Big Sur (film)

Jack Kerouac, saddled with the sudden success of his debut novel On the Road , is hiding from the public's insistent attention in a secluded hut in California's picturesque and sparsely populated Big Sur area . After spending three weeks alone, he succumbs to boredom and goes to Frisco , where he begins to drink non-stop with his beatnik friends. Jack is looking forward to seeing Neil Cassidy, whom he had not seen for several years, and his wife Caroline. Friends in company with Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Victor Wong and others spend the weekend at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Big Sur home. After a busy weekend, the comrades of Kerouac leave, and he remains in the forest with a heavy hangover. Soon Cassidy, with his wife and three children, returns to celebrate Jack's birthday. After an idyllic vacation on the beach, Neil takes his family home and introduces his friend Billy to his friend. Kerouac stays in her apartment for many days, spending most of the time in an old armchair with a bottle of red wine. Billy wants to marry Jack, but the prospect of marriage scares him. Lew Welch takes the couple to Big Sur to spend time quietly, but instead the writer begins a nervous breakdown. He spends a painful night overwhelmed by paranoid thoughts and inner demons. The next morning, Billy leaves Jack, and finally peace reigns in his soul.

Michael Polish was invited by the copyright holders of Kerouac’s work to film the novel “The Dharma Tramps ”, but the director refused, citing the fact that he did not like the name “The Dharma Tramps”, although he himself did not want to be one of his favorites release a movie with that name. After reviewing the list of books planned for adaptation, Polish expressed a desire to make a film based on the novel Big Sur , one of Kerouac’s latest works. He was provided with the original manuscript of the writer, including unpublished fragments, and within four days, Polish developed the first draft of the script adaptation, in which he literally saved most of Kerouac's text, adding only about twelve of his own words. The multi-page descriptions of landscapes and animals of Big Sur, which do not play a significant role for the film, were reduced; some key figures of the hipsters present in the novel were also deleted. A characteristic feature of the film version was the frequent off-screen quoting of Kerouac's prose; these voice recordings were made even before the filming began, the day the actor read the script out loud while sitting in his hotel room in San Francisco ^{[4] [5]} .

The role of Jack Kerouac was played by the French-American actor Jean-Marc Barr , known for his collaboration with the Danish director Lars von Trier , the image of his closest friend Neil Cassidy was embodied by Josh Lucas , the role of his wife Caroline Cassidy was played by the Australian actress Rada Mitchell , the role of common mistress Dzheka Williams "Billy" Debney - spouse of Michael Polish Kate Bosworth . Almost the entire crew was well acquainted with the literature of bit-generation: Barr read Kerouac and Henry Miller while studying at the University of Berlin , Mitchell at the University of Melbourne , Lucas and Polish got acquainted with Kerouac's work as teenagers. In addition, the actors knew firsthand about life “on the road” - Barr traveled to England, Germany, the United States and France, Mitchell traveled to India and Thailand. Polish was familiar with Kerouac's literary associates Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlingetti , the owner of that same hut in Big Sur. The film was shot in the Monterey district of California and in the Big Sur area itself - the places where the events of the novel took place ^{[6] [7] [8]} .

The first responses of film critics - from the premiere of the tape at the Sundance Film Festival - were mostly approving. Justin Lowe ( The Hollywood Reporter ) wrote that the task of creating a truly exciting and well-adapted adaptation of Kerouac’s work was made by Michael Polish better than most directors ^[9] . Zeba Blay ( Slant Magazine ) considered Big Sur a thin, sophisticated film; a brief but brilliant portrait of the creator ^[10] . Guy Lodge ( Variety ) praised the mournful grandeur of the musical background of the brothers Aaron and Bruce Dessner of The National group and the camera work of David Mullen, whose optical tricks gave the picture an elegant gloomy tone ^[11] .

In anticipation of the release of the film on wide movie screens, he was mercilessly criticized in the American press. David Lee Dallas ( Slant Magazine ) wrote that Paul’s desire to find his own cinematic language translates into a verbatim retelling of Kerouac’s text, and attempts to achieve the meditative mood of Terrence Malik’s films turn into a reduction of the novel to presentation in PowerPoint ^[12] . Rex Reed ( The New York Observer ) in a review entitled "Big Sur: Another in an endless stream of films about hipsters that no one wants to watch," categorically stated that the movie is about the bit generation, starting with the tape " Heartbeat " (1980) and ending with the film adaptation of On the Road (2012), has never been successful, and Big Sur is no exception ^[13] . According to Elizabeth Weizmann ( Daily News ), the whole picture boils down to an off-screen reading of Barr’s text in drone mode and Polish’s shooting of spectacular landscapes of Big Sur ^[14] .

Sheila O'Malley responded more loyally to the film on the website of Roger Ebert , calling Big Sur amazingly beautiful and quite powerful in portraying alcoholism, depression and manic disorders; the main drawback of the production is the insistent voiceover of Kerouac's prose, which moves away from what is happening on the screen and does not allow the spectacle to unfold, reach a climax and continue to develop independently ^[15] . Neutrally appreciated the picture of John de Faure ( The Washington Post ), calling it beautiful, sometimes touching, but having the same difficulties in connection with the outside world as its main character ^[16] . Steven Holden ( The New York Times ) reacted more warmly to the tape, giving a description in the following words: “Filmed without a trace of sentimentality, Big Sur is a painfully sad last hooray!” ^[17]