Yearly Archives: 2013

Wisconsin Film Festival review: Michael Murphy revisits “Phase IV”

phaseiv

“If I had been a tube of blue paint, he would have liked me more.”

That was actor Michael Murphy talking about Saul Bass, legendary designer and less-than-legendary filmmaker. In fact, although he designed iconic posters and opening-credits sequences for films like “Vertigo” and “The Man With the Golden Arm,” Bass made just one film as a director, the 1974 sci-fi thriller “Phase IV.”

Underseen for decades, “Phase IV” has resurfaced, and it played at the Wisconsin Film Festival on Saturday morning with a somewhat chagrinned-looking Murphy talking about it. “I heard some inappropriate laughter, dammit!” he joked to the audience after the film.

The foundation of the film is a rather silly sci-fi premise, that ants are starting to evolve and fight back against their predators, including humans. A pair of scientists (Murphy and Nigel Davenport) have come to a remote part of Arizona to study the phenomenon, and find themselves trapped in an escalating war of wits with the collective little buggers.

Universal Pictures sold the film to audiences as a horror movie in the vein of “Kingdom of the Spiders,” and there are some of those cheesy elements in there, to be sure. But Bass also brings a striking visual style to many scenes, including many close-up shots of the ants, and a gonzo original ending fully of trippy, baffling images that turned off test audiences.

After years working with improvisation-friendly director Robert Altman (such as on “Brewster McCloud,” which Murphy screened at the festival on Friday) Murphy wasn’t used to the strict hit-your-marks style of a director like Bass, and it showed. Bass and the studio constantly battled over the film, and Murphy said he was frustrated with several poor decisions, such as an intrusive introductory voiceover and terrible looped dialogue.

“It would have been a really interesting film if there was a little bit of attention paid to performances,” Murphy said. “Saul was a great artist, a good guy.”

Sean Savage of the Academy Film Archive, who found and restored the long-lost original ending, says he has a treasure trove of Bass material about “Phase IV” and other projects, and there have been some informal discussions about trying to release a restored Blu-ray edition at some point.

Murphy will be at the Union South Marquee Theater at 1:15 p.m. Sunday to introduce a film he’s much prouder of, Woody Allen’s “Manhattan.”

Wisconsin Film Festival review: “A Hijacking”

ahijacking

“A Hijacking” tells its tale as plainly as its title, without Hollywood action, without true heroes or villains, without the expected emotional button-pushing (there’s hardly even any music on the soundtrack.) What it is an authentic, suspenseful film about seemingly real people dealing with an unreal situation.

Mikkel is the cook on a ship heading for Mumbai. Peter is the CEO of the company that owns the ship. When Somali pirates storm the ship, Mikkel is appropriately terrified. Back in Denmark, Peter demands to handle the ransom negotiations himself over the objections of his counter-terrorism adviser. We’ve just seen Peter close a big deal, and he seems like the right man for the job, almost superhumanly unflappable.

But as days turn into weeks, weeks into months, the tension takes its toll on Peter. Meanwhile, back on the ship, Mikkel must learn to cope with constant terror. The Somali translator Omar is almost kindly, insisting this is a business transaction. The rifles being brandished say otherwise.

One would assume writer-director Tobias Lindholm would keep most of the movie on the  ship, since that’s where the action is. But he wrings a surprising amount of suspense out of the board room as well, often building drama through the separation between the two locations. Mikkel, trapped on the ship, can’t understand  why his boss doesn’t just pay the money. Peter’s only connection to his crew is a shaky phone connection; at one point, we hear a gunshot over the line, but don’t find out what happened until several scenes later.

The press notes say some of the actors involved in the film have lived through similar experiences; the actor who plays the counter-terrorism adviser used to be one. You can tell right away; this is a film that doesn’t use Hollywood conventions to let the viewer off easily.

What’s playing in Madison theaters: April 12-18

Yeah, that’s fair. The week that the Wisconsin Film Festival begins is the same week that two of the films I’ve most looked forward to seeing so far in 2013 open at Sundance. Why not open Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” as well and really twist the knife in?

