Inflected by westerns and the Depression, the road movie, with its roaming hippies and young lovers on
It is perhaps not surprising that filmmakers in both Australia and Canada have employed the road movie for articulating tensions around national identity and modernity. Like the United States, both nations possess a vast wilderness that constitutes an important facet of their cultural heritage. Canadian and Australian road movies often employ this frontier adventure space to engage social conflicts between indigenous and colonial cultures or between urban modern and mystical rural environments. Directed by Australian Bruce Beresford and set in the wilds of 17th century Canada, Black Robe (1991) embodies this framework as it follows the doomed journey of a French Jesuit priest on a mission to convert native tribes. The Australian Mad Max films (1979–1985) have become canonical for their dystopic reinvention of the outback as a post-human wasteland where survival depends upon manic driving skills. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) is a watershed gay road movie that addresses diversity in Australia. Walkabout (1971), Backroads (1977), and Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) use the Australian outback journey to confront white-aboriginal political relations. Bill Bennett's Kiss or Kill (1997) is a hip and clever Australian take on the outlaw couple. Canadian director Bruce McDonald has worked the rock 'n' road movie repeatedly, with Roadkill (1989), Highway 61 (1991), and most notably Hard Core Logo (1996), a mock documentary about a punk rock band's reunion tour. David Cronenberg's notorious Crash (1996) seems a fitting end-of-millennium road movie: its head-on portrayal of perverse sexual arousal through the car crash experience drove the genre over the edge for some viewers (like media mogul Ted Turner, who successfully lobbied against its US theatrical release).
Road movies from Latin America share traits with the European approach. Generally speaking, Latin American road movies focus on a community of characters rather than star individuals, on mature quests rather than young outlaw narratives, and on national issues related to North-South and urban-rural divides. A good example is Subida al Cielo ( Mexican Bus Ride , 1951), where Luis Buñuel brings his European sensibility to bear on a peasant's strangely enchanting bus journey to the city to attend to his dying mother. As in Fellini's La Strada , Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), and Buñuel's other road movies NazarĂn (1958, Mexico) and La Voie LactĂ©e ( The Milky Way , 1969, France), the journey here is episodic, a kind of carnivalesque pilgrimage. Such a "travelling circus" quality is visible in later Latin American road movies, such as Bye Bye Brazil (1979, Brazil), Guantanamera (1995, Cuba), and Central do Brasil ( Central Station , 1998, Brazil). Conquest-era journey narratives are also popular in Latin American cinema, Cabeza de Vaca (1991, Mexico) being one of the finest examples. Profundo CarmesĂ ( Deep Crimson , 1996, Mexico) and El Camino ( The Road , 2000, Argentina) are intriguing riffs on the outlaw couple road movie. With its focus on the sexual experiences of two young male buddies with an older woman during a road trip, Y Tu Mamá TambiĂ©n ( And Your Mother Too , 2001, Mexico) represents a turning point for the American-style road movie, and, predictably, was a huge success in the United States.
As twenty-first-century film continues to thrive under the power of digital technologies, it is safe to assume that more inventive road movies will appear on the horizon.
SEE ALSO Action and Adventure Films ; Crime Films ; Genre
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David Laderman
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