Sal admires the charismatic Dean, whose confidence is something Sal doesn’t yet possess. But Dean asks Sal for writing advice which pleases him. We see that Dean though is pretty directionless and lives for the moment, even if the moment is pretty meaningless. He often throws over the woman he is with to spend time with his friends, something Marylou sees and accepts and joins along with, and something Camille comes to realize she cannot. What exactly is Dean looking for in life? IS he looking?
Sal continues to traverse back and forth over the three years or so this movie takes place in, visiting Dean and evening going down for a time to Mexico with him. Other characters include those played by Terrence Howard (a jazz musician), Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams (characters based on William S. Burroughs and his wife), Elisabeth Moss (wife of one of their circle), Steve Buscemi (a man who picks up the hitchhiking Sal and Dean), and Alice Braga (a migrant farmhand).
The time this takes place sticks to the novel, in the 1950s, the transitory period between the jazz age and the upcoming Vietnam era, with strong elements of the beat generation. These three time influences are evident in the style and emotion of the story. Unfortunately for me the beat generation doesn’t make sense to me, as the often drug fueled poetry and language people of that day spouted is not a deepness that I identify with. It comes off as so much crazy pretentiousness and self-importance and I am not one who seeks to find meaning in poetry. As such, the character of Dean doesn’t earn, for me, the respect he gets from Sal and others. Other than his charm or charisma, what talent he had seemed wasted (as depicted in this film), and we get no sense what sort of writer he is or what values he has that Sal can respect and admire.
Marylou is portrayed as a naughty girl who needs to mature but doesn’t seem to know how, thinking that sex is the answer but knowing deep down there must be something more. Her open sexuality intrigues and frightens Sal and other young men. Maybe it frightens her too, a sort of wild horse she can’t tame on her own. A scene where Kristen Stewart is in a frenzied dance seemed to me the most open in her performance, as if the actress has just let loose with everything she has until she has no more to give, belying what I often see are repeat performances in her career.
The story doesn’t give enough of a follow-through at the end to make Sal a character for me to identify with. At the end Sal starts what we will come to know is his famous novel and writes about his friends, but from what I see there is nothing that says “masterpiece” about these people that I have seen. Do unstructured, unbalanced and "unworthy" people deserve to be written about? To me it feels that unlike his friends Sal was able to find the straight and narrow path to a more mundane and structured life within society instead of outside of it, and abandoned his friends due to their increasing distance and aging out of their younger selves.
At times the movie feels misogynistic in its portrayal of women, and I don’t think any one of the women were much more than drugged up kooks or sex objects. I don’t know if this is just how women were treated then, or what the novel/Kerouac said or experienced about women, or whether it is the screenplay or director who decided this.
Although the film is linearly plotted, it feels like a bunch of vignettes bunched together. Overall the movie is pretty frank about sex and sex acts, even to the point of vulgar language and sexual depictions. The movie is beautifully filmed, with the scenes that actually take place on the road the most beautiful. Garrett Hedlund gives a pretty good performance that leaves Sam Riley/Sal Paradise looking pretty bland. Tom Sturridge personified a pretty accurate looking beat poet in his manner. Oddball characters played by Mortensen and Adams were just too oddball to point out as a good or bad acting job.
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