After sleeping on it (writing review one day later), The Road Movie might not work as your traditional story-driven movie, but it may be in 2018 (this edited together in 2016) we need to change how we see movies anyway. In this case, we have what is like live-action cut scenes from a non-plot driven Russian Grand Theft Auto video game. There are no real rules in Russia on the roads by the look of it (perhaps the dash cams are to assist in that the cops make our corrupt cops look like boy/girl scouts).
People get out of cars and into fights; sometimes a car just goes off road into a river for a river-car ride; a car just crashes head on into another and we hear the couple of people saying where they're broken; a guy gets on top of a woman's car as she us parked, and he acts like a mad primate as she drives and is hysterical (he may just be deaf); trucks crash and flip; cows get hit and go on their way; the word 'f**k' is used so often in 67 minutes I think this out-f***s the 3 hour Scorsese crime epics.
The appeal in other words is to be a full witness to the insanity, and while these are taken from YouTube uploads, I think placing then in a short, to the point cinematic context is a nice radical act. It's found-footage when it comes down to it, and at the same time the tone is like taking all of the gnarly bits from Godard's apocalyptic Weekend and none if the political stuff. Human nature in Russia is brutal, unforgiving, and howlingly funny in these videos. At one point a car drives right on through a forest fire (!) that is happening on either side of the road on one hand, and on another a car chases a running bear and all the driver can think to say is to laugh at the bear's defecating. And is that a comet falling to Earth?
In other words, The Road Movie may or may not appeal to you, and I wonder what rewatchability it will have - unlike the insanity of the Jackass films, as one more comparison, there aren't any personalities to latch on to as we are Rear Window-ing as the passengers if these literal car wrecks - but it's a total blast from start to finish and a unique piece of cinema in this decade.
People get out of cars and into fights; sometimes a car just goes off road into a river for a river-car ride; a car just crashes head on into another and we hear the couple of people saying where they're broken; a guy gets on top of a woman's car as she us parked, and he acts like a mad primate as she drives and is hysterical (he may just be deaf); trucks crash and flip; cows get hit and go on their way; the word 'f**k' is used so often in 67 minutes I think this out-f***s the 3 hour Scorsese crime epics.
The appeal in other words is to be a full witness to the insanity, and while these are taken from YouTube uploads, I think placing then in a short, to the point cinematic context is a nice radical act. It's found-footage when it comes down to it, and at the same time the tone is like taking all of the gnarly bits from Godard's apocalyptic Weekend and none if the political stuff. Human nature in Russia is brutal, unforgiving, and howlingly funny in these videos. At one point a car drives right on through a forest fire (!) that is happening on either side of the road on one hand, and on another a car chases a running bear and all the driver can think to say is to laugh at the bear's defecating. And is that a comet falling to Earth?
In other words, The Road Movie may or may not appeal to you, and I wonder what rewatchability it will have - unlike the insanity of the Jackass films, as one more comparison, there aren't any personalities to latch on to as we are Rear Window-ing as the passengers if these literal car wrecks - but it's a total blast from start to finish and a unique piece of cinema in this decade.