Word: kerouac
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This near disaster wasn't supposed to happen. It doesn't add anything to Kerouac, but the film crew probably didn't have time for a second take. There are a lot of scenes like this in Kerouac...
...reconstructed scenes from Kerouac's life--which comprise about a third of the film, in addition to actual television excerpts and interviews with Kerouac's friends--resemble film clippings from Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of. These short pieces of film move slowly, the actor bears no resemblance to Jack Kerouac, and the scenes contain an inanity that we soon learn is unintentional. They seem like video filler for a predominantly oral presentation...
...addition to some dismal visuals, Kerouac deals with the controversial side of Jack Kerouac--the leader by default of the generation of writers and artists called the Beatniks--no better than have have recent print biographies...
Critics, social and literary, have scrutinized Kerouac for the questionable quality of his work (Truman Capote once said of Kerouac's prose, "this isn't writing, this is typewriting"), his political conservatism and his overt sexism. But the movie sheds little light, favorable or negative, on any of the juicier topics...
...what is likely good documentary form, Kerouac brings up all these issues without dwelling on any one in particular. The key issues surface--the author's Oedipal ties to his mother, his dabblings in Buddhism and his benzedrine-induced writing method, but although they're faithfully examined, Antonoli doesn't go beyond a cursory treatment of the straight facts...