On The Road again…

The book adaptation is a much feared prospect for readers and
audiences alike. The integrity of the novel hangs in the balance on
its liminal journey from page to screen. Questions and doubts arise as
to whether the director will remain faithful to the author? The plot?
The characters?

However, countless productions have proved that success can be
achieved: Fight Club, The Shawshank Redemption, Silence of the Lambs
and The Godfather are all critically lauded and universally loved
films whose material was spawned from a book. And yet, whenever we
hear of a classic novel about to be made into a film, we clench our
butt cheeks in trepidation, berating the lack of originality in modern
cinema and the perpetual need to ruin great literature.

Thus, when I caught wind of Jack Kerouac’s seminal Beat generation
novel being adapted by Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles, I
was as much nervous as I was excited. Emulating the feverish, raw, and
jazzy prose that so perfectly captures the energy and restlessness of
youths seeking meaning in 50s America is no small task.

Some books positively demand adaptation, brimming with cinematic prose
and offering immediate narrative promise (Gatsby’s entrance into his
own party for instance is seen through a sort of long shot from Nick’s
perspective). Kerouac’s On the Road is not one of these books.
Like the work of James Joyce, the book is explicitly literary, its
content inherently bound by its form. The wild, spontaneous prose,
mirrored by the up-and-go lifestyle of Kerouac and his counterparts as
well as his characters, could perhaps make for an incoherent,
disjointed film.

Whereas the ‘typewriter jazz’ of the Beat artists sings on the page as
subversive, anti-traditionalist, and empowering, it is no doubt easy
for this to become static on the screen.

Indeed, it is this stream-of-consciousness style that is so hard to
evoke, with its prevalence in the works of Joyce undoubtedly the
reason why Ulysses films have never hit the mainstream.
Personally, I find the 2 hour feature film time limit restrictive and
thus reductive for works as culturally important as On the Road. The
entire ethos of the Beat generation – their non-conformity,
spirituality and liberation – and, most importantly, resistance to
definition – could be boiled down to a montage or the general presence
of ‘sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’. Because that’s so counterculture
these days. More frustrating still is Kristen Stewart’s casting as
Marylou, who is so much more complex and contrary (definitely didn’t
intend for a pun about ‘Mary, Mary quite contrary to arise there),
than the two or three facial expressions Ms Stewart seems capable of
mastering.

Director Walter Salles’ most notable film The Motorcycle Diaries also
includes a sense of journey, revolution, and quest for identity that
is seemingly at the core of On the Road. However, while he seems a
spot-on choice, I can’t help but feel that any director who takes on
this insurmountable challenge will falter at translating this story.
Because technically there is no story in the way that you and I know
it. There are interconnected musings and events, a road trip strung
together by sensual sojourns and random vignettes spent in trucks,
farms, and apartments. But whilst on the page this can be interpreted
as a profound statement against the conformity of 50s suburban
America, and about lacking a sense of belonging, on the screen I fear
it could be interpreted as shallow and empty… Meaningless. Which is
exactly what Kerouac isn’t.

Moreover the visits, conversations and trips that Sal, Dean and
Marylou have are so fleeting and impulsive, perfunctory even,
accusations of the peripheral characters not being ‘fully-fleshed out’
or ‘given enough screen time’ seem inevitable.
That said, I have no doubt that Salles’ camera will effortlessly
capture a paradoxically effervescent and elegiac America, a sprawling,
charming landscape beset by discontent and disillusion. Hopefully it
will also capture the emotion, energy and melancholy of Kerouac’s
phenomenal tale of self-realisation.