"Two-Lane Blacktop." Criterion Edition. Greatest Car Movie Ever Made.  My year is complete. Yes.

"If I'm not grounded pretty soon, I'm gonna go into orbit."

--Warren Oates A.K.A. GTO

It feels almost too easy applying the term “existential” to Monte Hellman’s mysterious "Two-Lane Blacktop," (and Mr. Hellman has always insisted that the picture is not “existential”) but I think the alienated, ambiguous, weirdly funny and, at times, desultory cult car classic deserves the appellation.  A work of stark Sisyphean power, the picture brilliantly combines automobile allure and the expectations of the race with a sparer saga of the road – a road that seems free but really isn’t.

Now this may sound rather joyless for a car movie, and indeed for the greatest car movie ever made, but the picture is so inventive, so austerely beautiful, so unexpected and, yes, so auto-centric, that it’s a singular wonder. With a then much discussed script by Rudy Wurlitzer, the movie came with an interesting amount of hype. The screenplay managed the honor of being featured on the cover of Esquire Magazine before the film was made, something that was unheard of at the time, and something that made the movie’s lack of box office more of a disappointment. Naturally, it’s been a cult favorite ever since.

Leading this gear-head mediation through its long stretches of lonesome highway are characters stripped down to their basic handles -- James Taylor is known only as the “Driver,” Dennis Wilson the “Mechanic,” Laurie Bird the “Girl” and the late great Warren Oates, in one of his most unforgettable roles, is “GTO.” The stoic Taylor and Wilson work a seriously souped-up '55 Chevy that's all muscle and speed, no frills, while a garrulous Oates rolls a yellow 1970 Pontiac GTO -- something Taylor scorns as right off the lot. All players endlessly drive, seemingly to challenge other cars and race cross country, but who knows what they’re really seeking. When somewhat challenged on the matter – that all the speed will burn him up– the Driver replies “You can never go fast enough.”  And the picture doesn’t spare this feeling on the viewer as the continual purr and hum of the engine places you at one with the car – a oneness that has become the character’s very identities.

"Two-Lane Blacktop" was probably supposed to be a youth movie, but there’s nothing young about it.

Read the rest of my piece here.

--posted by Kim