established a new social organization, and this is evidenced in narratives that have their beginning in the principles of surveying and impulses of the human mind demonstrated by Sigmund Freud, which are violence

and the sex. That is why, whenever someone is arrested, initially is a victim of extreme violence, and immediately is beaten up or raped. Back to the ground zero, to the Stone Age.

Over time, new facets and nuances of social organization are showing up and revealing the behavior of inmates, in a wide range that demonstrate parallels with the kind organization typical of free and civilized societies: monetary exchange, games of interest, division of labor, wage labor, hierarchy etc. To the extent that the detention itself shows its particular way of civilization, there is also a whole arsenal of feelings that follows the primitive ones, ranging from melancholy to madness; disgust to dignity; from guilt to grace; rebellion to courage.

Freud asserted that, reduced to extreme deprivation, human beings lose their spirituality and would show their true nature, behaving like an animal. And it is around this possibility that the plot of the film is conducted in such a way that, despite all the oppressive forms which the characters must face, as schemes of political, religious and economic controls, as demonstrated by Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange (1971), or Ken Kesey and Milos Forman in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), there is a glimmer of hope, a humanity element that can save and redeem society and the individual, in this story that actually was written by Stephen King, wrongly known for being an author who compose only horror stories - but actually someone who tries to find some humanity in the midst of barbarism.

A film about freedom? But after all, what is the ideal of freedom? Does this possibility really exist in society? The theme is of an immense philosophical complexity, and does not fit to a review of a specific movie. But it should be noted here that one of the great intellectuals of the last century, Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher at Oxford University, believed that there were two possibilities. Berlin came to this conclusion in an article that was one of the great ideological foundation of the Cold War, named "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1958), after reflecting on the fact that countries like the former Soviet Union, which in the name of freedom and an ideal of a society fairer and equitable, ended up as stage of oppression, endless murderers and tyrant regime. From contexts like these, emerged concepts as the Positive Liberty and the Negative Liberty. In general, the Positive Liberty was born from the belief of revolutionary leaders and is guided by the view that freedom is for something, for some ideal to society – for instance, as promoted by the French Revolution and socialist revolutions. The freedom to rebuilt society and build something new, which will result in a better world - even if it involves coercion of the masses. Berlin said that this kind of freedom always lead society into chaos and would fail because it is guided by the false belief that there is only one answer to all ills - so the ends justify the means, and then itself establishes the horror. Negative freedom has no such vision. It is not for nothing. At its core, it has no purpose. It is understood to be the non-interference of State power over individual actions: the individual is as freer as the State allows. The lack of restrictions is therefore directly proportional to the exercise of Negative Liberty. It is the freedom of every individual to do what he wants, and nothing more. Governments and laws exist to ensure freedom. A society without ideals, with nothing that goes beyond individual desires and the ability to carry them out - which is the ideological basis of liberalism and consumerism. A society of millions of selfish individuals, that perfectly matches the ideas of Russian philosopher Ayn Rand, who adopted the United States as her nation and then became an influential novelist with “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”.

In the essence these two concepts of freedom, there is an implicit conflict between liberalism and socialism, the principle of the Cold War, the big question of the twentieth century. It is important to perceive how Shawshank Redemption is a story that metaphorically focus on the debate on the social organization throughout the century, and a pessimistic view of both any economic and political system to ensure a legitimate form of freedom - the polarity between Positive Liberty and Negative Liberty, between the Soviet Union and the United States. The moment Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) went jail coincides with the time that succeeds the end of World War II. From there, he, a banking and economist, finds himself caught in his own system, being exploited by prison controllers, the symbolic figure of an absolutely corrupt State and economic organization. Also very interesting is to find out how the new presence of the young rocker and juvenile delinquent, already decades later, promotes a new freshness to that social environment, and brings with him hope of freedom for Dufresne, which is immediately aborted by the strength of the State and the economic forces - he is unable to run away, nor help the protagonist to escape (an obvious reference to counterculture).

But is there any real possibility of real freedom? That is what makes this movie so beloved and popular. It is humanity itself, the sense of duty, belief in the viability of a redemption. There are hundreds of book about this theme, as for instance the classic Man's Searching for Meaning, based on a true story. Viktor Frankl, Austrian Jewish doctor caught during World War II, entered the concentration camp determined to conserve the integrity of his soul, and not let his spirit be slaughtered by the executioners of his body. Frankl noted that all prisoners, those who kept their better self-control and sanity were those who had a strong sense of duty, mission and obligation. The meaning of life, Frankl concluded, was the secret of the strength of some men, while others, deprived of a reason to support the exterior suffering, were besieged from within by a tyrant even more treacherous than Hitler - the feeling of living an absurd futility.

This dream of freedom, this form of redemption, it is proper to the whole mythological journey of every hero archetype, something that scholars such as Joseph Campbell mentioned in classic books such as The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was the sense of humanity and the high feeling of pure friendship and compassion that saved Dufresne and Red Redding (Morgan Freeman). Serenity. Resignation. The belief in a return, in a life that is complete out of their physical limitations.

The poster of Rita Hayworth on the wall, and the vast tunnel that opens through her image, and this tunnel is evidently a highly symbolic element (a return to the womb, an immersion inside mental state), dates back to something too human between men: the first sculpture ever made by humanity, Venus of Willendorf, sculpted more than 24,000 years ago, was precisely the image of a woman with voluptuous, well-endowed, showy, just to give a sensation of comfort to the nomad, a small amulet that made him feel safe and supported while going through long periods of pilgrimage and drought.

No man invents the meaning of life: each one is, as it were, surrounded and trapped by the very meaning of life. It marks and fix at a point in time and space, the center of your personal reality, but only visible from within. Maybe this was why Shawshank Redemption is a film that says both people who apparently can be aware.

Movie Review for "The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner"

The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner

The human condition, represented by a single race.

Not enough having one of the best tittles a feature film can have, this remarkable classic from the British New Wave is a rare cinematic miracle: with very little visceral roughness of a little and seemingly trivial plot, it reaches great and bitter truths regarding the human condition. It is life drawn by rough sketches.

