Today we continue with our recitation of upcoming holiday films, those serious-minded Oscar films Hollywood’s major studios have waited until now to release. First up today, a boomer generation story set in New Jersey, the film tracking a young man as he makes his way through love, sex, drugs and, yes, rock ‘n roll in the early-to-mid 1960s.
Not Fade Away, dir. David Chase, w/ John Magaro & Bella Heathcote
Here’s what Variety’s Ronnie Scheib had to say about Not Fade Away when it débuted at the New York Film Festival earlier in the month …
Music not only serves as the subject but informs the very fabric of David Chase’s savvy ’60s-set film. Aided immeasurably by his keen ear for dialogue, Chase filters a suddenly tumultuous, transformative decade through the restrictive prism of conservative suburbia in his feature film début story of a New Jersey boy’s coming of age, as political instability, class awareness and rock ‘n’ roll break in waves over the still-inchoate consciousness of several friends trying to form a band. Though starless (John Magaro, Bella Heathcote and Jack Huston play central roles), save for James Gandolfini’s knockout supporting performance, this dynamic pic should resonate with audiences upon its December 21st release.
The Village Voice’s Nick Schrager is equally high on the film, writing …
Rock ‘n roll proves the coming-of-age crucible for a young teen in 1960s New Jersey in Not Fade Away, Sopranos creator David Chase’s semi-autobiographical feature of shaggy hair, shagadelic beauties, and the joy and sorrow wrought from chasing, and failing to achieve, one’s dreams. Treating its characters with just the right balance of gravity and sense of humour, respecting their earnest sincerity and yet pricking them for their prejudices and pretensions, the film achieves a tonal balance that turns the material reflective without ever becoming cloying. This is never more apparent, or affecting, than in a quiet dinner scene between father and son, the father’s revelations about past romances beautifully conveying the material’s simultaneously sad and hopeful — and, thus, mature — belief that, for better and worse, some loves must be lost so that others may be found.
Kris Tapley, at In Contention, says, “Chase captures the joy and passion of the era, in a film that is both funny and, at times, profound,” while David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter writes that the film offers a “bittersweet glance back at the rock-fueled restlessness of the Sixties, the film a music-infused personal reflection, and a warm, funny, poignant scrapbook that evokes a spirit of youth that is still relatable in later eras.”
Producer/music supervisor on the film is the E-Street Band’s Steven van Zandt. Not Fade Away will open in Vancouver on Friday, December 21st.
Update, from Paramount: As it’s a ‘platform release’, Not Fade Away will open in Vancouver a week, or two later, than the December 21st date.
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” — Jack Kerouac, On the Road
On The Road, dir. Walter Salles, w/ Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund
If Not Fade Away is the under the radar nostalgia film this upcoming holiday season, the film that took Cannes by storm this past May, Walter Salles’ On the Road, with its all-star cast of Hollywood’s finest young talent — Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Elizabeth Moss, and Tom Sturridge, not to mention such indie stalwarts as Amy Adams, Viggo Mortenson, Steve Buscemi, Alice Braga, Terrence Howard and Michael Sarrazin — here’s a film that will hit theatres early in 2013 (although it’ll do a New York / Los Angeles Oscar qualifying run in December) that is all but guaranteed to be the indie blockbuster of the Oscar season, with a reported rock solid nod for Kristen Stewart as Best Supporting Actress.
Philip French, film critic for The Observer, had this to say about On The Road when it opened in Cannes, “Years in the making, Walter Salles’ movie adaptation of Kerouac’s beat classic — some five years in the making — is a bold, affecting, inherently sad and faithful adaptation of the literary sensation of 1957.” French goes on to write …
Salles and his screenwriter José Rivera give shape to what many have seen — wrongly I think — as a rambling, incoherent narrative. They make powerfully affecting the final break between a dispirited Moriarty, who meets up with a newly confident, smartly dressed Sal Paradise just off to a Duke Ellington concert at the Metropolitan Opera. Ultimately a rather sad film, as most road movies are, because the restless travelling life can never bring peace and contentment, as Kris Kristofferson’s wrote in his great song about life on the road: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Film critic Tim Robey in his four star review The Observer has this to say …
An alluring and honest treatment of Jack Kerouac’s beat novel, Walter Salles’ adaptation of On the Road is rambling, episodic, aimless, vague. You can throw all of these words at Walter Salles’ film — many did when it premièred at Cannes, in a longer version than the cut now released. They might sound like criticisms, but they are the point. The movie can’t help but ramble if it wants to honour the whole ethos of Jack Kerouac’s 1957 Beatnik travelogue, but it isn’t shy about weighing up his achievement, either. It’s partly a gorgeous and textured film of his book, partly a hidden biopic about why he wrote it. The supporting cast is tremendous: Kristen Stewart’s restless child-bride, Viggo Mortensen’s Burroughs surrogate and Kirsten Dunst’s trapped Camille all make vivid impressions, as does Tom Sturridge’s funny, lonely Carlo (the Ginsberg figure). Out in front, Hedlund is a gritty revelation, desperate and magnetic. Dean’s constant need for sex is understood as a sign of damage, part of the same compulsion that sends him all over America, bouncing between wives. Working with the wonderful French cinematographer Eric Gautier (Into The Wild), Salles summons a twilit America where wanderlust is an ache, an addiction, and a kind of madness, a tempting vortex to disappear into, for these rootless young people bored by the conventional options of living.
Either this film is made for you, or it’s not. For VanRamblings, we can tell you that we’ll search out On the Road on its opening day in Vancouver.
