Caminho para o Nada

There is a strange phenomenon with Monte Hellman, as well as for example Jean-Luc Godard: each of their films are immediately classics of cinema. "Road to Nowhere", as well as "Film Socialism" the same year, are films far in advance of their times, that everyone knows, more or less consciously, are as necessary as a play by Shakespeare or Beckett, or a composition by Bach or Schoenberg. The desynchronizing between the release and the public recognition wouldn't be so important, if the author, in the meantime, were allowed to make his work and offer us many other cinematic diamonds. But the result is the rarity of Monte Hellman's films, and it's like humanity is depriving itself from emotional and artistic resources it needs so much. "Road to Nowhere" is one of the major films of the decade, related to works by Pierre Corneille ("Illusion"), Luigi Pirandello ("Six Characters in Search of an Author"), Vincente Minnelli ("The Bad and the Beautiful") or Federico Fellini ("8½").

Monte Hellman's final film starts off looking like a self-reference. We see that it's about the production of a movie, and the opening credits are for the film-within-a-film. But before too long, "Road to Nowhere" turns out to have more than one plot going on.

This is definitely not a movie for most audiences. There are no top stars, no CGI, and no fast action. This is very much a plot-driven movie, and it requires a long attention span. I don't know most of Hellman's work, but it sounds as though he preferred to avoid Hollywood conventions (although he gave Jack Nicholson early roles in some movies).

If you're willing to settle for a serious movie with lesser known people, then this will be one for you. Otherwise you can stick to Marvel adaptations.

Ever see a movie that is full of art, depth and meaning, but you just don't like it?

David Lynch movies strike me the same way. "Road to Nowhere" seems like a very Lynchian film. It carries a dark, brooding sense of imminent tragedy, characters are mysterious (some may say deliberately 2-dimensional), and the story disorients the viewer by leaping through different planes of existence. It's the kind of movie you're probably expected to view several times before you truly get it.

The story takes us to a small town where we piece together a crime based on small fragments. The whole time, a movie is being filmed about the crime, and that's the real plot. It's actually pretty clever of the director to hit us with 2 simultaneous stories unfolding in cryptic bits, and if I had more patience, I could have absorbed it all. But for the first hour I was just struggling to figure out what's going on, and the long, slow pacing seemed to mock my struggle. Do not watch this movie unless you're prepared to sit for nearly 2 hours like a deer in the headlights.

When the big picture finally materializes, it's almost too late. The abrupt ending may leave you feeling unsatisfied as it did me. But I guess that's where you're supposed to watch it again.

There was one part I'm very glad I saw: a scene where one character recites the poem "Sonnet XXV" by George Santayana. I'd never heard that poem before and immediately paused the movie to look it up.

Another scene, a short one of a plane crashing into a lake, struck me as beautiful. Make no mistake, even though I'm not a big fan of this movie, I enjoyed parts of it and would recommend it to fans of David Lynch ("Mulholland Drive"), Peter Greenaway ("Zed and two Naughts") or maybe--this is a stretch--Wim Wenders ("Paris, Texas"). It's also vaguely reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch ("Limits of Control") but it doesn't have Jarmusch's humorous moments, or any humor really. This is a very serious movie, made by serious people, intended for serious cinephiles. Do not watch this if you're in the mood for "Peewee's Big Adventure" or you'll be likely to crash your own airplane into a lake.

As 'Road to Nowhere' begins, pre-production is underway on a movie project about a notorious murder case involving an absconded embezzler, faked accidents and substitute corpses. The director is seeking a lead actress to play the crime's femme fatale - and his search soon unearths an uncanny double of the villainous vamp, whose only previous credit is an 'exploitation' movie. Coincidentally her character is called Velma - which also happens to be the name of the duplicitous missing showgirl in Raymond Chandler's 'Farewell, My Lovely'. After two-thirds of the film is wasted on long shots of characters tying their shoelaces, watching nail polish dry and rehearsing inconsequential dialog, the actress embarks on a tepid love affair with the film's director, which results in some unexplained melodramatic discord and a violent conclusion.

Although film-within-a-film concepts have been used previously, as in Truffaut's 'Day For Night' and David Lynch's 'Inland Empire', a disciplined director armed with a coherent screenplay should be able to conjure fresh life from the old dog. Unfortunately 'Road To Nowhere' never provides any useful information about the original crime or those involved, nor does it ever clarify various intrigues amongst the film crew. Director Hellman justifies all the heavy-handed movie references and opaque mysteries by claiming he prefers surreal narratives - but his excuse is fraudulent. This isn't surrealism - it's just dull story-telling - or more accurately, no story-telling.

Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) is a filmmaker. Nathalie Post (Dominique Swain) is a blogger. Laurel Graham (Shannyn Sossamon) is an actress or not. There is a crooked land deal, a plane crash, and a film within a film.

I don't know anything about director Monte Hellman. I am going to check out Two-Lane Blacktop after this. For now, this one has ideas that interest me, but ultimately, it is a bit too confused. I actually like the early confusion before they get to the film within the film. The story never really gets completely clear. I'm not sure about the deterioration. I just want some more clarity.