Well, I suppose I should just be happy that Danny Boyle’s “Trance” and Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines” are here, and assume they’ll be around after the eight-day festival ends next Thursday.

 

All week

 “Trance” (Point, Sundance) – Danny Boyle seems to rocket back and forth between Oscar contenders (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “127 Hours”) and gleeful genre fare (“28 Days Later,” “Sunshine”), and the appropriately named “Trance” definitely seems to fall in the latter category. It’s a trippy crime film about an art heist where the audience is never sure what’s real and what isn’t. It looks cool, anyway.

 

“The Place Beyond the Pines” (Sundance) – Derek Cianfrance’s follow-up to “Blue Valentine” is a similarly bleak drama, this time an epic crime drama about a cop (Bradley Cooper),  a robber (Ryan Gosling), and the connection between their two sons. Reviews suggest Cianfrance may have bitten off more than he can chew, but I’m more than curious.

 

“42” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Cinema Café) – Writer-director Brian Helgeland’s biopic about Jackie Robinson looks earnest and inspiring – and would you want it to be any other way? Harrison Ford, playing crotchety baseball owner Branch Rickey, who signed Robinson and cross the color barrier when nobody else would, looks like he’s a ball of fire in this one.

 

“Scary Movie V” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema) – David Zucker, who recently slapped Robert Hays with a fish in the new Wisconsin Department of Tourism ad, goes back to the horror-movie-parody franchise yet again. And by “parody,” I mean “obvious references to recent horror movies that even people who just saw the trailer will get.” Sigh.

 

Tuesday

 

“Girl Rising” (7 p.m., Union South) – Back by popular demand, the inspiring anthology film, looking at girls in eight different developing countries and their struggles to get a good education, has a free screening on campus. Highly recommended – here’s my reported from a packed Gathr screening last month.

 

Banff Mountain Film Festival (7 p.m., Barrymore Theatre) – The touring film festival features nature and environment documentaries from all across the countries, so much so that it’s spread across two nights (Tuesday and Wednesday) this week with different film programs each night. Tickets are $12 in advance ($14 at the door) for a single-day ticket or $20 for a two-night pass; buy advance tickets at barrymorelive.com and check out the film line-up for each night.

Wednesday

 

Banff Mountain Film Festival (7 p.m. Barrymore Theatre) – See Tuesday listing.

 

Thursday

 

“Zero Dark Thirty” (7 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) – Kathryn Bigelow’s fact-based thriller about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden doesn’t preach for or against the “enhanced interrogation” techniques – i.e. torture – used along the way. But it does put ownership of those incidents in the lap of the American audience. If we want to cheer Osama’s death, the movie implicitly says, we have to own everything else as well. One of the best films of 2012. Free!

Wisconsin Film Festival review: “The Final Member”

The_Final_Member_2

“The Final Member” screens at 10 p.m. Saturday at the Union South Marquee.

Everybody needs a hobby. For Siggi Hjartarson, it was collecting penises.

It started with a dried bull penis, and then grew to a private collection, and then finally a museum in Iceland devoted to displaying the equipment of every species of animal on Earth. (It’s like Noah’s Ark, although Siggi only lets in one of each.) Except one.

Man.

The hilariously straight-faced documentary “The Final Member” chronicles Siggi’s quest to find that lucky donor. Like any good Christopher Guest mockumentary, it’s full of oddball characters who take something way more seriously than they should, and it pulls up just shy of openly making fun of them.

Siggi, in particular, cuts a rather sympathetic figure, an old man who tends to his cows, loves his family, and is a scholar on the side who translates centuries-old books. He just wants a legacy to live on after he goes, and a museum full of penises dunked in formaldehyde has somehow become that legacy.

