Macadam à deux voies

Warren Oates plays a GTO driver who, on his road East, challenges two car nuts for "pink slips". The first to get to Washington D.C. wins the other's car. The two young guys have also picked up a girl on their way, or more accurately, she just got in their car, no questions asked; who she is, where she's going, nada. She's just tagging along for the ride. All four major characters are drifters, men (and woman) with no names, and their credit titles reflect that: G.T.O., The Driver, The Mechanic, The Girl. They're parts of a long tradition of genre anti-heroes, drifters and outcasts, that includes the likes of Sanjuro (Yojimbo) and The Man with No Name.

However they face the same paradox every cinematic anti-hero faces: by separating themselves from society, by refusing to sit still and conform, they're free; it's just them, the engine revving and the road. The problem is that even though they are free, they don't seem to realize it. They keep trying to define themselves through society values. As Warren Oates muses about settling down: "If I'm not grounded pretty soon, I'm gonna go into orbit". The only thing that still permits these people identity and a place in society is through their cars. If the end is a symbolic representation of this moral double-bind that pushes them into two opposite directions, only Monte Hellman knows.

The reason I'm musing about characters in a car movie however is simple. Two-Lane Blacktop is not just about the race between a 1955 Chevy and a 1970 Pontiac. And that's probably why the movie meanders seemingly aimlessly in places, as if in a trance. It's not a racing movie. It doesn't try to be a tight, gripping thriller. In that light, the sometimes slow pacing becomes part of what defines the movie. It feels more like some sort of existential journey through 70's America. But the beauty (and Hellman's talent) is that he refuses the easy way out of obvious allegories (the kind of which Jarmusch used in Dead Man). Things are pretty much open and left for interpretation. But as the two cars cross country on their way to Washington D.C., Hellman captures the zeitgeist of the times in a unique way. I don't know how this slice of Americana looks in the eyes of Americans, but for a European like me, it paints the country in the same mythic colours Sergio Leone's movies did. The difference being this is not a reconstruction of a time and era seen through the eyes of a fascinated European director, but real locations and people.

In any way, Two-Lane Blacktop is closer to Vanishing Point than Gone in 60 Seconds. A superb road movie on all counts and more than a road movie.

The people who love this movie seem to love it for that certain feeling that it gives them. Reminiscent of an era they lived personally, the film evokes their own past experiences, or at least past experiences they wish they had had, that enhances the craft and lax storytelling of the picture into something else entirely. I do like the film. I think it's an interesting film with a worthwhile story to tell and that it does it well, but there does seem to be that sort of disconnect because I was never a child of the 60s learning to say goodbye to the hippie era.

It's a road trip movie without a real destination. It's a race movie where everyone stops for coffee so the other guys can catch up. There's no real destination. There's no real purpose to the journey, and that's the purpose of the film. Of the four main characters (you could say six if you include the two cars), only the Mechanic seems to know exactly what he wants, and that's to wander from race to race with his car, fixing it when it breaks and fine-tuning it before every showing. The other three, the Driver, the Girl, and G.T.O are almost completely defined by their purposelessness that manifests in different ways.

The Driver starts the film like the Mechanic, only out for the next race, but it's the introduction of the Girl that upends everything. Not immediately, of course, but steadily, the Driver seems less concerned with his core purpose as the Girl gets closer and then pulls away, undermining the relationship between Driver and Mechanic. The girl is purely a drifter. She jumps into their car at a roadside restaurant after collecting her things from a rundown van and just accepts their destination as her own. She's never gone east, you see, and going east sounds cool so she's on board. She doesn't seem to understand the effect she has on people, blind to how they see her, and in a complete haze. She's disengaged from everything save what's in her own head. The last character is G.T.O., played wonderfully by Warren Oates, and he's a motormouth who's constantly changing his story about where he's going and where he's from. His shifting tales tell us his uncomfortableness in any one spot, and he's the perfect guy to simply take up a random challenge for a cross country race.

