The Road Movie Review!

An awe inspiring documentary edited together from public dash cam footage from Russian drivers. Ranging from crazy stunts you wouldn't believe unless captured on video, to the majestic, yet terrifying, mother nature as you have people who captured the meteorite falling, and a wildfire.

Documentary is a title I'd use loosely when trying to explain what this movie is about. While it has footage taken of actual people, and these are very real events that have happened, there is no narrative to The Road Movie that moviegoers would expect. It's experimental in an editing adventure; trying to make completely different situations flow together to create a narrative of human ignorance and, at times, carnage.

One thing that excites me, and I believe everyone, are Youtube videos. The randomness of the internet is a seductress to the modern age, and as you fall down a hole of video, after video, after video, you start to feel the fuzziness of sitting on your butt for a few hours as your next high. These same impulses are applied to this film, as you're essentially watching a really long Youtube compilation. You can't help but gawk, and be in awe, at some of the footage presented in this marvelous film.

As the clips went along, I, as someone who has very little Russian knowledge, started to feel connected to these random people and in a way understand a piece of the Russian spirit. The people presented here are so open, and natural, about their ideas, quirks, and ambitions over the smallest of things. You'll have one guy get so angry that there's another car in front of him (going to the other way) that instead of getting out of the way he gets out and almost attacks them with a sledge hammer. Other times you'll see accidents happen, and the video stays post-accident to capture the camaraderie of the Russian people helping each other. Then you'll have even weird footage of someone driving off a road and into a river, where the car floats down the stream. Nonchalantly the driver says "Fuck, now we're sailing," to which his passenger replies, "Where to?"

This film is crazy in all the right ways, and truly embraces the notion that truth is stranger than fiction. On one level it's a mindless collage of accidents, and strange behavior caught on dashcams, but it's also an exploration in editing, and maybe an unintended exploration on being a human in the modern world. This won't be for everyone, but it's a great film to have with buddies while you kick back on a Sunday afternoon.

B