Two-Lane Blacktop,
directed by Monte Hellman, does not tell a story of character transformation
brought about by the road as other movies we have studied this semester have. Even
though the Driver is affected by feelings for the female hitchhiker, he still
maintains his need to continue his journey and get parts. The portrait of the
road that Hellman presents in his film is centered more on the actual journey
and less on the destination. The viewers get thrown in with no warning to the character's life on the road and are just as abruptly thrust out of it.
Seen
as a possible precursor to Hellman’s piece, the film Easy Rider presented a new form of road movie that took the main
characters from west to east instead of incorporating the traditional westward trend.
With a loss of direction displayed through the non-conventional pattern of
travel, Easy Rider sets up the
spliced and disconnected format of Hellman’s road film by offering a new way to
regard interactions with the road.
The
movie, Two-Lane Blacktop, starts in
the middle of a race and also ends in the middle of a race with barely any
context for either situation. In the scene 1:39:00 to 1:41:15, the final race
of the movie is shown and then disintegrates as the film reel seems to combust.
The burning of the film during the race illustrates how the focus is not on whether
the Driver wins or loses, but instead it is on the journey as an act. This
clear shift of attention from character to journey is again highlighted in the
scene starting at 1:39:00 with the camera hanging low and focusing on the white
strip in the middle of the pavement, but then slowly panning up to the two
poised cars.
The
direct shot of the pavement and the use of the Chevy’s sounds in place of music
calls attention to the how the movie as a road film has nothing in it to
distract it from its goal of portraying road life just as the Chevy has nothing
in it to slow it down during races. Now that the west is conquered which is
seen through Easy Rider’s movement
eastward, the American road journey is not as based on direction as it once
was. Instead, the new road movie now focuses on an individual’s interaction
with the road itself.
With
the closing of the car window at 1:40:20, the Driver becomes one with the road.
In a country that has been dominated, this union of driver and road illustrates
the new way of thinking of the road as not simply a way to get somewhere but as
an experience in itself. The first road films had characters going west and
discovering riches as well as themselves. The next generation of road movies is
epitomized in Easy Rider with the
more circular motion of travel along the now country-encompassing highways and
the still present desire of self-enlightenment illustrated through Captain
America. But Two-Lane Blacktop brings
a new shift to the genre of road film by placing the road in the role of the main
important experience as well as the all-encompassing mind set. Monte Hellman allows
viewers to engage the road and become one with it just as the Driver did.
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