Walter Salles presents a road movie adapted from On the Road, one of Jack Kerouac's most famous novels, and a founding document for the Beat Generation.
Just after his father’s death, Sal Paradise, an aspiring New York writer, meets Dean Moriarty, a devastatingly charming ex-con. Sal and Dean bond instantly. Determined not to get locked in to a constricted life, the two friends cut their ties and take to the road with Marylou, Dean’s liberated and seductive wife. Thirsting for freedom, the three young people head off across the vast American expanses, in late 1940s pulsating with jazz music, poetry and drugs.
»I read the book at a difficult time in Brazil, the years of the military regime. I was immediately taken by the freedom of the characters, by the jazz-infused narrative, by the way sex and drugs could be seen as instruments to expand our understanding of the world. It was the exact reverse angle of what we were living. So Kerouac’s vision caused a profound impression on me, and on many other people of my generation as well. Symptomatically, On the Road was published in Brazil in 1984, when the country was moving back towards democracy. The book was so emblematic for me that the idea of adapting it for the screen didn’t initially occur to me.«
- Walter Salles
Walter Salles
Born in 1956. After studying economics, he went to the University of California, where he graduated with a degree in audiovisual communication. Central Station won the Golden Bear at the Berlin FF and was nominated for two Academy Awards. Salles makes documentary as well as narrative films, often centred on the topics of travel and self-discovery.
filmography (selection)
1996 Socorro Nobre (documentary short)
1996 Terra Estrangeira (Foreign Land)
1998 Central do Brasil (Central Station)
1998 O primeiro Dia
2001 Abril Despedacado (Behind the Sun)
2003 Armas e Paz (short)
2004 Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries)
2005 Dark Water
2006 Paris, je t'aime (omnibus)
2008 Linha de Passe
2008 Stories on Human Rights (omnibus)
2012 On the Road