Jack is an unknown writer living in New York, or he's just starting to learn how to be a writer. He lives with his mother in a messy room all day long. The room smelled of cigarettes and coffee, with occasional sunlight streaming in through the glass. Every night he goes to bars, sings, dances, smokes marijuana, fucks women, or gets fucked by women. It may be fate that Jack meets Dean, because two similar souls will always meet at a certain moment in their lives and become the good or bad part of each other's memory.
The film begins with Jack wearing a red cotton plaid shirt, standing on the freeway for a ride to Denver. The Rocky Mountains in autumn are golden, it is the palace of idealists. It takes a lot of courage and support to choose to go against the society. Maybe we magnify his beliefs. There are no long arguments. You don't need to prove yourself, just experience. In a truck, he met homeless people from Montana and Colorado who didn't communicate much, just drinking, singing, and peeing on the rocking back of the car.
On the bus in an unfamiliar city, he met a single girl, so the plot took us to see the scene we wanted to see. In the tent where they had finished picking cotton, under the peeping eyes of their son, they danced with their crotches involuntarily, the hormones were splashing with desire. Of course, for a traveler, there is always meeting and leaving. So there are big trees next to the village, women's sorrow, and men's wandering. No one is right or wrong, people always meet and leave like this, paving the way for the next encounter.
Soon he arrived in Denver, and in the middle of the dark night, walking through the deserted streets, Jack and Dean met. So women appeared smoothly, women who had not yet been able to dress neatly in underwear, women with blond hair and lustful eyes, one by one. Dean takes his buddies from New York, out and about, whiskey, beer, marijuana, music, and idealism. Meet some artists, homeless people, waitresses, chatting, drinking, smoking, and having sex. The next day I always wake up on some sofa, in the sun.
Jack kept writing in a notebook, a pencil, with Dean's whimsy. Writing may be a record. Those lives that have been experienced or heard from others, those unfamiliar or familiar lives, are reconstructed in the author's mind, and then repeated line by line through pencil. Then the reconstructed things may be unreal or fabricated, but it does not affect the charm of the text at all, because this is the life you like, and you don't care about a little mistake.
A large number of characters, men and women, meet and miss, and men appear in order to elicit women and ideals. Women appear to elicit lust and grief, which always oscillate between duty and ideal. The yearning for a stable life and the search for an ideal switch back and forth between the plots. In the end, there is neither a stable life nor a bullshit ideal. Life is still as swaying and uncertain as ever. Jack couldn't articulate the meaning of life, and Dean couldn't articulate the meaning of life either. There seems to be no search from the beginning, because you don't know the direction, and there are always unfamiliar villages and towns ahead, the sound of galloping motors and the falling snow. The cafe's rambunctious notes and dawns and sunsets enter and fade out.
The threesome of Jack and Dean having sex, jerking off on the highway, maybe just having nothing to do and need to find an exit. The development of American society cannot eliminate the diseases and poverty of the lower class and the depravity and impetuousness of the upper class. Many problems are hidden in quiet corners and need to be torn apart to face them.
Dean soon had two children and a wife, but he was torn between responsibilities and ideals. The cuteness of the child made him feel guilty, but the dullness of life made him unacceptable. The last glimmer of hope At the end of the film, Dean says it took him five days and five nights to come to him from Denver, and Jack remembers when he was in Mexico, when Dean left him seriously ill and left alone with his wallet. Jack rejected Dean, and at the same time refused to continue this life. Jack put life back on track, Dean was still wandering, selfishness and confusion brought despair to life.
Difficulties and pressures are just excuses for unwillingness to take responsibility. Facing them bravely is the way to solve them. Escape and rejection never require courage. Find a no-man's land and hide yourself. It should not be poetry and distance.
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