This memorable and beautiful portrait of reality has its foreground with the image of a young man simply called Smith (Tom Courtenay), a typical angry young english lad, someone from the common people. He runs alone on a deserted road. Runs without knowing why, runs without knowing where to go. Runs simply because he knows he ought to. Later, in the course of the story, Smith is sent to reform school after a misdemeanor, and there he is required to participate of races among the detainees. Nothing more emblematic.

In the metaphoric race of men, no one is concerned about his own performance. The individual race is the race of the opponent. Those standing behind want to prevent those on the front to continue - hold shirts if necessary; those on the front just want to keep others in their lower position (the film best quotation is: "Keep back, Smith!"). Smith is not one of them, he does not fit into the group. Makes amid race of men his personal race, that same of the first sequence of the movie. He is doomed to live for himself, but bound to win. His fate, in the short term will be the ruin before the other runners. But his real achievement will be well ahead.

On the first dispute, Smith, who comes at first, and then, without any logical justification, takes a tremendous beating from other co-reformatories. The race itself was irrelevant: a simple recreation for young offenders detained. The supervisor, opportunistically, promptly see any way to take advantage of the natural talent of Smith, proposing his participation in official competitions reformatories.

The great merit of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) is the deep significance that it achieves without giving great demonstrations of its intentions. It is a small production, a relatively short film, a portrait of an adult as a young man, but of great significance. An adaptation of Alan Sillitoe short story, it is a film that is in the forefront of British cinema of the early sixties, the so-called British New Wave, an equivalent of the French Nouvelle Vague in England - at a time when "new cinemas" spread worldwide. All the characteristics of this specific style of cinema are there: gray and narrow streets of the English suburbs, the angry young men of the post war thirsty for escape routes from ordinary life, and the kitchen sink drama, inherited from the theater dramaturgy, which is based on the domestic drama, family relationships, represented by the English genre known as the "kitchen sink drama".

The director Tony Richardson, one of the central figures of British culture at the turn of the late 50s to the 60s, whose career also represents the trajectory of this moment of British cinema: came from modern theater, was one of the founders of the Free Cinema, a new documentary film style (the English equivalent of Cinema Verité idealized by Jean Rouch in France, or even the American “Direct Cinema” of D.A. Pennebaker), and, as other directors of avant-gard, went to Hollywood and to the mainstream, winning the Oscar with his very next film, the book adaptation Tom Jones (1963), starred by Albert Finney. The writer Alan Sillitoe, the man behind the short story that gave birth to this film, and himself the author of the adapted screenplay, is also the playwright of the movie which is the highlight of the British New Wave British, the remarkable Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).

The actor who embodies Smith, Tom Courtenay, legend of the English theater, which had its peak of popularity in the popular David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965) as the Russian insurgent Pasha, had a career which has always favored the theater instead of the screens. Recently, after decades with scattered roles, recently returned to the cinema with the encouragement of Dustin Hoffman in Quartet (2012).

Few movies can be simple without simplify reality - perhaps the most ominous attribute that any work of art (or individual) may have. The line is thin, and has extreme results. One of the strongest images that cinema can reproduce is the face of a man. On this film, in its crucial scene, there is a close shot of the Smith’s face, stopped, staring into something, just at the finishing line. There is an enigmatic portrait of a face: the certainty that his victory in a competition of opponents never mean a personal achievement. His great victory is put outside. It means finding his own path. 

Movie Review for "To the Wonder" (2013)

To the Wonder

Malick and the search for acceptance.

Some might say that the extension of movies that comprehend a filmography, or all work of a great artist does not cover more than just one theme, which is nothing but the great purpose, the uneasy feeling that made the person go to a specific direction on life; a concept which is now represented in various forms in the work done throughout his or her career, an affirmation that is probably true for writers, painters, musicians, and so on. For great filmmakers, the claim could not be clearer - just analyze the legacy of each director to find a common bond in all movies.

Terrence Malick and his feature To the Wonder (2012), a film that not only complements its predecessor The Tree of Life (2011), but as well comes with an idea already present in other of his early films, the ones from the 70s: the search for a place people could call their own, where one can feel at home; the search for a sense of belonging and an environment that individuals may have some control. Once in his later works he not only draws parallels, but inserts the daily life in a universal context, this theme is consolidated as the eternal search for balance and equilibrium, the rule of physical science that goes for everything that surrounds this universe, tangible and intangible - starting from the principle that everything is part of a one big thing, of the same material and the same energy that are interrelated.

It is a pretention, and also a risk. Not by chance his last two features have generated much discussion and many detractors. Both are widely supported by interpretations of biblical messages. There is an implicit conflict between science and religion. Terrence Malick, good old hermit with solid background on philosophy, strips him down completely in doubts and weaknesses, and offers his apparently sincere questions about the meaning of life. The reclusive director is graduated on Philosophy at Harvard University, and has written important studies on the work of philosophers whom had discussed the meaning of life and metaphysics, as Aristotle (author of “Metaphysics”) and Martin Heidegger, author of “Being and Time” and “Essence of the Reasons”, this last one which Malick himself translated into a bilingual version.

But, on the other hand, it is possible to find correspondences with all sorts of self-help best-selling books and quantum physics with such purpose. Often, at various times, the characters speak in "invisible forces", "signs of God", "language of nature", "manifestations of the Divine Energy", "You can be whoever you want" – typical quotations of this kind of books. Plus, the trajectories of the characters on this movie To The Wonder in particular, are widely supported by the idea of "being a foreigner in a foreign land." At one point, we get the impression that Terrence Malick eventually became an avid reader of the Brazilian writer Paul Coelho - it is a fact that many lines seems to have been taken directly from the book The Alchemist and many others by the same author. That is not necessarily derogatory: it is true that the writer had found many of his ideas about wisdom in books of the Bible (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Psalms, Job) and in many other writings of the cultural tradition that seek answers to the meaning of life, as I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the Mahabharata (which contains the famous passage Bhagavad Gita), and then brought these concepts to a language that emphasize simplicity and accessibility to a wider public.

