A movie about nothing A dusty desk, laptop, and DVD bar with the words “The Road to Nowhere” written carelessly with a pen right on it. The woman takes the disk, inserts it into the drive of the laptop. On the screen begins a movie called “The Road to Nowhere”. The heroine points her camera at the monitor and shoots the film she is already watching. It's a dead end. A movie about how people watch movies. Yes, this is just a primary look, but in the beginning the director does everything to turn away from the film. And in the future, everything turns out to be even worse. This is a movie about how people make a movie that is sure to be a masterpiece. And they shoot boringly, mundanely, well, straight, like a documentary about the shooting process, where the characters constantly boast that they decided not to invite Leonardo DiCaprio and refused to agent Scarlett Johansson, who has already tired of their requests to remove it in their future masterpiece.
American director Monte Hellman for 25 years hatched the idea of shooting this film. And although my personal acquaintance with the work of this director ended with Roger Corman’s film Terror, where he gave several of his students to direct several scenes at once, Monte Hellman had some fame later. At least the tapes “Two stripes” and “Fighting Rooster” can often be seen in the lists of cult films. So we could expect a triumphant return of the once famous director with a new film. But in the end, even getting into the main competition program of the Venice Film Festival can be considered a jump over your head. Of course, there is a certain crisis in modern cinema, because even such prestigious festivals began to get rather mediocre works. And of course, this is Hellman’s first feature-length feature film in 22 years, which also played a role.
According to the plot, we are told the story of a director who decided to film the story of the life of a certain Velma Duran. Who she is and what her story is interesting to us is not reported, but for some reason they try to confuse the viewer, trying to mix the story of the real Duran and what the director actually shoots. A kind of “Inner Empire” by David Lynch, but shot completely ineptly, devoid of a sense of humor and rhythm, but possessing an even more unprofessional, bad camera work. Monte Hellman went further than Lynch and instead of a cheap, but still professional, digital camera, shot this picture with a Canon 5D Mark II camera. He wanted to show his absolute independence. At the same time, we constantly see quite expensive professional cameras. But nobody's filming them. But they do. It seems like a new round, but I was distracted from the plot.
The director makes a film about how Cuban Velma Durand learned a terrible secret (which is surprising to no one except the always drunken expert consultant this secret does not care) and eventually got involved in some spy adventure. Director Mitch Haven (played by Tai Runyan) is more interested in actress Lorel Graham (Shannine Sossamon). He's passionate about her. Their relationship can be called a novel, corrected for the fact that sometimes the director sees Velma Duran in her, and on the set he too often forgets about the script, just admiring the play of Laurel. Together, they discuss the old movie, the filming process, the movie in general, every night watching old movies, which Haven in the final comments with the phrase: "Fucking masterpiece." At these moments, it can even become pitiful for him, because he, by his own admission, shoots a shitty Hollywood film, and dreams of filming no less “The Spirit of the Hive” by Victor Erise. Moreover, the director in fact turns out to be a festival bore, as evidenced by one of the remarks of the film: “From the script there are 95 pages left (author’s note: 1 page on average equals 1 minute of screen time), and the film is still 4 hours.” And the footage with the film by Victor Erise acts for the film with a refreshing contrast shower. You seem to be beginning to penetrate, but no. Here's the "Spirit of the Hive" with sweet Ana Torrent and immediately see the weakness of the work of Monte Hellman, thus scoring a goal in his goal.
As a result, we have the real cinematicism of Monte Hellman, shooting for the sake of filming. Otherwise, you can't call it a show-off. Yes, sometimes Hellman managed to captivate me as a spectator, but in the end the whole action turns out to be an empty, absolute nothing, going nowhere. This film is essentially doomed to cultism in narrow circles, since it has all the signs of films around which an active group of fans gathers, ready to defend them even in comparison with more recognized films. This is not surprising, even John Waters’ Pink Flamingos have a cult, and they are much more hopeless than movies. But in its essence, this is doom, there is nowhere to go, a dead end, then you can only make films about the shooting of a film, about the shooting of a film, the story of which is based on a real story, and drawn from another film. It's over. And most of all, it irritates the final credits for the song with the following text:
“Look, you’re out of the movie room.”
Isn't it wonderful that we helped you forget about the pressing problems?
I'm sorry, but the problems of fake rotten art are no better than forgetting the problems of the moment. Especially in such a piece devoid of integrity, rather close to the amateur activity level of “Timecode” Mike Figgis.