As mentioned earlier, the other two characters are the cars themselves. The Driver and Mechanic drive a 55 Chevy that they've souped up lovingly, and G.T.O. drives a, well, a G.T.O., fresh off the assembly line. The people jump into and out of each car almost randomly. G.T.O. picks up hitchhikers as often as he can, giving them a new version of his life story, and the Girl slides into the passenger seat before the occupants of the two cars have even really introduced each other. Quickly follows the challenge to go from Arizona to D.C., and the movie feels like it's going to be an actual race for about five minutes until G.T.O. gets pulled over by the cops and the Driver stops to tease him. They stop a bit further up again where the Mechanic looks at the G.T.O.'s engine and tells him he needs a new part within fifty miles, but sure, they'll wait until G.T.O. has taken care of the issue. By the end of the film, the race has been completely forgotten as the Driver tries to get the Girl back from G.T.O. at a roadside diner, and then she just jumps onto the back of a motorcycle and drives off away from both of them. The race is over before they get past North Carolina, and they all go their separate ways, the Driver and the Mechanic to find another race, and G.T.O. to find another hitchhiker to tell another story to.

The point of the film then becomes obvious. None of these people have a real purpose. Even purposes that they define for themselves are tossed off without a second thought. They have no place in society, and they can't seem to make one for themselves out of it. It's an interesting portrait done well, but, as I said earlier, I think the real connective tissue between the film and the audience is the era, that space between the 60s and the 70s where the hippie movement died and those who could have been part of that were still searching for something to latch onto. It's a feeling thing that doesn't really translate across generations, but I can understand it intellectually if not emotionally.

In terms of the actual craft of the film, it's really well made. Monte Hellman is incredibly precise with his camera, coming up with surprisingly striking compositions to capture action and movement across all three dimensions of space. I love Warren Oates as G.T.O., but I find James Taylor a stilted performer as the Driver. He's often called introverted by those who love the film, and while that's true, he's also not great at actually delivering dialogue.

The much better version of Easy Rider, Two-Lane Blacktop is a loving look at the hole between generations. It's well made and largely well-acted, but it really does seem to require a personal connection to the era in order to work as well as it can. Maybe further viewings will help bridge that gap. I'm perfectly willing to give it multiple viewings, though. It's definitely worth the time.

This is either the best film I've ever seen, or just an interesting exercise in film-making that is ultimately of little value. The problem is that I can't decide which! No film has ever given me as much trouble in terms of my deciding where to place it in my personal Top 250 list. I mean, I know it's difficult to compare the relative merits of movies from different genres (e.g. "Schindler's List" vs "Monty Python And The Holy Grail"), but this movie is so unlike almost any others that I still don't know what to make of it.

I tried listening to the DVD commentary for some help, but Monte Hellman and Gary Kurtz had obviously pre-decided that they wouldn't talk about any aspect of the "meaning" or intent of the movie, preferring to concentrate on technical aspects such as pre-production, casting, locations, logistics, acting, lighting, sound, camera-work etc. I kind of respect them for this - leaving Joe Public to use his/her own brain in order to decide what the movie is all about.

One of the people in a featurette on the DVD said that "people haven't begun to realise how good Two-Lane Blacktop is" and I think that's right - the more I think about it, the better this film becomes in my estimation.

My take on the movie is that it's basically a contrast of the two extremes of human behaviour, as characterised by the brash, noisy "GTO" played by Warren Oates and the quiet, understated-to-the-point-of-lifelessness "Driver" and "Mechanic" - their personalities perfectly mirrored in their choice of cars. Most people's personalities lie somewhere in between, but by juxtaposing the extremes it forces one to think about one's place in that spectrum. "The Girl" is mainly a plot device to create a little bit of dramatic tension, as blokes left to themselves tend to go with the status quo. But we only want a little bit of drama, because that's not really the point, and too much drama would distract from the underlying theme.

I really love the "space" in this movie: the long takes, the long silences, the wide-open scenery, the fact that nobody SAYS anything (Warren Oates talks a lot, but never SAYS much). In modern life in general, I think people talk too much - try sitting still and shutting up for 103 minutes while watching this movie.

Not that I suppose anyone is interested, but I eventually rated this at about #70 in my Top 250, but next time I watch it I may move it up to #1 or drop it out of the 250 entirely...

Nostalgic of late 60s and early 70s American culture, this film is hard to come to grips with. At face value it's nothing more than a poorly plotted road trip across the U.S. Southwest, as two guys and a girl, in a 1950's hotrod, race a guy named G.T.O (Warren Oates) in his yellow muscle car.

The film's concept is a little like that of the early 1960's TV series "Route 66". But the approach here is totally different. Director Monte Hellman designed "Two-Lane Blacktop" as if it were a docudrama. Dialogue is minimal and not canned, camera work is unobtrusive with very long camera "takes", none of the actors wear makeup, non-actors play bit parts, there are minimal plot contrivances, and so far as I could determine there are no indoor movie sets. As such, the film reminds me of "Woodstock" (1970).