Same as Malick, citing passages of those books of the Bible in his movies, sometimes at the very first shot. The same way as Shakespeare, or as Homer (author of Iliad and Odyssey), the so-called wisdom books of the Bible represent the strongest heritage of human culture on record until this era, and they contain principles of the way societies understand life and feelings, something culturally inherited: the tradition and the reference of what we mean by existence and conflict, the archetype of life and death, and also influencing the following melodrama, tragedy, and other literary genres - something that literary theorists and critics such as Northrop Frye or Harold Bloom, or even writers as Dostoevsky always had agreed. It is also curious to mention that, once Homeric texts were based on poetry, on the poetic form, Plato, logical and rational philosopher, preached that the epic form present in Homer's poetry, telling supernatural events was just nonsense, and could not bring any kind of trustable knowledge. The world has changed little in recent millennia.

To The Wonder takes the risk and the controversy: on one hand there is this very dense familiar drama, the tension relationships of undeniable relevance, but on the other, depending on the point of view, it may seem a fastidious accumulation of teachings present in books by Fritjof Capra (author of The Tao of Physics and Turning Point), Deepak Chopra (author of Science vs Spirituality), Eckhart Tolle (author of A New World and Communion with Life), Joseph Murphy (author Cosmic Energy - The Miraculous Power of the Universe), and many others classified as self-help, quantum physics as esotericism. Religions still exist and have its power and strength, of course, but we should remember that we live in a world that is - and more than ever - skeptical, positivist, mechanistic and technocratic - due to various economic, political and scientific contingencies.

The understanding of today’s interpretation of life at the present culture is more reflected and identified with the thought of writers such as Ray Kurzweil (author of The Age of Intelligent Machines), advocating ideas as the body as the center of life (he himself takes and sells dozens of pills a day and says he will never die), that God is yet to be created, and today all knowledge ever produced can be found using a cell phone like the iPhone – concluding that, the Internet and computers came to give all the answers to all the questions that exist. Thus, in times where the valid knowledge is the scientific, and other recognizable forms of knowledge are achieved through practice and method, any form of exposure that questions life in terms of intangible nature tends to be stigmatized with adjectives such as philosophical speculations, intellectual bluffs, esotericism, mysticism, ethereal, new age, quackery, self-help, personal marketing and etc. Perhaps it true for most of the cases. This is not the case of this film. But this article discusses some topics around some Terrence Malick’s newest films, and it opens wide questions more explicitly.

Focusing strictly on the film, one fact is that one of the great characteristics of Malick filmography is precisely that his films are never restricted to a cutout - also, his features don’t have a conclusive and definitive ending. The parallel with philosophy, life and the culture is not only constant, but essential and vital. The diegetic universe is not confined to what happens on the screen. His films are fragmented, with no specific beginning nor end. There is a strange discomfort of facing a seemingly unfinished work, constantly changing. However strange it seems as audiovisual events suspended in space and time, so they stand to establish a link with the audience's structure of thinking. The proposal of the photographic and editing language, and the whole concept of mise en scène, as seen in The Tree of Life and To The Wonder, shows how everything is organized and presented by imprecise frameworks, shots and cuts based on a proximity to the very real sensorial experience. Scenes and sequences not show strictly traditional concepts such as descriptive general shots, character close-ups, static shots and reverse angle during dialogues: there is a movement that flows, moving images in the search of a framework composition, also for a meaning; the vision, the image of things floating with thoughts; the jump cuts are frequent, yet very similar shots between one cut and another, at the same scene, demonstrating a small passage of time and additionally a new time - something pointed as “wrong” on traditional editing manuals, but that emulates the blink of the eye and the sensorial life experienced off-screen for everyone in the audience. Turned out to be a certain cliché to current art films, especially in Europe. But in the case of Malick, he designs his mise en scène and combines it with the theme of his films on such a brilliant and distinctive way.

And perhaps at this department of his films the director reaches that “something else”: the Mexican director of photography Emmanuel Luzbeki again opted to shoot To The Wonder on film, on the traditional Kodak 35mm celluloid. It is interesting to figure out that the technical reasons for this choice are the same as the artistic ones: the constant need of filming with intense back light. A reminder that all happens under the sun, or under heaven (an evident mention to the Bible, especially the Book of Ecclesiastes) according to the belief of the director, as the sun symbolizing a supreme and metaphysical energy. Objects and people are lit by the sky, under the influence of celestial forces on Earth’s life, which is in the context of a much larger universe that relates to it. There is the idea that there is something greater that takes the master control. There is also the visual exuberance, so precious in his movies, but never superfluous or meaningless: it provides the distinct impression that the director believes in the manifestation of God in the colors of the sunset and the twilight, that His presence can be felt in the movement of leaves as a form of energy and the miracle that is found everywhere: the visible and the manifestation of the invisible. It has been said that in the book I Ching - The Book of Changes contains the famous quote: everything is changeable, except mutation itself, which is constant, and it demonstrates the essence of life. Just as he left his house and his country, the american Neil (Ben Affleck) found in Europe, the old continent, the desirable true love, Marina (Olga Kurylenko); just as she left France and his native land, Marina, in a new world, could finally found herself and was able to see the man who is her beloved one - perhaps only then she could truly understand what love is. In The Tree of Life there is a predominance of a masculine vision of the life cycle and family ties, although in To The Wonder there is the complement of a female point of view, that here is much more focused on the central question of love. What in the first movie was represented by the figure of a male God, severe but fair, and then following to the family father figure, represented by the character of Brad Pitt, the man who goes in search of sustenance and work, and who because of it gives up to his dreams, the rebel son who finds shelter in the love of a foster mother, the child who learns to be strong and tough, the father who loses his son, the prodigal son coming back home, and so on... The whole idea of existence, quite cyclical, inspired by the idea of "eternal return", based on a male view, which in To The Wonder, if not exactly the opposite, but something like a counterpoint and a complement. In The Tree of Life there is the force of man, the pain of being father and son, the certainty of God's presence and the brutality of nature. To The Wonder is up to the feminine love, the pain of being a woman and mother, uncertainty before the man and God's presence and redemption for the mistakes of the human being.

