Road to Nowhere could be subtitled Monte Hellman’s Jigsaw Puzzle. It’s the first film in twenty years from 79-year-old cult director Hellman, and he has delivered a multi-layered riddle that challenges the audience. There is the story of a crime as it was originally understood, the story of what really happened and the story of a film being made about the crime. The same actors play the characters in all three stories. One of the actors in the movie may actually be one of the participants in the original crime.
It’s not a film for everyone. You must be willing to accept that the story is not going to make sense for a while, and some issues are never going to be resolved. If you can engage in the puzzle, there’s enough of a payoff.
My guilty pleasures include Hellman’s 1974 Cockfighter with Warrren Oates and his 1971 Two-Lane Blacktop with Oates and James Taylor (yes, the singer-songwriter James Taylor). Road to Nowhere is far more stylish and ambitious than those films, but far more baffling.
In Road to Nowhere, the director of the film within the film discovers and becomes besotted, even obsessed, with his leading lady – and things do not turn out happily. I had to think of the female lead in Two Lane Blacktop, Laurie Bird; Hellman had a relationship with Bird, who later became Art Garfunkle’s companion and committed suicide in Garfunkle’s apartment.
Other recent DVD picks have been Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman and The Music Never Stopped.
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