On Mise-en-Scene and On the Road

How do you adapt one of the most enduring and loved novels of the 20^th Century? Hiring a director perhaps best known for already making a great road movie is a good start. In 2004 Walter Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries and word has it that it was this film that got him the job of bringing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to the cinema screen.

To compare the film to the book is a pointless exercise. They are different mediums and use different tools to achieve something absorbed in completely different ways. Fans of novels, especially ones as meteoric as On the Road will never be happy, even if Kerouac could somehow direct it himself.

Therefore, how does On the Road work as a film? The best way to approach a review of this film is through Salles’ construction of his mise-en-scene, which is very impressive. From the costumes to the sets to the props, all communicate an incredibly vivid sense of time. Even the roles are very well cast. Everything within the frame is so meticulously constructed that we wish we could step into the screen and be instantly transported to this world of bohemian intellectuals in New York, or San Francisco.

But we can’t step into the screen and if we could would we like what we found, for even though Salles’ mise-en-scene is rich and warm, his film is cold. There is a distance between the characters and us that is never breached. We remain observers unable to enter the world of Sal and Dean; uninvited for being too conventional or conservative. So much occurs within this film and that we never feel engaged with the story or care about the characters is a major problem. On the Road may have suffered by being swamped by its own expectations.