At first, Siggi has a donor — 93-year-old “adventurer” Pall Arason, who claims to have slept with hundreds of women, which makes you wonder when he made time for “adventuring.” But Pall is getting up there, and Siggi worries that certain aging processes (in the words of George Costanza, “shrinkage”) will mean the specimen isn’t big enough for his museum.

Enter an American, Tom Mitchell, and “Elmo.”

Elmo is certainly big enough to make it into the museum, but Tom is one seriously weird dude. He’s obsessed with his little sidekick (frontkick?), dressing him up in little costumes, getting him a stars-and-stripes tattoo, even commissioning a comic book starring Elmo. Tom is so thrilled at the idea of Elmo becoming famous that he’s even considering donating Elmo to the museum WHILE HE IS STILL ALIVE to head Pall off at the pass. If Tom wasn’t a real person, Will Ferrell would have had to invent him.

Much hilarity ensues, including a riotous sequence in which Pall tries to get a plaster-of-Paris cast of his equipment made, with disastrous results. Ouch. In the end, Siggi gets his museum acquisition, and the rest of us have watched a very strange and funny film. (By the way, one of the editors of the film is a UW grad, whose name is . . . and I’m not kidding . . . Andrew Dickler.)

Wisconsin Film Festival review: “Blancanieves”

blancanieves_pabloberger-2

“Silent film” may be an inapt description for Pablo Berger’s “Blancanieves.” Yes, the film is a beautiful homage to the silent films of the 1920s — shot in black and white in full-frame, with no spoken dialogue and only one sound effect, that of fireworks exploding in the sky.

But this film, which played Thursday on Day 1 of the Wisconsin Film Festival, is anything but quiet. It has an absolutely gorgeous score by Alfonso de Villalonga that is in many ways an equal partner to the images, highlighting and evoking the emotions of a scene or the motivations of a character. Like “The Artist,” this was an unusual but rewarding experience to see on the big screen.

“Blancanieves” literally translates into “Snow White,” and the film is a retelling of the classic fairytale, transported to 1920s Seville and the world of bullfighting. When the great matador Antonio Villarta is gored by a bull, and his pregnant wife dies during childbirth, Villarta falls into the clutches of scheming nurse Encarna (Maribel Verdu, who looks a lot like “Artist”‘s Berenice Bejo).

Encarna gets the ailing, wheelchair-bound Villarta to marry her, and he and his young daughter Carmen come to live with her. Encarna, it won’t surprise you, is a wicked stepmother, tormenting both and having designs to kill them both. Carmen escapes her clutches, but loses her memory and wanders into the path of a troupe of bullfighting dwarfs (six of them, but who’s counting?) Carmen, who the dwarves name Blancanieves “like the girl in the tale,” joins up with the dwarves, and soon discovers she has bullfighting talents of her own.

The images are sumptuous, from expressive close-ups of the main characters to frenetic quick cuts during action scenes, such as the bullfighting, which is truly scary at times. Berger plays with the “Snow White” tropes — there’s a poison apple, but Prince Charming isn’t who you might expect — and opts for less of a happy ending than we might expect.

And that score! Stirring orchestral movements during the most dramatic scenes, with flamenco guitar and handclaps to illustrate the energy and goodness of Blancanieves, while horror-movie theremin is employed for the villainous Encarna. No, “Blancanieves” isn’t subtle, but it’s an unforgettable time at the movies.

“Blancanieves” plays again at 7:45 p.m. Friday at Sundance, and a few rush tickets should be available at the door.

Wisconsin Film Festival preview: “This is Martin Bonner”

this-is-martin-bonner-paul-eenhoorn

“This is Martin Bonner” screens at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Sundance and 2 p.m. Sunday at the UW Elvehjem. Writer-director Chad Hartigan will talk at both screenings.

The 15th annual Wisconsin Film Festival starts today! And while I’ll be shifting from “preview” mode to “review” mode in just a few hours, I couldn’t let one lovely little gem of a film slip by unmentioned.

In most movies, Martin Bonner would be a memorable minor character, the sort where you’d idly wonder “What’s that guy’s story?” Chad Hartigan’s second feature gives Martin that movie, and the results are quietly astonishing.