The male figure of Ben Affleck is, intentionally, only a vague male representation, an indecipherable man in the eyes of a woman, an uncertain presence, an apathetic worker, a highly suspected presence. In To The Wonder all male figure is the least important, is the frail figure – she wants to be able to trust and surrender to this man, but how? God made man in his own image and likeness. There is a current crisis on faith. Everyone is insecure, all in search of a sense of belonging, of fulfillment. The priest interpreted by Javier Bardem is faltering as the very existence of God, himself liable to fall into temptation - how to believing into something you cannot see and touch? The ex-husband of Marina (Olga Kurylenko) is in France because he left her behind to look for other women. The daughter of Marina does not accept Neil (Ben Affleck) as a parent, denies he as a man and father figure. If the Man is fragile and his presence is uncertain, how to trust in the love of Him? People must accept God or deny it? Accept his image and representation or deny it?

The literary tradition on which the film is based, as the Bible, Homer, the I Ching, or even if it was the case of a self-help bestseller, indicate this idea very clearly: to get to the true wisdom of life, one should depart. As Jesus went away to the desert. As set out the great heroes in their great epics. Be, at some point in life, a stranger in a foreign land. And the belief that, in the crisis, faith grows stronger, as so as the individual character. Father Quintanna (Javiem Bardem) is someone from a Hispanic origin living in Oklahoma fighting against his inner demons. Marina (Olga Kurylenko) lives in America in search of a vague and diffuse love of a husband; Neil (Ben Affleck) lives with a foreigner, and does not already know if he can love someone that is so far from himself - in many ways. At one point of the journey, all falter: daughter back to France; mother, weakened, also goes back to her homeland - and it is curious to pay attention to the places where she will first go in Paris: in the speed of subways, and the so-called "new Arc de Triumph", the Grande Arche de la Défense, located in the neighborhood La Defense, precisely the great modern buildings and skyscrapers of Paris, and is its financial center, the most Americanized area of the French capital – which means that her concept of home has been expanded.

And it is at the moment of weakness that the most fragile of creatures, man represented by Ben Affleck, meets the childhood friend, Jane, played by Rachel McAdams. At this point it is interesting to figure out how Malick wisely chooses his actors also by physical characteristics: hard to envision a more typical image of a European legitimate north-american –European-descendant than the Caucasian beauty of Rachel McAdams. Leaving the French one, that's where he will seek in vain to find balance and equilibrium. And the pain of being a woman and mother become visible - and the reason why they need support and a safe shelter.

In the midst of so many weaknesses, hesitations, uncertainties, betrayals on this truly human drama, after all humans are weak and imperfect before an ideal Creator, it can be concluded that chaos is a path to balance. There will be only freedom if there is redemption. And this is where the movie, in a mature way, talk in the name of love: a love that is free and is not necessarily governed by the will or the effort; love as a feeling that makes someone interact to this world and to each other; love as a force of nature that is inherent in everything, and that is the representation of a much larger love beyond human comprehension - that love is a gratitude feeling, a belonging sensation of being part of the life on Earth; and then, without love there is no movement and no peace nor equilibrium, so there is no life. Those ideas are spread by every single shot.

Malick cleverly makes use of symbols and its meanings, and can adopt philosophical concepts and the cultural heritage in any frame from the start to the end: the physical world, a representation of a greater reality (concept indeed based on Plato's Republic), the divine nature; man as a representation of God; the link between men and women as a representation of an alliance that exists outside of the Earth: the belief in God is strengthened by the woman when there is trust in man (as in wedding moments and promises of love), weakened when there is distrust in man as a safe shelter; the presence and the regard of a creator and omnipresent God is constantly represented by windows and stairs, symbols that reveal a search for something that is outside and higher; the eternal return, the cyclic life, represented by the constant presence of the fan blades movement, park rides, giant wheels, bullets and seesaws that appear throughout the sequences; the human need to be accepted, to deliver, to have something or someone to trust; men and women in every part of the story living their conflicts instinctively as human beings that are in the midst of insects, buffalos, horses, turtles, eagles - the dictionary of symbols next to the session would help! But the important thing is that the audience, whether interpret it rationally or not, can feel it. To The Wonder may not have the strength, consistence and the impact of The Tree of Life; may not have the aesthetic splendor and cohesion of a more traditional script as Days of Heaven (1978). May not have the same daring and adventurous spirit and of Badlands (1973). But contains many elements of these films. And it is for sure another important film that integrates the filmography of Terrence Malick, but in many ways complements and exists only in the presence of its immediate predecessor. But there is no doubt, at least so far, that there is an upward curve in the language of a filmmaker who believes in the power of the image, the capacity of film language to bring life meanings and reflections through a sensorial narrative, especially poetic - that same poetics that Homer used to explain the world, and Plato rebuffed. There is an ideal and a common thread: the reason why Malick directs his films is the same that made him become a filmmaker. And that's what matters. In a work that brings more questions than answers, more sensations than conclusions, we must assume that he is on his way. And there is no end, only paths.

Movie Review for "The Great Gatsby" (2013)

The Great Gatsby 

Free manifesto in defense of (Luhrmann’s) cinema - or something like "the Fitzgerald disappointment remains"

In 2013, director Baz Luhrmann’s choices already seem destined to not please anyone. He is the filmmaker of the wrong way, of the opposite side. Comparisons with Ed Wood, the worst filmmaker ever, were made due to attack his newest feature. In a certain way, the attacks should be welcomed: at least he is not malicious; there is authorship, some integrity, and an undoubted loyalty to the director believes on his personal point of view. Anyway, opportunism is not the tonic. Unfortunately, all ingredients for commercial failure. The Great Gatsby (2013), in Luhrmann's version, is also a film language exercise, an ode to the history of cinema, as he did in Moulin Rouge! (2001), in Romeo + Juliet (1996), and in Australia (2008) - there is always a great syncretism, where he merges musical theater, the burlesque, kitsch elements, high culture, pop songs, and, as usual throughout all his filmography, fits into the vein of the so called “postmodernism”. Is there a reflection of our time? It may have – but it’s too late for now. But nevertheless, with The Great Gatsby, he does not diminish, he does not simplify the lyricism of the book, which is a dense portrait of society and human feelings.

