Issue 117: On The Road Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) | artwork by Tom Ralston

For all its discussions of morals and metaphysics, Stalker is ultimately a film about criticism—not in the sense of simply pronouncing something wasteful or worthwhile, but in the explicative sense, wherein interpreting an object or experience imparts a particular way of seeing.

The Other Half of You

Christian Craig·

Issue 117: On The Road

Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild is a lot of things—Renoirian screwball, Gen-X The Odd Couple, defense for the reggae mixtape—but it’s a road movie first and foremost.

There and Back Again

Calvin McMillin·

Issue 117: On The Road

Whereas Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters is a fairly stationary film, charting one family’s experiences in and around their cramped Tokyo home, Broker is a story of people on the move.

The Endless Road

Brianna Zigler·

Issue 117: On The Road

Bookended by the post-industrial Midwestern hellscapes of Stranger Than Paradise and the twilight tourist Americana of Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law takes us to the bayous of New Orleans, where a pimp, a radio DJ, and an Italian traveler all wind up in jail.

Screenshot from Warner Bros' original theatrical trailer for Scarecrow (1973) via YouTube

Boxcar Love: Scarecrow’s Not-So-Modern Bromance

Duncan Birmingham·

Issue 117: On The Road

In its own time, this hard-to-pigeonhole ambling road picture had as much trouble finding its place in the world as Max and Lion. But the past decade has seen Scarecrow garner a cult following, with Pacino and Hackman both publicly praising it, and director Jerry Schatzberg even rhapsodizing about a sequel.

The Circus Sands

Nathaniel Missildine·

Issue 117: On The Road

In Fellini's La Strada, we enter another plane by grace of Gelsomina. Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) is the Spirit, the Soul. She will play the trumpet.

Home Like No Place

Alexander Farmer·

Issue 117: On The Road

For a road film, Vincente Minnelli's The Long, Long Trailer exhibits a remarkable sense of stasis; for a film designed to take the Ricardos from the diminutive screen to the silver screen, it exhibits a remarkable sense of claustrophobia.

Dog Days

Michael Autrey·

Issue 117: On The Road

The road movie genre is divisible into two general types: those that move, looking either forward to the promises of the horizon or away from the disappointments of the past—and those that don’t, the promises of the road making two halves of the parenthesis, charging the moment of stasis with meaning it might not otherwise have. Wendy and Lucy takes place in one of these pauses.

…But What Am I?

Mark Dzula·

Issue 117: On The Road

Whether lost in the pregnant pause of a phantom victory, swamped by the rush of bizarre sex appeal, or struggling with the desire to follow a new best friend but kept back by the ironclad claims of home, Pee-wee understands that dreams are the basis for strange journeys.

Tangerine and the Odyssey of Modern Times

Christine Prevas·

Issue 117: On The Road

Sean Baker's Tangerine might be a manifesto of a kind of care that we could call “good enough,” a care in which we cannot give each other everything, but we can give each other everything we can.