On the Road with Judas

Oh how I haaated this movie for the first half hour! It begins with a mishmash of unrelated scenes, half a dozen actors switching roles without warning, and lots of mumbling non-sequitur banter that could've been the rejected lines from Pulp Fiction.

That's not what made me hate it, though. What made me hate it was the idea that the director seemed to be trying too hard for that "indie" feel: using lots of random, quirky images for the sake of being random and quirky. I swear I came this close to going home and watching reruns of The Partridge Family instead.

But somewhere after the half hour mark, a story starts to emerge. Several stories, actually. "On the Road with Judas" teases us with a crime story, a love story, a tale of friendship betrayal, and of course the story of a man who is rapidly losing his grip of reality. It is ultimately the last story that shines and makes this a great film.

The plot is basically irrelevant so I won't bother talking about that. Instead this becomes a film of philosophical depth, attacking the question of reality vs. fiction (truth vs. intentions) and the infinite conflict that falls on the poor sap who's in charge of it all.

If you've seen the excellent film "Synecdoche NY" which came out several months after "On the Road with Judas", you'll definitely notice many parallels between the two. Both films tell the story of a writer who is attempting to write about his own life as it happens. As real life and written pages become intertwined, the task becomes impossible, confusing, maddening.

Mixing reality and fiction in a film is tough for a filmmaker to do without totally losing the audience (which I think may have happened here, judging by IMDb's low rating of 4.3). Certainly it requires a lot more audience effort than your standard linear storyline. But many films have pulled it off, notably: "Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story", "American Splendor", "Beyond the Sea", "The Science of Sleep" and the aforementioned "Synecdoche NY". "On the Road with Judas" fits right in with the rest as a challenging yet ultimately rewarding experience for people who can bend their perceptions of reality. The ending is classic.

A final word about the soundtrack: nice! Being set in 1991-1993, the film features some interesting versions of songs by Depeche Mode "Enjoy the Silence", Modern English "Melt with You", and others plus some very nice classical sonatas such as Debussy's "Claire the Lune".

Overall, this is a very deep and powerful movie disguised as a "fun romp" (or whatever the dumb DVD cover says). If you can make it past the first half hour, I think you'll really enjoy it.

This is not one of my twenty-seven favorite films, but it really is worth the watch.

Having-a-plot-line wise, "On the Road with Judas" is a bit lacking, but it is cohesive with the way it was made and was intended to be. See, instead of the basic book-to-movie adaptation, the film suggests that the book (written by writer/director J.J. Lask) has already been made into a movie, and a lot of the footage is interviews with the "actors" in the "movie," as well as the "real" people whom the book was "based on". A little confusing, but it works.

The "double-life" description really doesn't do the film justice.

What was really interesting was the director Q&As afterward (I saw it as SIFF), for it ends up that J.J. Lask (who played the interviewer in the movie) had each of the actors read his book, and then he interviewed them, in character, improv-style. The rest of the movie was written afterward, based on what they said in the interviews.

Also, Aaron Ruell is just adorable.

Although this is not a movie that is eager to please it's audiance, it is one who is looking to take them for a ride. In a cookie cuter world this is far from a hit. But it is a movie I will never forget. From those moments that made me cringe by how familiar some emotions were to those whomade me wonder what could have bin. I love this movie not in my top pic pics of all times but one I always look forward to re watching. Just like un rincon cercas del cielo

This is a film about a writer, who has written a novel, that is made into a movie, in which his imaginary characters are "real" people, who are portrayed by actors, who appear on a talk show, hosted by the actual writer of the novel and the film, where they sometimes comment on the real/fictional characters they are playing.

And this actually WORKS! It all makes sense because the author has a problem with reality; therefore, he reworks it through his fiction.

Judas, his main character, is an underground hero, so much so that a movie is being made of his life. Lask interacts with his characters, as do the actors hired to portray them. The cerebral journey blurs the line between creator and creation, as well as reality and revised reality.

If this sounds pretentious, it's not. Though the movie elevates Judas to the level of iconic legend, it does so with a wink. He and his quirky friends may be the subject of "talk show" interest, but the mundaneness and normalcy of their story is apparent. Thoroughly postmodern, the tale has simple heart at its core: since our lives rarely are what we wish them to be, sometimes we need to sustain our illusions in order to get by.

For those who enjoy the intellectualism, imagery and melancholy of works such as "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," this is a film worth checking out.

This played Sundance I think last year. It's crazy. It's like a not-at-all creepy David Lynch. It's very hard to explain. But you have a writer of an autobiographical book, and the book is being adapted into a movie. The film follows the author, the actor playing the author, the filmmaker making the movie, and also the author of the REAL book/actual director of the movie, JJ Lask.

If you think Charlie Kaufman is meta, then you haven't even scratched the surface of On The Road With Judas. There are some of my favorite actors in the film too - Kevin Corrigan, Aaron Ruell (from Napoleon Dynamite), and that guy from American Pie Eddie Kaye Thomas is in it too. It's a real mindfuck of a movie - it's kind of like the movie version of a really hard sudoku problem, but really rewarding when it all comes together.

And unlike a lot of other films that are about themselves - it never sacrifices human emotion for the sake of it's cleverness. At it's very core is an honest love story, that is very well drawn.