We live in the age of simplification. And so as expected, it will not please the huge audience, because it fails not to create a simple pastiche, or an ordinary parody, or satire, and not even mentioning promiscuity, levity, and, above all, frivolity, this element so worshiped and praised in these times. At one point, with much distinction, Luhrmann mentions Rear Window (1954) during a scene in The Great Gatsby. Who knew? Who cares? Does it matter? Not enough disposable, it does not reach the level of the fad, of the empty entertainment. The Great Gatsby is the adaptation of a literary classic to the Hollywood industry - but not just another classic, but the novel that is one the most important works of the American literature. There is no way to adapt such a book to film without being stoned, whatever the result is. Working on immaculate texts by history, from Shakespeare to Fitzgerald, Luhrmann knows the risks he takes but seems not afraid or intimidated, he is aware of the tough consequences. Our admirable new version of Ed Wood seems loyal to his delusions, in his particular way to make movies.

These are not only contemporary versions of old movies and books – these are also versions attending to his very particular taste, to his heart wishes. Therefore, he inevitably will found critical failure as he prints his personal style to the established canon, mixing high culture, as represented by the score of classical composer George Gershwin, with fashionable pop music by Lana Del Rey, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. He takes a classic of 1925, and on it does a frantic editing, including free digital camera movement in the diegetic space, shots that do not last more than 3 seconds, conspicuous use of computer graphics and color treatment in post-production. And of course, lots of music punctuating every scene. Towards, conservatives see him as someone who does not have enough intellectual background to take a classic plot seriously, or at least to bring to the public something minimally faithful to the manuscript and the original context. He has no choice: on one side, he is going against stupidity and coarseness that is expected of everything that is done to please a large audience. On the other side, fights against nostalgia, the conservatism, which does not allow noise and impurities. Everything is a matter of perspective.

The Great Gatsby has been hyped through the internet with the most horrifying adjectives which a movie may be called. It is a curious phenomenon. A little clarity does not hurt anyone, and it seems quite obvious that it cannot be that bad. What should be thought are the reasons why the receptivity of a good movie like this was so hostile. It is inevitable to wonder, think out loud, in parallel, that people live in a time where it is celebrated with praise that any teenager who had never went near to any work of literature can make movies using photographic cameras and post it on YouTube, and then quickly gets the status of a genius, as the great art of our time. There are studies that affirms that every new medium, new format that comes out, the language principles comes near to zero – from Wii videogames, and so for videos for the internet. In this sense Internet and its digital low budget cinema on YouTube serve as a huge cloak, an impregnable force that pulls everything and everyone into the amateurism – if not to mediocrity and stupidity. But it undeniably affects the popular taste.

There is an interesting book on this subject, called The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen. The same force that generates serious treatment for any simple video posted on social networks is the same enhance the greatest atrocities oriented to works that are not necessarily crap, as this film directed by Baz Luhrmann, and therefore, to an adaptation of the main work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In this context, Luhrmann’s specific film language, the subjects covered by Fitzgerald, the celluloid projected in the darkened room, the intending to take Gatsby to the movie theaters again, all of this strangely seems too distant, dated and irrelevant to us, away from our ongoing reality. There is a backfire: wanting to make a current version of Gatsby, post-television, post-music video, post-cinema, the same current context rejects it, and the reasons are diverse, as some as mentioned above. The damage is already done. The human dilemma of the lonely, passionate and millionaire of Jay Gatsby seems that simply ceased to exist, that will not find any identification with almost anyone from the huge audience. As words that no longer exist. Sounds pretty admirable that someone want to adapt Fitzgerald as a Hollywood movie nowadays. New versions of old classics always existed during all cinema history, even today, as people can see in Les Miserables (2012), by Tom Hooper. Not always highly valued, not always with good results - says the infamous quotation: "great literature does not convert into great movies." But in a period that the movie industry experiences its worst moment ever, surviving almost exclusively on superhero franchises and movies with high level of mental sickness, such as The Hangover, Fast and the Furious, Twilight Saga, Brazilian comedies played by soap opera actors… the list goes on. Bring to the big screen the dilemmas of the human condition of The Great Gatsby, exhibit it on movie theaters, to the big crowd, is something that worth a standing ovation. To say that Luhrmann ruins the book, takes a serious plot and then make something simply histrionic and eloquent, destroying the supposed "moral" of a writer that stood against capitalism and bourgeoisie values... what a nonsense. Whoever says this, or never read any Fitzgerald book, or never understood it. Or even worse, it demonstrates ignorance about the author's life. F. Scott Fitzgerald was never Manichean, and he has always had quite dubious feelings about the lavish lifestyle of the cosmopolitan American Jazz Age. In his very own way, he was a scholar who understood a concept of beauty, in part inherited from Europe, but which was born as soon as the United States became the major economic power in the world, that establishes the signs and symbols that determine power relationships among social classes - a phenomenon that always occurred when an empire arises, as happened in Greece, Rome, etc. There is an aesthetic force emanating from parties, music, drinks, elegance, fashionable clothes, lines of the cars, the speed, the small pleasures of worldly actions, the beauty and the vigor of youth. Fitzgerald was much more into to the depth of thought of writer such as Oscar Wilde ("The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible") than a mere shallow opposition to society, to the "American way of life", as some people mistakenly like to affirm. His disappointment was with life itself, it is with the human nature. Fitzgerald, from classics such as This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night, is more than a social critic, but above all someone who create portraits, which exhibit characters through existential conflicts, along with the author's own concerns: talented but disillusioned, whose life was marked by early success, a troubled marriage and, perhaps most tragically, by the rapid decline caused by a terrible and fatal alcohol dependence. His message is not based on "social benefit".