Martin (Paul Eenhoorn) is a man in his 50s who lives in Reno, Nevada and works as a counselor for inmates at the local correctional facility. Eenhoorn, a fine Australian character actor, plays Martin as a good man, but one who keeps the world somewhat at a distance. As the film unfolds, quiet conversation by quiet conversation, we learn that Martin self-detonated his old life in Maryland — getting divorced, getting fired from his job, losing his faith — and has come across the country to — start again? Or simply to spend the rest of his days alone, away from the prying eyes of everyone who knows him? Hartigan, and Eenhoorn’s warm performance, keep us guessing.

Martin meets Travis Holloway (Richmond Arquette), a recently paroled inmate in his program. Travis is also trying to restart his life, starts attending church, tries to reconnect with his grown daughter. Even though Travis is perhaps a decade or so younger than Martin, he seems older, wearier. The two men are facing the world alone, the sum of the bad choices they’ve made etched in their faces. Slowly, they become friends, but the wary sort of friends that middle-aged men make, when they’re not sure if they have the room in their lives for another connection.

“This is Martin Bonner” tells its story at its own pace, which might seem frustratingly slow to some, but felt just right to me, riding the real cadences of everyday life. Both men spend a lot of time alone, with their thoughts, and the film reflects that almost monastic existence in its tone. But then, all of a sudden, Hartigan includes a scene that’s so stunningly lyrical as to take your breath away, such as Martin refereeing a girls’ soccer game, the field nestled right up against the looming mountains, or an incredible 360-degree pan of a bleak highway scene, all motels and storage tanks, the future that Travis sees for himself.

Both Eenhoorn and Arquette give layered, honest performances, not straining against expectations so much as just allowing Martin and Travis to be authentic human beings. The film pulls you into their lives, and when the time came for the screen to finally fade to black, I was so invested in their story that it was kind of a shock to see it end.

Wisconsin Film Festival preview: “Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time”

nameless_gangster_press

“Nameless Gangster” plays at 6:45 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Monday at Sundance Cinemas, and advance tickets are still available for both shows.

If you get squeamish at the sight of somebody getting a good beatdown in a film, steer clear of “Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time.”

Guns barely appear in the film, but it seems everybody is carrying a big stick in this South Korean gangster epic, and not afraid to use it to punish their enemies. Even the prosecutor, a so-called “good guy,” delivers a thrashing to an unarmed prisoner cowering in his cell.

That’s part and parcel of this cynical but engrossing film, where might makes right, everyone is on the take somehow and the idea of a criminal “code” is laughable. Yoon Jong-bin’s film has the epic sweep and detail of a gangster movie like “Scarface,” but none of the mythologizing.

For example, the hero isn’t a young up-and-comer like Henry Hill in “Goodfellas,” but a sad-sack, deeply corrupt customs official named Choi (Choi Min-Sik). His crew routinely skims their own percentage off the illegal goods coming into Seoul, but he’s about to be made the fall guy when their corrupt schemes can’t go ignored any more.

Then he discovers a shipping container full of drugs, meant to be sold in Japan, and sees his play. He seizes the drugs and plans to sell them himself, rationalizing in a hilarious monologue that it’s payback for Japan’s occupation of Korea. (“It’s called patriotism!” he insists to his partner.)

The sale puts him in the orbit of South Korea’s real criminal underworld, especially the smooth and lethal Hyung-bae (Ha Yung-woo). Choi is desperate to survive in a world he clearly isn’t cut out for, and Choi’s performance as an ordinary middle-management sort of guy way in over his head is a revelation, as he goes from false bravado to fawning obsequience, changing alliances recklessly, anything to keep him alive. It’s not a likable performance, but it is a memorable one.

The film has none of the stylish action one might expect from an Asian gangster movie; the cruel violence is shot plainly and unsparingly, underscoring just how dangerous this world is and how ill-prepared Choi is to survive in it. “Nameless Gangster” is a different kind of mob movie, but one that gangster movie fans should definitely seek out.

