America has a thing with myth making, one of the prominent interviewees remarks more than half-way through Ebs Burnough’s dedicated documentary, which does just that. The charismatic collage of biography, literary exploration and historic homage, premiering at the Locarno Film Festival Out of Competition, magnifies and monumentalizes the legend of one the USA‘s pivotal novels, his author and the counter-culture they channeled. These three are, of course, Jack Kerouac, his second novel “On the Road” which catapulted him to fame, and the Beat Generation of which he was both part and patron. Their saga is inspired by and intersecting with other national icons and tropes; a mythological map, to borrow from the book’s timeless analogies, which doesn’t provide guidance but rather invites it to get lost.
The director-writer follows this invitation – a bit too eagerly – immersing himself and the audience in a dreamlike wave of images. Cinematographer Tim Cragg‘s splendid visuals capture wide landscapes, rushing by as if seen through a car window, neon-signs glistening alongside Philadelphias roads, and glances of small town quaintness giving way to busy cityscapes and vice versa. Mountains, deserts, and skylines all become part of a timeless topography of yearning, for freedom, independence, and self-realization. These ideals are an integral part of a vision of an ideal America that today feels farther away than ever. Paradoxically, this distance is part of what gives Kerouacs On the Road a lasting fascination, and draws the contemporary figures in Burnough’s film to the novel.
The scenario moves forth and back between rich archival material, threading together archival glimpses of Jack Kerouac with three modern road trips. A woman visiting her elderly father one final time, a teenager who just turned 18 hading for college, and a couple in their 40s, rediscovering their freedom after the kids left home. This triptych echos Kerouac’s life rhythms from idealistic youth, restless adulthood, late-life reflection, reaffirming the image of melancholic rebellion he created for himself while presenting him as an supposedly universal figure of identification. As renowned counterparts to the prototypes of everyday people, Josh Brolin, Matt Dillon, W. Kamau Bell, and Joyce Johnson jointly further mold Kerouac into an eternal icon and ascertain that his novel would have lost nothing of its relevance.
Kerouac’s problematic persona is vaguely acknowledged, but rather than interrogating it, the intoxicating imagery paired with Michael Imperioli’s measured readings from the book romanticize it. His casual chauvinism and disdain for women, occasional racism, his middle-class status enabling his stylized rebellion, his privileged white-male perspective all seem part of a “good old time” without political correctness. Postcard-perfect pictures of retro-America are not just establishing shots, but a calculated cinematic seduction, blending the idea of the road as eternal muse with a toxic nostalgia for a deeply conservative era marked by racism, sexism, and class hierarchies. A nuanced discussion of race, class, gender, or the politics of mobility is tactfully avoided. Diverse voices serve to associate Kerouac and his work with a diversity that neither of them stood for.
Kerouac’s road – his way of life, career path, and journeys – was never open to everyone. However, structural inequity and the political dimension of travel are implied at best. The worshipful tone suggests Kerouac’s legacy was self-evident, a canonical constant above reevaluation. While the sentimental scenery is easy to drift through, it remains a scenic intellectual loop, circling around one white middle-class man’s nimbus of prophet and poet.
- OT: Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation
- Director: Ebs Burnough
- Year: 2025
