Two-lane blacktop (1971)

OK - I confess. Some road movies make me fall in love with the US and A. This is not the real country of course, but the places you see in precisely this kind of movie (from the early seventies): dingy gas stations, sleazy cafés, a thousand different landscapes. Two-lane blacktop (Monte Hellman) is, among other things, about racing cars. But don't think you and your popcorn are in for an adrenaline-kicking movie in the style of The Fast and the Furious. This is ... slow stuff, contemplative stuff - the cars may move quickly, but the film does not - and it works. A meditative little film about racing cars; genius, I tell you. I hadn't seen any of Hellman's films before, so I didn't know what to expect. One could perhaps compare it to a similarly macho movie which is just as slow: The family, starring Charles Bronson. Two-lane blacktop starts with a racing scene and ends with one as well. In between we see two guys in a car. Suddenly a girl gets into the car. We don't know her name, and nobody else's either. They hook up with a strange man, challening him to race, cross-contry. People talk in short sentences and everybody seem to hold a grudge against everybody. Drifters & dreamers - boredom mostly, and lonely folk who pick up hitch-hikers. Atmosphere: passive-aggressive, bad vibes in the air. Meanwhile: the gang is talking about spare parts. The strange man and a hitch-hiker listen to a Western song on the cassette player. The youngsters have burgers in a sleazy diner on the wall of which a sign says: no dancing. The girl is learning how to drive a car but that doesn't happen. The girl looks at others. Nobody seems to really bother about the race and who wins it. Instead, they help each other out. One of the racers falls asleep while messing with a car. Early morning. They talk to local people and the local people make sure that they are not hippies. No, hometown boys. You like Americana? Go watch this.  - - Watch out for Harry Dean Stanton (yes, he looks young here, or almost)! This might be a movie that would be silly if one tried to hard in disentangling it - so, please, beware of the Existentialist interpretations.