 

“Upstream Color” will lead off next round of Sundance Screening Room titles

UpstreamColor_still1_AmySeimetz_ShaneCarruth

It may be hard for a movie fan in Madison to think past the Wisconsin Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday and brings over 150 movies to town. But the festival will end eventually, and the trick is to keep your hunger for offbeat and interesting films going after it does.

Luckily, there will be plenty of chances to do so — the Union South Marquee Theater will jump into its Mini Indie Film Festival in late April. And Sundance Cinemas will kick off its next Screening Room calendar on Friday, April 19, the day after the Wisconsin Film Festival ends.

I’m especially excited about the new Screening Room schedule, as I’ll be doing a pair of post-show chats about a couple of the films in Sundance’s new Overflow Bar, located on the first floor where the gift shop used to be. And the first one should be a doozy. Visit sundancecinemas.com for more information.

“Upstream Color” (opens April 19) — Nine years ago, writer-director-star Shane Carruth made one of the best time-travel movies ever, “Primer,” on a budget of just $7,000. Now he returns with a beautiful and just as confounding sci-fi tale involving true love, an ageless organism, and pigs. I’m doing a post-show chat after the Monday, April 22 early evening show — I’ll post more details closer to the event.

“Room 237” (April 26) — If you miss Rodney Ascher’s engrossing documentary about the various arcane film theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” it’s coming back.

“The Angel’s Share” (May 3) — Acclaimed director Ken Loach returns with another tale of working-class life in the United Kingdom, in this case a comedy about four young Scotsmen and a cask of rare whisky.

“Koch” and “West of Memphis” (May 10) — A double dose of documentaries. “Koch” has nothing to do with the notorious Koch brothers, but instead follows the career of former New York Mayor Ed Koch. “West of Memphis” is a follow-up look at the lives of the West Memphis 3, three teenagers wrongfully convicted of murder, and the case that remains unsolved.

“Lore” (May 17) — Another film festival sellout, this drama follows a group of children, left alone after their SS parents are arrested after World War II, who must traverse Germany, and see the results of their parents’ legacy along the way. I’ll be doing a post-show cat after the early evening show on Monday, May 20.

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (May 24) — A Pakistani immigrant working on Wall Street has his allegiances tested after 9/11 in this film from director Mira Nair.

UPDATED: 58 Wisconsin Film Festival sellouts; festival starts Thursday

phaseiv

Obviously it would have been better for headline purposes if only 56 films had sold out, so I could have made a play on “56 Up” somehow. But you just weren’t satisfied, were you Wisconsin Film Festival fans?

As of Sunday night, 58 films at the festival had all or some screenings sold out in advance. Which still leaves a lot of films with advance tickets still up for sale (if you can see a movie on a weekday afternoon, you’re in the catbird’s seat). And every screening will have a limited number of rush tickets released at the door — get to the theater at minimum an hour early, bring something good to read while you wait in line, and you’ve got a pretty good shot.

Advance tickets will be on sale through Wednesday at wifilmfest.org and the festival box office on the first floor of Union South. After that — well, the festival starts Thursday, so they wouldn’t be advance tickets any more, would they? — you can buy them on the day of the show at the venue. Follow me at @r0bt77 — I’ll be live-tweeting the festival and linking to reviews I’ll be writing for both this blog and 77 Square.

Oh, and get some extra sleep between now and Thursday if you can.

“56 Up” — all three original screenings are sold out, but a fourth screening has been added at 9:15 a.m. Saturday at Union South, and advance tickets remain for that. One of the subjects of the doc, Nick Hitchon, will be speaking at the 6 p.m. Saturday screening only. (Note: the original version of this post said the fourth screening was at Sundance. That has been corrected.)

“7 Boxes” — The 5:15 p.m. Friday show and 9 p.m. Tuesday shows are both sold out.

“All the Light in the Sky” — 4:45 p.m. Sunday sold out.

