Big Sur

Big Sur
Fri 1/10 9:00; Sat 1/11 6:30; Sun 1/12 2:30 & 7:30; Mon 1/13 6:30; Tue 1/14 9:00; Wed 1/15 6:30; Thur 1/16 4:00

Dir: Michael Polish / 2013 / US / English / 81 min

Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur is a portrait of the decline and fall of a literary and pop culture icon. Brought to the screen by Michael Polish (Twin Falls Idaho) in his first film written and directed without his twin brother Mark, the film strips away Kerouac’s thinly veiled pseudonyms and presents the characters for who they really were–Kerouac and several of his friends and fellow Beat Generation writers. Profoundly (and fatally) ill-at-ease inside his own skin and constantly seeking escape or, barring that, oblivion, Kerouac is not coping at all well with the instant fame, notoriety, and adulation that the publication of his seminal novel On The Road has brought him. Attempting to win his battle with alcoholism, Kerouac takes up poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s offer of his cabin in the woods at Big Sur and goes there to try to rest and regroup. Unfortunately, after a short time alone he is drawn to San Francisco, where he meets up and carouses yet again with friends and lovers. Bringing them back to Big Sur with him gives him no lasting solace or comfort, and Kerouac realizes that no matter where he runs he is unable to escape himself. Kevin Jagernauth of Indiewire.com describes the film as “a beautifully anti-romantic look at the Beat Generation” and enthuses that Big Sur “refuses nostalgia and easy answers, and is a more fascinating, satisfying picture… as a result”; the film “rises and fades, shifts and moves, through movements and melodies, singing a beautifully sad song for an era and a man who lost his way.”