![]() ![]() It could be a disguise, or it could – after being banned from making films for 20 years – be his new day job. Nebraska (2013)ĭissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi is behind the wheel of a taxicab. As a road movie, it’s closer to Gus Van Sant’s two-men-in-the-middle-of-nowhere indie flick Gerry (2002) than Thelma & Louise (1991). What happened? Marriage? Different careers? Life? Accompanied by an elegiac Yo La Tengo score, and filmed in languid long takes that drink in the Pacific Northwest landscape, Reichardt’s film is about two old buddies lamenting the past. Yet when Kurt solemnly says “I miss you” to his friend, it’s clear their relationship took a wrong turn somewhere. They seem slightly awkward and uncomfortable, unable to act like they used to act around each other.īeing a ‘minimalist road movie’, not much happens and scarcely any dialogue drives the plot forward. The two friends lay out a map on the hood of their banged-up Volvo. In the film, he plays thirtysomething hippy Kurt, who reunites with an old friend for a weekend trip to a remote hot spring in Oregon. With his hobo beard and his folky threads, singer-songwriter Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, looks every inch the traveller in Old Joy, Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist road movie. But that’s also what’s so romantic about this vision: two men, two wheels, and of course, the epic mountain vistas and endless dusty tracks of South America. After all, a bike can’t provide shelter when the heavens open up, or space for tools and drinking water when that inevitable breakdown happens. ![]() What makes this a singular road movie, though, is the bike. The plan: to travel from Buenos Aires to Guajira Peninsula in Venezuela via the Andes, the longest continental mountain range in the world, to see things they’ve only read about in books, to be enlightened. Yes, this is a biopic, but its focus is Che Guevara’s pre-revolutionary years, specifically the time he hopped on a Norton 500cc motorbike with a friend for the trip of a lifetime. Set in 1952, it follows 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (you know him best as ‘Ernesto Che Guevara’). Seeing this film, it’s obvious why director Walter Salles was plucked as the favourite to adapt Kerouac’s On the Road. Frank’s ‘Milk and Honey’ – and how it captures the loneliness of long-distance driving. What’s more important is that the viewer surrenders to the film’s visual poetry, its rhythms – the long takes, the piercing lens flare, the sombre strains of Jackson C. ![]() But Gallo isn’t interested in explaining why this guy – a motorcycle racer on a cross-country trip from New Hampshire to California – is so glum. The mood is contemplative, the man reflecting on a life-changing incident in his past. The man is Vincent Gallo, also writer, director, editor, cinematographer, costume designer, makeup artist, you name it, of this movie. But the image that really encapsulates this existentialist movie is less explosive: a man looking through a windshield smeared with dead flies, staring blankly at the open road unraveling in front of him. It’s hard to talk about The Brown Bunny without mentioning its infamous fellatio scene and the hearty boos that greeted its Cannes premiere in 2003.
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