“Augustine” — 7 p.m. Thursday (April 18) sold out, tickets remain for 9:15 p.m. Tuesday.

“Beyond the Hills” — 5:45 p.m. Sunday sold out.

“Blancanieves” — both shows sold out.

“Breakfast with Curtis” — 11:30 a.m. Saturday is sold out, but tickets remain the 12:15 p.m. Friday show.

“The Bronte Sisters” — 1 p.m. Wednesday is sold out, but tickets remain for 9:15 p.m. Monday.

“Citizen Koch” — 11 a.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 7:15 p.m. Saturday.

“Coming of Age” — 7 p.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 2 p.m. Tuesday.

“Computer Chess” — 6:15 p.m. Tuesday sold out, but tickets remain for 11:15 a.m. Sunday.

“Consuming Spirits” — 2:15 p.m. Saturday sold out.

“Dear Mr. Watterson” — Both screenings are sold out.

“Dragon Inn” — 11:45 a.m. Saturday sold out.

“Either Way” — both screenings sold out.

“The End of Time” — both screenings sold out.

“Father’s Birth” — both screenings sold out.

“The Final Member” — 9:15 p.m. Friday is sold out, but tickets remain for 10 p.m. Saturday.

“Flicker” — All three screenings are sold out.

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” — 2:30 p.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 1 p.m. Monday

“Grave of the Fireflies” — 2:30 p.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 4:45 p.m. Thursday, April 18.

“A Hijacking” — 9:30 p.m. Saturday is sold out, but tickets remain for 3 p.m. Friday.

“I Am Divine” — Both screenings are sold out.

“In the Fog” — 4:30 p.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 2:30 p.m. Friday.

“The Institute” — 6:45 p.m. Thursday (April 11) is sold out, but tickets remain for 6:45 p.n, Tuesday.

“The Jeffrey Dahmer Files” — 8:30 p.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 9:15 p.m. Saturday.

“Kauwboy” — 2:15 p.m. Saturday is sold out, but tickets remain for 4:15 p.m. Wednesday.

“Key of Life” –  both screenings sold out.

“Kon-Tiki” — 6:30 p.m. Sunday sold out

“Leviathan” — 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 18 sold out, but tickets remain for 4:45 p.m. Friday.

“The Librarian and the Banjo” — 4:30 p.m. Sunday sold out

“Lore” — both screenings sold out

“Low & Clear” — 2:45 p.m. Sunday is sold out, but tickets remain for 4:45 p.m. Friday.

“M” — 7:30 p.m. Saturday sold out

“The Moo Man” — 1:45 p.m. Saturday is sold out, but tickets remain for 4:45 p.m. Monday.

“Much Ado About Nothing” — 9 p.m. Thursday sold out

“Mussels in Love” — 7:30 p.m. Friday sold out, but tickets remain for 7 p.m. Monday.

“Only the Young” — 7:45 p.m. Friday sold out, but tickets remain for 4 p.m. Sunday

“Ornette: Made in America” — 7:15 p.m. Thursday sold out, but tickets remain for 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

“The Painting” — both screenings sold out

“Phase IV” — 11:30 a.m. Saturday sold out

“Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy — 8:45 p.m. Monday is sold out, but tickets remain for 8:45 p.m. Sunday.

“Present Tense” — Both screenings sold out.

“Pretty Funny Stories” — 5 p.m. Saturday sold out

“Radio Unnameable” — Both screenings sold out.

“Renoir” — Both screenings sold out.

“Room 237” — 6:30 p.m. Wednesday sold out

“Shepard and Dark” — 6:30 p.m. Monday sold out, but tickets remain for 1:15 p.m. Tuesday

“Short Films From Wisconsin’s Own” — 2 p.m. Sunday sold out

“Source Tags and Codes” — 9:15 p.m. Thursday sold out

“Stories We Tell” — 6:45 p.m. Thursday sold out

“Street Pulse” — 4 p.m. Saturday screening sold out

“This is Martin Bonner” — 6:30 p.m. Saturday sold out, but tickets remain for 2 p.m. Sunday.

