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Road To Nowhere by Monte Hellman

Article de Siclones le 20 avr 2011 dans A l'affiche | 1 commentaire
Sortie le 13 avril 2011
His last film was 20 years ago and was titled Silent Night, Deadly Night: Irreversible Coma.
At the time, a video store employee contacted Monte Hellman to direct a film from his
script ... finally, the guy changed his mind and directed Reservoir Dogs himself. Hellman
nevertheless appreciated the project enough to agree to act as executive-producer in order
to find the funding. In 2010, the two find themselves at the Mostra of Venice, one is
president and the other the oldest director in the competition. Not ungrateful, the
Tarantino jury will present a Golden Lion to Hellman for the entire body of his work. And
yet, like the young director at the end of Coppola’s , Tetro the failure (commercially) from
the stable of the legendary Roger Corman (Coppola and De Palma / Scorsese ...) seems to
be beginning a second youth.

It’s difficult and inevitably not very necessary to summarize the story of Road To Nowhere. A
blogger has rekindled some interest in an old case which had rocked the peaceful Smoky
Moutains of North Carolina a few years earlier. The ingredients were a politician with an
arrogant success, a cop at the end of his road, an irresistible Cuban 30 years the junior of the
other two, Velma Duran, and the disappearance of $100,000,000. A classic thriller plot, to such
an extent that very soon we will abandon the idea of trying to grasp the ins and outs. Director,
Mitchell Haven, and his screenwriter seize investigations of this blogger to draw a film project:
Road To Nowhere, which the Road To Nowhere of Monte Hellman recounts during its shooting
as well as its preparation.
Road to Nowhere – Bande-annonce – 2011
Road To Nowhere plays the card of the setting in abyss ... but in a manner so brilliant that it
would be difficult to give you a reference source. Seeking to count the number of dimensions
intertwined between other scams reported, the film in the film with even the right to its own main
title credits, and its filming, then the projected film and even a few episodes experienced by
Monte Hellman , would be insane.1. One could guess it more instinctively than by taking a ticket
from Mulholland Drive, in Road To Nowhere the viewer is released, right from the start. We can
also find an inverted structure, where Lynch quietly unrolled the glamour aesthetic of well
known series Z to end up imploding the tale, meanwhile Hellman takes the risk of escaping
trouble from the beginning, where the blasting of the narrative is even more confusing through
his particular style of long almost stationary takes, nearly-silent and extended in time, proving to
be sparing of explanation. But two hours later, a miracle happened and I came out with a
fascination that time does not stop nourishing for a film that encourages us to seek outside keys;
beginning with the sublime poster which follows you right out of the cinema.
In the middle of the film, the director obstinately wants no supertar for the distribution, saying
that the success of a film is 90% dependent on casting. Monte Hellman modifies this in an
interview, saying this also includes the choice of locations and technicians ... anyway, just by
choosing to embody Shannyn Sossamon as Laurel Graham / Velma Duran, one can already
consider the cast as a success. Ubiquitous from beginning to end, even the haunting image of the
end credits (and perhaps beyond), the actress carries the film without the need to push in the
trenches with the kind of spectacle becoming customary with directors, and that Watts, Portman
and Gainsbourg had to try in establishing recognition for their talents: neither masturbation nor
lesbian experimentation, self-mutilation or hysteria here ... In this case, there is first of all the
incarnation of the mystery of Velma Duran, of course, where it is unclear whether she died or
simply disappeared with the loot, even reappearing to play herself, taunting the whole world ...
but when this question then is answered as prematurely hoped for in a story that will die soon,
the information appears as anecdotal so much is one caught up by something indefinable.