It is true that Fitzgerald was quite concise, rewrote his books to the minimum pages, to the essential, but criticize the film for excesses does not seem logical to a time when the glorified cinema are the long television series. Interesting to see intellectuals stating that the old cinema became the tale, and the TV series, the novel. These are, interestingly, the same detractors of films like The Great Gatsby. When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg talk about "cinema implosion" at USC, the University of Southern California, we discover that the full-length high budget format, with artistic ambitions for screening in movie theaters may be threatened for the reasons already mentioned here, and Gatsby is certainly an example that justifies this kind of apocalyptic view. Mario Vargas Llosa, the nobel prize winner, in his recent book “The Civilization of Spectacle”, said he feared that with the migration of books for tablets, literature could fall into an irreversible decline, on which literature becomes pure banality. In fact this phenomenon is already happening - with both film and literature. And the Internet, of course, this immense amalgam that does not differentiate between a classic of literature of a celebrity tweet, the great cinema and an instagram photo, is often considered as the great revolutionary bound of this time of progress. The current rule is: by decreasing the level of information and repertoire of a message, more people can join. Lurhman’s Gatsby wanted to bring Fitzgerald to the new times, to a contemporary version, relevant to the ongoing context. It's a good movie. But taking in count the cultural context of film, and the suicidal nature of its noble mission, the ratings are far from desirable. Or even: what could say Fitzgerald seeing the critic failure of this film, if resurrected? He probably would say: "… but that is what I’ve said in the book, that greed, superficiality, opportunism and bad behavior of men would triumph over the true feelings and good intentions." 

Movie Review for "Shutter Island"

Shutter Island

The burden of the past and the impotence facing reality are motifs for Scorsese's incursion into suspense.

Shutter Island is a feature film absolutely apart in the filmography of Martin Scorsese. He is often regarded as one of the greatest directors of North American cinema alive, especially for his movies about gangsters and the mafia world. Here there is a grim thriller, a haunting psychological drama. Although it has many elements in common with some of his greatest classics, Scorsese risks in a relatively unexplored territory if compared to his past features, daring to flirt more directly with the style of Alfred Hitchcock and the genre of film noir, at this adaptation of the book written by Dennis Lehane.

Renowned for its lasting partnerships, as the ones he had with Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, Shutter Island is already his fourth movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, whose talent he attributes to the fact that he continues to make movies so productively. At his best as a dramatic actor, DiCaprio lives the disturbed detective federal police Teddy Daniels, sent to Shutter Island, the remote island that gives the title to the film, where he runs the strangest prison for sociopaths, a maximum security mental hospital that would make the psychiatric hospital of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) seems like a naive kindergarten. Along with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo, in good performance), he goes to the isolated area in order to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of a dangerous killer, accused of killing her own children. Memories of the detective past life will surface, and this is just the starting point of a complex plot that will become increasingly exciting and unsolvable.

There is a conspicuous use of the soundtrack as an artifice to create fear and suspense, something that will refer directly to Alfred Hitchcock’s films. The dissonant arrangements of brass session create the climax, and very reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann's work (the composer Hitchcock frequently collaborated with). The plot takes place in the 50’s, and so all the costumes, hats and overcoats and all detective duo's antics are following a re-creation of many archetypes of Hollywood's Golden Age: DiCaprio is presented as a typical film noir character very reminiscent of the detective played by Glenn Ford in The Big Heat (1953); Ruffalo talks in a fastidiously way, true to Marlon Brando as a young man. In addition, everything is carefully designed to recreate the atmosphere of that time, and the picture matches perfectly to the environment of light and shadows typical of the genre. Scorsese never cease on making references to the history of cinema on his films, and here is not different. Most notable is the shot that shows DiCaprio in the shower, a scene in the bath as seen in Psycho (1960).

Despite the fact that it constantly refers to the aura of some of the most emblematic thriller films of the past, however, it is undeniable that Shutter Island shows some similarities and commercial appeal as seen in contemporary suspense cinema style - M. Night Shyamalan included. Absolutely absurd turning points, psychological mazes, a constant mix of delusion and reality and at the end a final revelation, tremendously shocking, a climax which gives a new meaning to the whole story, and often highly ambiguous. It would be surprising if there were not something formulaic in terms of script, but Scorsese’s newest tale is undeniably incendiary and able to fully take the attention of the viewer until the last minute. Yet despite a more commercial content of Shutter Island, it is misleading to think the new yorker director would fall into a simple genre formula. On the other hand, the plot serves as a background to a much deeper and comprehensive debate of what may initially assume.

At first, the time when the story takes place: 1954 is the epicenter of the years that followed the end of World War II, where the world still resented the greatest catastrophe ever caused by humanity itself. How to get on with life, knowing that the carnage and guilt are still so present in the collective unconscious and imagination? How to keep living with the images of extermination in mind, the Holocaust, when the memory of dead bodies in concentration camps still so fresh in the memory? The impact of that has changed the world, and that is the real central theme of Shutter Island.

There was a new revolution coming up, and a new generation of young people wanting, even unconsciously, to deny all the past and the existing cultural tradition. What was in vogue in the cinema of that period was precisely the impotence of man before the horror and the new order that was taking over the world. The cinema of the time was absolutely focused on this idea, from Hiroshima Mon Amour (1958) to On The Waterfront (1954), through several Nicholas Ray’s films. It's just about the insecurity of the post-war that Hitchcock is based, who put James Stewart precisely as a former heartthrob and greatest symbol of the "good American citizen" in the role of a limited and insecure police in Vertigo (1958), the film that obviously is the major influence for Shutter Island. In this great classic of the British director, the detective finds himself helpless after becoming aware of his own inability to face reality, carrying the guilt and the paralyzing trauma for letting a person die innocently.

Shutter Island also discusses the cultural role of the atomic bomb in the twentieth century. One of the biggest responsible for the youth revolution in the world, the ubiquitous possibility that the planet would explode and end up in dust all of a sudden, promoted the springboard for an anarchic impetus to enjoy life here and now, encouraging reckless and insane behavior, something that culminated in the development of counterculture and even new drugs (whether psychotropic or hallucinogenic) and its abuse – rock and roll, for instance, just appeared in the year in which the plot takes place in time. The launch of TV, mentioned by the characters of the asylum as "the voices that invade your world", enhanced the increasingly debatable about individual identity (the ideas of Wilhem Reich were getting popular at that time), since human behavior became increasingly influenced by behavioral revolutions. Who am "I" in this new world full of new realities?

It is ironic that Martin Scorsese, who is a great scholar, a film historian, has opted for a project with this specific purpose after breaking a cycle of more than three decades when finally won the Oscar, a burden that he carried throughout his career. Shutter Island seems his reckoning with the past, that he made up with film industry. A movie made without awards pretension, guided only by his passion for cinema. He who went from a promising independent talent, was in the very forefront of the great American cinema in the 70s, and today is a veteran of the studios that with this film seeks a new identity and freshness. Shutter Island may arise to exorcise the image of a director who only makes movies about the mafia. If the burden of the past allows. 