That's both good and bad. Lack of acting experience renders James Taylor and Dennis Wilson more natural than what could be expected with trained actors. It's bad because neither Dennis Wilson nor James Taylor could act, and their entertainment quotient is zilch. In performances, the film thus bears a striking resemblance to "Zabriskie Point" (1970).

For the above reasons, a lot of viewers will not like this film. The plot, such as it is, is super slow and the performances are drab. And there are no special effects to function as distractions. So ...

What you have in "Two-Lane Blacktop" is a 1970's art-house film. What it lacks in entertainment value the film makes up for with its heavy-duty philosophical and existential themes. An economy of language wherein nothing in the film is "explained", the tacit praise of the prosaic, and the almost stifling trust in the present moment, all speak to the human heart, as the voice of nihilistic romanticism. There is no freedom here, no escape, no change, nor redemption. The landscape horizon never gets closer. It's the myth of freedom and the embrace of alienation. No matter how far you travel, you never actually arrive. It's the journey that matters, on the devil's highway. But that's life.

Long out of circulation because of disputes over music rights, Two-Lane Blacktop, now available on DVD, is one of the most original and compelling American movies of the twentieth century. It is a road movie, a film about cars, and a search for meaning in American life that could easily be called "Zen and the Art of Drag Racing". Shot from the inside of a car, it is an authentic vision of what it is like to be driving across America at a specific historical moment. Promoted by Universal Studios in 1971 as an answer to Columbia's Easy Rider, the film was originally released to less than enthusiastic audiences but has since taken on the status of cult classic and it is richly deserved. Unlike Easy Rider, it is a film that simply observes and what it sees is pure Americana: its people, gas stations, diners, and drag strips. We feel the claustrophobia, the spaces, the speed, and the loneliness.

The film stars singers James Taylor (Fire and Rain) and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys as taciturn drag races who drive their souped-up 1955 Chevy across the country challenging locals to a drag race. The main characters are drifters. They come from nowhere and are headed east, toward a destination that is murky at best. They are people whose reality begins and ends with their machines. Everyone talks about how good life can be -- somewhere else -- in New York, Chicago, the beaches of Florida, and the coast of Mexico, somewhere up the road apiece. Warren Oates, a Monte Hellman regular, turns in a truly outstanding performance as the driver of a Pontiac GTO who challenges Taylor and Wilson to a cross-country race, the prize being the ownership of the cars. GTO is a talkative fellow who concocts tall tales about his background to impress every hitchhiker he picks up (one is a gay cowboy played by Harry Dean Stanton). He is a sad and perhaps self-destructive individual but he is human and you can reach out to him and feel his pathos.

First time actors Taylor and Wilson express little emotion and there is scant dialogue but they also seem right for their roles. Their total focus is on their car. Though the Chevy looks old and ugly, it is as powerful as any car on the road and the driver and the mechanic treat it like their own flesh and blood, constantly fine tuning to maintain its impeccable performance. They go from town to town, just trying to survive by racing. In the words of author John Banville, they "have no past, no foreseeable future, only the steady pulse of a changeless present". Along the way they pick up a cherubic young roadie (Laurie Bird) who is willing to go wherever the ride takes her. After each of the boys has sex with her in motel rooms and in the car, she becomes moody and resentful and fears that she is being used but has nowhere else to go. Though the main thrust of the plot is the race to Washington, DC, the focus seems to get lost along the way, and the film becomes more of a character study of the lack of human connection than about racing.

The film looks for the soul of America in the early 1970s and comes up empty. It was released in 1971 at a time when the hopes and dreams of the '60s counter culture had given way to the disillusion of Kent State and Altamonte, the bombing of Cambodia, and the media's cynical preemption of the Hippie movement.

The movie is about everything and nothing. Everyone is biding their time waiting for life to turn out rather than creating the possibility. Though they live for the moment there is no joy, only the gnawing reality of something missing. They are like many of us, skimming along on the surface of life, reminiscing about a goal that once seemed real but is now just out of reach. They look ahead to a blank future, while ignoring the life around them, what is in the present moment. Two-Lane Blacktop is an exceptionally beautiful film, a poetic description of a world without possibilities. It may also be the definitive statement of the anguish of the materialist paradigm that has begun to crumble and fall apart.