Something that escapes the mystery screenwriter who accepts the generic term Femme Fatale in
the first film in the film, and who keeps warning his director friend that his love for his actress
puts the whole project in jeopardy. Laurel dries her nails, Laurel ties her shoelaces, Laurel
laments being a bad actress while watching rushes, Laurel huddles against a man to stop his fit of
jealousy, Laurel is upset and vibrates her lips while blowing through them, Laurel has her little
nose all wet while watching a DVD of The Spirit of the Beehive ... rarely with so much
simplicity have we had the opportunity to celebrate a woman, the Woman (?), through cinema.
Mathematically, most other roles, all male except that of the blogger who will show her butt
wrapped blithely in lace in the foreground, will suffer from the comparison ... but will
nevertheless remain the tragicomic spectacle of a very male resignation, more or less acute, and
taking many fascinating forms.
Two Lane Blacktop – Bande-annonce
Of course, this film is dedicated to a woman who was already someone to make you stop and
turn around. Laurie Bird, an actress who committed suicide at age 25 and who lived a love story
with Monte Hellman during the filming of Two-Lane Blacktop. In this film, probably the least
spectacular car movie ever made, a driver and his mechanic (played by Dennis Wilson) drive a
souped up, to make it win drag races, 55 Chevrolet across the U.S. They cross the path of a
hitchhiker played by Laurie Bird, then a pathological liar who wanders inside a Pontiac GTO
seeking hitchhikers to tell his dream life. The cars quickly a bet on a race across hundreds of
miles to bring our characters to Washington, D.C. At the last stop before the finish line, the girl
who had turned the heads of at least one of the drivers, goes off with a biker. The other rivals in
the face of an accomplished fact are left to head back to new restless wanderings, without saying
a word. The camera follows them through two scenes of absurd rides typical of the work of
Hellman, and then in the course of an upteenth drag race, the film burns. All this was only
cinema ...

In other aspects, Road To Nowhere can be seen as the film-summation of its author. Leonardo
DiCaprio is interviewed about Jack Nicholson, one of the first of Hellman collaborators, Mitchell
Haven (first pseudonym of Hellman when he staged Beckett) speaks about the frustration that an
artist can feel faced with lawyers, managers and other businessmen in the movie industry, while
Monte says without bitterness that he never stopped working although he was never able to get a
film made in the last twenty years, or even the appearance in full climax of a camera Canon 5D
used to shoot the film and metafilm, and even earlier the budget digressions about this equipment
could be taken into account in this biographical balance sheet. But in truth, Road To Nowhere is
well beyond the boundaries of self-centeredness, to earn its stripes as a true film-buff fantasy. In
absolute generosity, whatever seems cold and silent like a blond offering half her cigar to a dying
person, for his (rare, no doubt) audience, Road To Nowhere even invites us to see more movies
invariably described by Mitchell as ‘masterpiece’ as he shows them to Laurel. So this time,
instead of releasing his viewers in the burning of his film ... Hellman drowns them without
feeling guilty.

Not free from the defects inherent in the style of this arid filmmaker, defects which are perhaps
not really a fault, Road To Nowhere is added to the list of curiosities signed by Hellman.
Probably the most generous and enthusiastic that this person greatly underestimated by
Hollywood has ever offered. Alas, such a reward is reserved fundamentally for film enthusiasts
basically coming back from a certain sensationalism whose provocative resonances finally
impact a larger world beyond academia and other international juries that more often reward
performance than talent, this film in absurd and spellbinding accents exudes a beauty and
intelligence that it would be criminal in any case to avoid. But with less than 30 copies in the
country, better not waste any more time.

It’s my hollywood piece of shit movie – Monte Hellman //O.H.N.K. production

Road To Nowhere de Monte Hellman | Scénario de Steven Gaydos | Photographie de Joseph M.
Civit | Musique de Tom Russell | Avec Shannyn Sossamon, Tygh Runyan, Dominique Swain,
Cliff De Young, Robert Kolar, John Diehl, Waylon Payne, Fabio Testi, Lathan McKay, Mallory
Culbert, Bonnie Pointer | Etats-Unis | 2010 | 121 min. | Policier et romance | Distribué par
Capricci Films | Crédit photographique : Capricci Films