Movie Review for "Searching for Sugar Man"

Searching for Sugar Man

In search of lost music.

Who is Rodriguez? "In the middle of the 70s, if you went into any middle-class home, white and liberal, who had some pop albums, you would always find: Abbey Road, by The Beatles; Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Simon & Garfunkel; and always would see Cold Fact, by Rodriguez. For us, this was one of the most famous albums of history. "This sentence above was said by Stephen "Sugar Man" Segerman, the owner of a record shop in Cape Town, South Africa, who earned the nickname "Sugar Man" in reference to the absolute success of the classic song with the same name, written by the American folk singer Rodriguez. Except for the last album, the statement would perfectly fit on most of the occidental countries at that time. But then again, who is Rodriguez?

This descendant of Mexicans, immigrants in Detroit, whom moved to the city to work at the car industry, was, according to several testimonies of this documentary Searching For Sugar Man (2012), the author of the "soundtrack of our lives." The most popular singer in South Africa. As big and important as Elvis Presley, John Lennon and the Beatles. Bigger than Bob Dylan, bigger than the Rolling Stones. Without ever being known in his own country, his records and his songs served as the hymns for protests against apartheid, the dictatorial regime that segregated and oppressed South Africa decades ago. An artist who influenced all who came after him in the country. Simply one of the greatest myths of the musical world. He seemed to be a global phenomenon for South Africans living at that time, isolated from the rest of the world.

But for what reasons me and you, and probably anyone else in the world, music lovers, have never even heard of this genius, this poet and prophet who changed the world? That's what this documentary is about to investigate - providing surprising answers. Initially, the truth is that Rodriguez, despite the high quality of his music, never even made a minimum success in the United States (it has been said that his debut album sold only six copies in America), nor anywhere else except in South Africa. He was fired from the label shortly after the recording of his second LP. Never played on radios. His success in the Africa country was never known to anyone outside the boards. It is claimed that, possibly in the early '70s, an American girl visiting Africa took one of his records to a boyfriend who was there, and then copies on K7 tapes were recorded, the hype began and the subsidiary label in South Africa officially launched the records , selling over half a million copies only at that time. The impact was so big that some of his songs were censored by the regime. The only news people had about Rodriguez in South Africa was that he had the most shocking and grotesque death of the entire history of rock. At the height of depression and anguish, he was on a live show playing to his fans, as he filled his body with gasoline and committed a barbaric suicide by incinerating himself in front of the audience, dying on stage. A so tragic and fictitious ending that only added mystique to his legend.

The 90’s came out with digital format of music available to a wider public around the world, and then people started to listen to music on CD, and the global village gained force and support with the internet. Two crucial factors that contributed to bring new life to the cult around Rodriguez’s image. The re-launch of his two albums on compact discs contained, on the pages following the cover, the question: does anyone knows something about Rodriguez? A musical detective? Because it was just when Internet came out that the South Africans finally realized Rodriguez was not a world celebrity as they once believed. And the question you probably already have done in your mind: where, and to whom, went all the money from the sales of his hundreds of thousands of copies sold? Would he have left children? Had family, heirs? What would have to say his past music producers? The owner of the label? Most perhaps the important: did Rodriguez really die in such a brutal way?

In this curious and intriguing story, Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary with a brilliant format. The images of the testimonials are merged with general shots of Detroit and Cape Town, showing deserted streets, a bleak environment, but at the same time deeply poetic. There is an immense melancholy and loneliness emanating from the streetlights, mixed with dusk and dawn. The cinematography is splendid, a masters work with sophisticated lighting and geometric composition, something not exactly common to be found in documentaries - especially the so-called "direct cinema" or "cinema verité". The camera is on the tripod. Here the documentary follows the direction of the highly produced set, of previous script, and everything from editing to sound design is carefully calculated to cause the sensation of a thriller; there is also animation effects and an ostensible presence of color grading, which never makes it a documentary less veracious.

For the atmosphere of this slight return to the climate of the 70s, many images were shot on Super 8mm film. A curiousity, revealed by the filmmakers in a recent article at American Cinematographer magazine, is that the 8mm film roll were over near the end of shootings, and as a last-minute decision before this feature was complete, a few takes were shot using an iPhone App that emulates the Super 8 film. As has been said by researcher Bill Nichols in lectures, great scholar and documentary researcher, the cell phone will become more and more often used to produce documentary footage, both in “direct cinema” style and also in finest productions like this. Searching for Sugar Man was, deservedly, the winner of best documentary in the Oscar ceremony in 2013 – and have won many other awards all over the world. It broadcasts a wide message. Without raising a flag or the wrist, it talks about the transformative role of music anywhere, at any time. Talks about the historical issue of the sometimes tension relationship between Americans and immigrants, children of immigrants, especially from Mexico, even more tense during the 70’s. Talks about the hostility and the dirty games of the music industry. Talks about the emptiness of the quest for fame. Talks about Detroit’s crisis, which already has being the subject of several other prominent documentaries, as in Requiem for Detroit? (2010) and Detropia (2012), as in fiction, in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008). Talks about a star that once were at the high top of fame, as in other documentaries, such as Dig! (2004) and Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008).

But above all, Searching for Sugar Man speaks straight to the heart of the audience. It is very difficult not to be touched by this plot, with the wonderful folk songs played by Rodriguez, the man with such a tough story of life. A movie for those who love music. The real music, not that one recorded and promoted just in order to generate attention at any costs. Not overloading nostalgia nor the melodrama, it is a documentary that talks about ideals - music made as an ideal of life, songs that represent an ideology for freedom, consciously or not, but at a time where left-wing utopias still existed and, in a certain way, were necessary. And that is why those songs sounded so libertarian.

Movie Review for "On The Road"

On the Road

A film adaptation of a beat classic.

