Asphaltrennen

Two Lane Blacktop is, together with Red Line 7000, perhaps the best film about car racing ever made.

The absence of plot and the minimal characterization reminds of another american film of the 70's, Walter Hill's `The Driver. What that film was for the noir genre this one is for the road-movie, a type of picture that was reaching its height around the time.

Monte Hellman, a crafted director that got his apprentice under the wings of Roger Corman, presents an empty world of wasted landscapes, forgotten towns and sleepy gas stations populated by ghostly and vanishing archetypes. They appear whenever they are needed, perform their actions and disappear immediately, as those hitchhikers picked up by G.T.O. that work as samples of possibilities of America.

Car racing is reputed to be a passion, but the people over here is deprived of feelings. They drive continually, there where the wind blows or whenever there's a chance to make money to keep-on going. They hardly talk with each other, and when they do it seems that they are not listening. The impressive cast is led by two rock stars (James Taylor and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys) and the icon Warren Oates. Despite their apparent differences they all constitute a single and exchangeable character, shown by a number of movements taking place throughout the film -driving each other's cars, behind the wheel or at the front seat, competing against each other or together performing a task.

This is an exercise of form, a raw vision of a country falling into pieces with nowhere to go, lost in cyclical repetition and in the eve of self-destruction, as the outstanding last frame of the film burning the screen poetically concludes.

In "Easy Rider" two bikers are in search of American as they travel from coast to coast. The lead biker even calls himself Captain America. In "Two-Lane Blacktop" two car freaks, one a mechanic the other a driver, speed across the nation in search of what? Cars to race? Their trip turns into a cross-country race between their 55 Chevy and a GTO. How the driver of the GTO (played by Warren Oates) got the car depends on which of his stories the viewer believes. The revelation at the end of the film may possibly be the truth.

This film by existentialist director Monte Hellman who later helped produce Quentin Tarantino's seminal "Reservoir Dogs" is an important one. The dialog and acting are minimal, only one of the leads is a professional actor, Warren Oates. The others are two recording artists, James Taylor of "Fire and Rain" fame, and Dennis Wilson from The Beach Boys and a flower child Laurie Bird who tragically committed suicide in Art Garfunkel's apartment a few years later (ironically Garfunkel had helped Paul Simon sing the hit "I've gone to look for America"). The only other professional actor in the movie that this viewer recognized was Harry Dean Stanton who played the homosexual Oklahoma hitchhiker. This gives the film a more realistic feel and adds to the minimalism of the script and direction. The abrupt ending is a bit disconcerting but after a few viewings it makes more sense.

In "Easy Rider" the rock music was an integral part of the story. The soundtrack is one of the best ever. The music in "Two-Lane Blacktop" serves as mere background, kept so low that at times it's difficult to hear. There's a wild version of "Hit the Road Jack" by Jerry Lee Lewis who pumps the keyboard so fast that at times it sounds as if the keys are leaving the piano. The first rock song about racing, Chuck Berry's "Maybelline," is also heard at one point. It's hard for the listener to discern if Berry wrote the song about a woman or about a car. Otherwise the music corresponds with the simplicity of the rest of the flick.

The existential humor is easy to miss on the first viewing. GTO confesses to Mechanic and Driver that he is tired of picking up fantasies. Another part of the film has Driver asking Mechanic a question. Mechanic tells Driver to pull over and stop because it will take him a while to explain. When Driver stops it takes Mechanic only one sentence to give him his answer.

The viewer needs to watch "Two-Lane Blacktop" several times to get its full impact. The time is not wasted for the true believer.

"Two Lane Blacktop" is plain and simple, the "2001" of both road movies and car movies. A film experience like none other that will transcend you further than anything considering you have the slightest sensitivity for driving... or for cars... or for any of the actors involved in it... which is not anyone, sure. Even though, it remains an amazing film beautifully written and shot. And when you know it started as a Disney project surfing on the "Beetle" series' success, it turns out to be a piece of history. But hell, it's so strong it doesn't even need the anecdote. What it deserves is his freaking place in cinematic heaven, and it's a shame it's not there yet and remains hard to see in a theater ! Monte Hellman never made one as strong. Rudy Wurlitzer holding the pen probably helps. Still, Hellman is a fine director to be rediscovered too. One thing is to remember : if you have never seen it and see it plays around your block, cancel any previous plan and just GO FOR IT !

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...

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.