87/100

Analyzing this film feels wrong, somehow. Its greatness lies in how much it strips away: conventional performances (apart from Oates, who serves as garrulous counterpoint to Taylor and Wilson's superlative blankness), narrative payoffs (where are the tortured Internet debates about who gets the pinks?), establishing shots, etc. What remains is as pure as Americana gets—a road movie that's genuinely, as its title declares, about the actual road. My sole reservation is the way it treats The Girl as chattel for the men, which not only reeks of unthinking sexism but belatedly introduces real conflict (via Taylor's sudden fixation with her) in a film that had been doggedly and deftly sidestepping it up to that point. But that's only a…

Within 15 years of Two-Lane Blacktop’s release, three of the four principal cast members would be dead. One of them died of natural causes, the other two died before they were 40. The youngest, Laurie Bird, committed suicide by overdosing on Valium at the age of 26, after a lifetime of traumatic incidents and depression that she clearly didn’t have the right support for. The other, was Dennis Wilson, the drummer of the Beach Boys, who had notorious addiction issues with drugs and alcohol, and couldn’t heal from his disease after numerous attempts. He drowned while drunk, jumping into the ocean inebriated while trying to find things he’d thrown overboard years beforehand. He was a year out from turning 40.…

There is no end to Two-Lane Blacktop. There is no end to the restlessness of the hauntingly desolate, open road. The landscape whips by in streaks of greens, browns, and grays—a blurry rendering of pastoral America. The introspective silence, the apathy, the loneliness is echoed by the magnitude of the journey, of the winding highways—an infinite present, where “future” is a destination too abstract to anticipate and “past” a place too obscured by distance and time to seem relevant.

The goal is to keep rolling, ever rambling, chasing an elusive horizon. What is home? Is it 650 miles and 12 hours back, or is it the familiar curve of a steering wheel? What is family? Is it the vague memory…

"The thing is you just keep moving."

Former Roger Corman acolyte Monte Hellman scored his biggest critical success with the imposingly blank Two-Lane Blacktop. Easily the most impressive among the glut of post-Easy Rider alienated road films, Two-Lane Blacktop follows a pair of inscrutable automotive enthusiasts who begin in Southern California and embark on a listless easterly drift across the United States.

The nameless protagonists are identified only as the Driver (James Taylor—yes, that James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of Beach Boys/being-Charles-Manson's-former-mentor fame). Their unstated bond revolves around the drab but speedy 1955 Chevy 150 which they have rebuilt and now apparently share; this unassuming contraption allows them to cruise through drive-in diners and entice local marks into…

Loved re-visiting this classic. The Techniscope cinematography by Fred Roos and Jennifer Shull captures the flat landscapes beautifully.

Watched the Criterion Blu-ray. Fantastic extras:

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Monte Hellman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, supervised by Hellman and presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
- Two audio commentaries: one by Hellman and filmmaker Allison Anders and one by screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer and author David N. Meyer
- Interviews with Hellman, actor James Taylor, musician Kris Kristofferson, producer Michael Laughlin, and production manager Walter Coblenz
- Rare screen test outtakes
- Performance and Image, a look at the restoration of…

Perhaps my favorite development among film fans over the past 10 to 15 years has been the ever-growing cult of those who now rank the great Warren Oates among their favorite actors. That's because Oates has been MY favorite actor for as long as I can remember. DVD and Blu-ray releases of many of his films have pushed his status much higher than the 'well-liked character actor' tag critics would define him with over the years...as a new generation of buffs take in the array of genuine and peerless performances the man's given over his too short career. I've stated it countless times to anyone who'd listen, Oates should had been nominated on several different occasions.

Which bring's me to…

Infinite emptiness. No beginning and no end; just the supposed coexistence of freedom and aimlessness for free birds not tied down to a place or a person. Unexplored past, ever-changing past, non-existent past, worthless past. The past might weigh heavy on them, or it might not mean anything at all. They don't let us in on their lives.

Operating on the roar of the engine that overtakes their silence and converses with them. The landscape is hypnotic and the road haunting, but their nomadic liberty is restricted to a mobile box of metal. There is no destination in mind. The world is an ineffably melancholic series of pit stops.

That freedom is false.
That aimlessness is omnipresent.

A seemingly eternal…