Big Sur (2013)

Directed by: Michael Polish
Country: USA

Movie Review: A big disappointment is what “Big Sur” revealed to be. Being a fan of Jack Kerouac’s novels and an admirer of some previous works of helmer Michael Polish, this film became a disillusion, suffering from the same problems of pace and energy, evinced in “On The Road”, other failed adaptation of the same writer, directed last year by Walter Salles. I wonder if the problem has to do with the difficulty of adapting the author’s works to cinema or if it’s the directors’ inability to deal with the written material. The film starts with a sober Kerouac, which is the same to say monotony is around, but even when he starts drinking, the somnolent narrative never gathered the right elements to drop all its torpor. The visual side was its stronger aspect, an asset in Michael Polish's attractive style, which alone was powerless to transmit the eloquence and dizziness that one may extract from reading a book such as Big Sur. The infinite words forming outbursts of elaborated speeches weren’t anything more than philosophical thoughts most of the times loose and disconnected, leaving me in a confuse state of mental dimness. This fact just proves that great books don’t always mean good movies. I was expecting something more 'out of the box', more extravagant, in order to depict an iconic work from the king of Beat Generation. Sadly, that didn’t happen, with Kerouac being vulgarized by this wishy-washy, pretentious exercise. Obfuscated performance by Jean-Marc Barr in the role of the mentioned American novelist and poet.