The Road Movie (2016)
Country:
BelarusLanguage:
RussianRelease Date:
19 January 2018 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Дорога See more »Filming Locations:
RussiaBox Office
Gross USA:
$24,681, 25 January 2018Company Credits
Production Co:
Russian dashcam videos—the ones that show dashboard footage of
ridiculous car crashes and random madness on the roads of the
Motherland—became popular on the Internet presumably because people
enjoy watching chaos from a distance. Mayhem, especially found
mayhem, can be genuinely entertaining, and many of these videos honestly
live up to their ludicrous, brutal reputation. Of course, there are
social and political reasons for the prevalence of dashcams in Russia (a
check against widespread insurance fraud and police corruption), as
well as for the country’s high rate of car accidents (crumbling
infrastructure coupled with nasty winters tend to create poor road
conditions), but these videos flatten out all those tangible
complications. Queasy implications of layered voyeurism notwithstanding
(after all, you are watching a stranger watch real destruction), Russian
dashcam videos simply satisfy a broad “football in the groin” desire that many folks, including myself, hold dear.
That might be a protracted justification for entertainment that’s in
the same ballpark as, say, Roadrunner cartoons, but it goes a long way
of explaining the base appeal of “The Road Movie.” Dmitrii Kalashnikov’s
debut feature is a 70-minute compilation of these dashcam videos
uploaded to the Internet by Russian citizens. These videos run the gamut
from manic car accidents to utterly surreal encounters. Kalashnikov,
who serves as the film’s editor, selects videos that have their own
internal rhythm, yet they all follow a familiar structure: a calm, then a
storm, and then the aftermath. “The Road Movie” operates on a unique
tonal wavelength, one that’s both manic and oddly comforting. It may be
an anthology of bedlam, but it eventually settles into a calming mode
that derives from a director providing his audience exactly what they
signed up to watch.
Describing any of the clips in “The Road
Movie” at length will inevitably do a great disservice to the experience
of actually watching them, especially since they’re predicated upon
shock and awe. However, some of the highlights from the film include a
drunken joy ride that lands a car in a river (“We are sailing,” one
passenger calmly states as the vehicle floats downstream), a humorous
yet mundane conversation between a taxi driver and prostitute about fee
structure, and a car chase in which the police are downright incapable
of quartering their suspect. Each “scene” has its own identity, but when
juxtaposed against similar events, they become a tapestry of the
absurd.
Maybe it goes without saying, but “The Road Movie” is
very funny, albeit in the pitch-black sense. Much of the humor comes
from the passengers’ po-faced narration to disorder just outside their
window, or casual asides right before an accident, such as when a driver
remarks, “Man, it’s not even stylish … to wear a sombrero in the car”
just before another car crashes inches away from them. It’s not quite
accurate to say that “The Road Movie” demands that you laugh at people’s
pain, but it does ask the audience to treat the bizarre with a certain
amount of levity, even if the surrounding reality is fairly disturbing.
Kalashnikov opens up a few interpretive pathways with “The Road
Movie.” Someone could make the case that the film wryly captures
something specific to the Russian character, though I’m struggling to
suss what that would be, considering that “road rage,” “recklessness,”
and “bystander apathy” are common to Americans as well. Kalashnikov
mildly interrogates the nature of unconscious performance in moments of
extreme terror. How much are the passengers “acting” for the camera
during these scenes? If the camera isn’t pointed at them, does its
presence still amplify their behavior? Admittedly, he doesn’t answer
these questions, but he foregrounds them to an extent, particularly in
scenes that linger on the aftermath of an accident. There are also a
couple severe breaks from Kalashnikov’s voyeuristic approach that
suggests an attempt to push the viewer from observer to active
participant.
Yet, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that “The Road
Movie” works best as spectacle. Kalashnikov’s editing schema, with its
thematic rhyming and seamless transitions, elevates “The Road Movie”
above supercut status, but it still plays like a greatest hits tape.
Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that. It might be slight,
but “The Road Movie” never overstays its welcome and rarely becomes
monotonous, which is remarkable given the nature of the beast. It’s
designed to provoke laughter and raised eyebrows, and it does exactly
that with minimum fuss. Sometimes you want heart, and other times you
just want a football in the groin.
***
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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