“Tiger Tail in Blue” — 7:15 p.m. Sunday sold out.

“A Touch of Zen” — 11 a.m. Sunday sold out.

“Unfinished Song” — 5 p.m. Saturday sold out.

“Winter Nomads” — 4:30 p.m. Thursday sold out, but tickets remain for 12:30 p.m. Friday

“The World Before Her” — 7:30 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday both sold out

“On the Road”: Hey Jack Kerouac, now for the tricky part

on-the-road-stewert

“On the Road” is now playing at Sundance Cinemas: R, 2:05, three stars out of four.

Who would dare try to make a movie out of “On the Road”? How could you not, in the eyes of the many faithful followers of Jack Kerouac’s counterculture epic, not screw it up? This is an autobiographical book about which not only the events it’s based on have been mythologized, but the writing of the book itself is the stuff of legend. Kerouac famously blurted out “On the Road” in a three-week literary bender, taping the pages into one long scroll so he could write in one uninterrupted explosion.

Yet if anybody dare attempt it, it would be director Walter Salles and screenwriter Jose Rivera, whose 2004 film “The Motorcycle Diaries,” featuring a young Che Guevara, traveled the same highways as Kerouac’s mix of free-wheeling travelogue and consciousness awakening. They haven’t made a film version of “On the Road,” because that would be impossible, but they’ve made a film for “On the Road” fans.

British actor Sam Riley plays Kerouac’s fictional avatar, Sal Paradise, who in the free-wheeling haze of post-war America drifts into the orbit of Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), who, in Kerouac’s memorable phrase, spend “a third of his life in the pool hall, a third of his life in jail, and a third of his life in the public library.” A two-fisted philosopher-drunk, Dean drapes an arm around Sal and takes him on a nonstop adventure — jazz clubs, poppers, wild parties and above all else, the open road. With Dean’s child bride Marylou (Kristen Stewart) in tow, the film cruises back and forth across the country, its essential fuel Kerouac’s words, delivered by Riley in a convincing imitation. It’s all episodic, with characters drifting in and out of the film without explanation, including Tom Sturridge in what looks like a Ginsberg knockoff, and Viggo Mortensen as a stone-cold William S. Burroughs imitation.

Hedlund is good as Dean, although I think the part works better if you think of him as Kerouac’s reminiscence of Dean (or Neal Cassady, actually) rather than a fully-dimensional person. Dean in the archetype Sam aspires to be, living fully in the moment. But that comes at a cost to everyone around him, including the women — Marylou, Camille (Kirsten Dunst), the mother of his child, and assorted women along the way. The film doesn’t judge, which I think I mistook for acquiescence until “On the Road” kept going, and Dean gradually, and finally, finds himself isolated from the world. The last meeting between Dean and Sal, now married and prosperous, is a heartbreaker. Dean got what he wanted from Sal, Sal got what he wanted from Dean, and the two men go on their way.

Surprisingly, but perhaps wisely, Salles doesn’t try to recreate the heady stream-of-conscious rush of reading “On the Road.” Instead, it’s staged as a rather traditional road picture, with title cards telling us what state we’re driving through, or what the month and year are. Which seems a little odd for a book that was originally written not only without chapter headings, but without even paragraph indentations. There’s something just a little too tidy about it (even the film’s fever dream, brought on by Sam’s bout with dysentery, is an awfully tidy fever dream), especially because there’s no real story to follow here, only encounters and images. But it gives the viewer time and space to really savor those moments, brought to life with Eric Gautier’s gorgeous camerawork, taking us out in the middle of the desert or deep inside the tangled bodies of a Manhattan house party.

The beauty of the images gives “On the Road” a touch of nostalgia, for a long-lost Beat Generation that felt it could change the world, or at least abstain from it. The movie version of “On the Road” won’t have the impact on a person that the book ever did. But it does go some way to explaining why the book did.