REVIEW - BIG SUR

A world from within. It's no wonder Jack Kerouac's mind got so frazzled - the view from within is not as inviting as it is from a distance. To gain a thorough comprehension of beatnik society, one must study it from the broader confines of general society, because, as it developed as a rebuttal to the suffocatingly conservative morals of immediate post-WWII America, it would not exist were it not for that general society. Any allusions to this outside world are brief in Big Sur, and tantalising - the woman descending the steps, to what banal yet curiously fascinating future does she teeter toward? Or Jack and Neal, reluctant to undress at the springs, their catholic upbringing stifling their thirst for relief from the invisible constraints which that society imposes upon them. Neal's job, his family... what could this all represent in a beatnik lifestyle that seems to reject all such popular customs? Nothing to Jack, who muses over everything as though it were all one and the same, gloomy, poetic ruminations over the essence of the absolute. He gets by on an inebriated wander through people and places, purposeless by nature, by demand, and by eck does it go on! Jean-Marc Barr's narration forms an incessant, and incessantly glum, lullaby, sending one's thoughts astray, as we observe him engaging in a life that has little value to him, and hear him articulate just how little value it has, and wonder if any of this is headed anywhere. Only deeper into despair, and the harder Michael Polish tries to convey the awful state of poor Jack's fragile state of mind, the harder Big Sur grates on one's nerves. Polish's precious tone isn't aided by the soothing colour scheme of M. David Mullen's cinematography, which is as pretty as it is prosaic, nor by the easy-listening soundtrack courtesy of The National. I normally admire The National, but I can't admire M. David Mullen, since anyone who employs an initial to denote their first name (or any other) isn't worthy of my admiration. You'd just know a guy like that would work on a film like this, wouldn't you...