On the Road

On the Road (2012) is Walter Salles' adaptation of Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation novel, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Aspiring New York writer Sal Paradise has just buried his father when Dean Moriarty blows into town: fresh out of jail, married to teenage Marylou, and incapable of staying still.

The three of them point a car west and keep driving. Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, down into Mexico. Jazz clubs, gas-station jobs, borrowed beds, benzedrine. Sal scribbles it all down because he's convinced this restlessness is the real thing, the freedom worth torching an ordinary life for. Dean drags everyone along and burns through them, himself included. Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart lead, with Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen and Steve Buscemi turning up along the way.

Salles shot on film and on actual highways, so the Beat scene feels lived-in rather than embalmed. It's for viewers who like a road movie that refuses a tidy moral and characters who never quite figure themselves out. Stream On the Road (2012) online on iFILM.