Some people say that great literature adaptations will not necessarily be converted into great cinema. When published in 1957, the novel On The Road by Jack Kerouac was received enthusiastically by critics. "Its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion," wrote Gilbert Millstein for The New York Times at the moment of its release. Actually, its time is the post-war baby-boom, the American cultural hegemony through the occident, the prospect of a new era of libertarianism, liberalism and prosperity. On the Road is a visionary work of literature, a seminal novel that captures with sharp authenticity the rising of the juvenile as the main figure of popular culture, thirsty for renewal and a new way of life apart from the recent global tragedy. Therefore, it stands both as the modern epic of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, an Odyssey that defines the twentieth century, but also as a fresh literary form, as the mad narrative flow of Kerouac demonstrates.

It is a direct descendant of the canonical tradition of American literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, to portray what was the so called “lost generation”, but there is a great influence of writers such as James Joyce and William Faulkner to transpose into words and free meter stream of consciousness narrative, although still finding sources in European authors such as Arthur Rimbaud and Marcel Proust, making use of stylistic features as the poetic prose and involuntary memory, respectively. What made the book so acclaimed, is also what motivate its detractors - "That is not wrighting; it's typewrighting ", once said Truman Capote. On the Road is one of the most representative novels of the past century, it goes from psychoanalysis to psychedelia, the decay of tonal tradition from classical to freedom of bebop, the hardbop, free jazz... musical rituals would give rise to rock and roll as well.

Therefore, adding to the historical influence of the book, there is the rough idea of the immense difficulty of adapting a book of this stature to a feature film. There is a journey through America, the constant comings and goings, unimaginable situations on the roads, but also there is the narrative style, structural transgression, rupture, forty meters prose-spaced with no paragraph, written by an author who, taking amphetamines, was typing fourteen thousand words fourteen hours per day.

Brazilian director Walter Salles had an enormous challenge when invited to adapt to the language of cinema that literal poetic narrative. The choice of this specific director by the producers and the studio was determined by several reasons. He had experiences on directing good pictures such as the Brazilian Oscar nominated Central Station (Central do Brasil, 1998) and The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), where he gained experience working on road movies, films on which the territorial journey is the path of self-knowledge, the finding of identity, life from the perspective of absence the father, the melancholy man's link with his creator. It's a look of a stranger on a north-american kind of reality - Kerouac offers the marginal view of society which he himself belonged, as well as other writers from beat generation (the term beatnik mentions the Russian satellite Sputnik). And for the producers, Salles is a filmmaker of the whole American continent, a Brazilian from the generation of City of God (2002), regarded by the nervous and instable camera movement, the uneasy look and frantic editing. Behind the film production is Francis Ford Coppola, who like David Lynch, is also obsessed for the cultural moment of the fifties, and actually since the 70’s he is involved with projects that orbit around the youth of that particular Era - as in American Graffiti (1973), Rumble Fish (1983) and Peggy Sue Got Married, (1986), and even in the recent autobiographical Tetro (2009).

The choice of actors was also very accurate. They came from past movies that were indirectly related to the book’s themes, or under its influence in a certain way. Sam Riley, who performs the alter ego of the writer, Sal Paradise, starred Control (idem, 2007), living the self-destructive rock star Ian Curtis, leader of Joy Division. Kristen Stewart is perfect as Marylou - the actress had a turning point in her career precisely in Into the Wild (2007). And the young Garret Hedlund fits perfectly to the character of Dean Moriarty, with all his brutality, virility, mixed with a sensitivity personality and tenderness.

On the Road (2012) is faithful to the book. Its burden is the caliber and the relevance of the novel, never inseparable, never forgotten. And the film is very competent to implement many drug use scenes without being self-indulgent, or turning it into a simple meaningless celebration, or a frivolous look on hallucinogens consumption. The film show many sex scenes, but never in a gratuitousness way, as sometimes it happens in other movies - as in Brazilian Paraísos Artificiais (2012), a recent example. It is based on one of the most cool and detached references of modern pop culture, but luckily it does not demonstrate an indie/hipster look, its focus is not on the ongoing aesthetic culture of teenagers, of fads, it is not fulfilled with self-reverences, when the director wants to be seen more than the movie itself - which probably would have happened if this project had fallen into the wrong hands.

Another virtue of Salles is because the film is not supported by voice-overs all the time. Usually the sacredness of the original text ends up underestimating the ability of the language of cinema itself to tell the story with the right shots and angles, with camera movement, editing, lights, sounds - an example of this type of mistake in the Brazilian cinema is found in Lavoura Arcaica (2001), a movie by Luiz Fernando Carvalho. Beside the fact he actually is a great talented director (and this film does have its particular beauty), in this case the public seems to be watching a narrated movie, being explained and justified by a undesirable voice over all the time. There are, of course, much worse examples. Salles chooses to respect and trust in the capacity of the audience, when he skillfully makes a cut from a shot framing the scroll on a typewriter to another shot with the horizon showing the track of a road. When, in the dialogues, he does not add in the dialogues the characters thoughts and disillusions, but simply focus on the facial reactions of the actors as they listen to traditional tonal music, or when they are ironically repeating President Truman’s speech, the one he says he must cut down on the cost of living. It does not offer easy explanations to what is exposed - life is what it is.

The narrative is sustained by a floating camera, by baffling cuts and flashbacks according to the rhetoric of the original novel, but still there is the classical cinema atmosphere, the aura of the golden age, wide shots of landscapes, the wild and native America, viewed through the lens of an unstable camera, following the tension around characters relationships. The jazz soundtrack, the bebop, the unsteady beat on drums à la Gene Krupa punctuate the movie flow, but Salles never makes the soundtrack an attribute to prefabricate emotions, or to give to the film a boring music video look.

On the Road, unlike the book, was not welcomed with hype at its premiere – as shown at the Cannes Festival in 2012. It will not have the historical significance of the original book. Nor inspire new generations to leave home, or to explore life intensely. Never a demerit or a fault from the director or the producers or of the film itself, by the way. This is perhaps this movie greatest virtue - no concessions in order to make it something pleasing to a generation that is much more into the narcissistic paranoia and mass hysteria of The Social Network (2010) than to the rebellion and restlessness of Rebel Without a Cause (1955). On the Road goes against the flow as Jack Kerouac did.