The Royal Road (2015)
A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.
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If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.