1 week ago
71
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
- ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’
- ‘Bodkin’
- ‘The Fall Guy’
- ‘The Idea of You’
- ‘Challengers’
- ‘Unfrosted’
Critic’s Pick
This semi-fictional tale of a road trip for weirdos is full of joy.
May 9, 2024, 5:06 a.m. ET
The thesis of “Gasoline Rainbow,” the latest cinematic fantasia from the brothers Bill and Turner Ross, is articulated in its first moments, in voice-over set atop a sunset. “Sometimes when I look at night, I see that light over the hills, and I just wonder what it’s like … to be there,” a youthful voice says wistfully. The speaker wants to know if they’re alone in being who they are — a “weirdo,” as they put it. “I want to be out,” they continue. “I want to be myself, I want to be accepted. I want to be loved for who I am.”
Technically we’ve not yet met this person, but that doesn’t matter: We know them. The misfit outsider is a familiar character in movies and literature, and often possesses some wisdom that people trapped in the more conventional daily grind can’t see. There’s a tiny bit of the prophet in every outsider — and, of course, all prophets are outsiders.
“Gasoline Rainbow” is a technically fictional tale of five such misfits who get in a car and go on a journey toward the Pacific Coast. I say “technically,” because like much of the Rosses’ work, there’s not much separation between reality and make-believe. Their previous film, for instance, the 2020 sorta-documentary “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” sets up a scenario — the final night at a Vegas dive bar, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election — and populates it with real drinkers, who have a real rager on camera. But the bar itself wasn’t technically closing, it wasn’t in Vegas and these people weren’t regulars there. What, you might ask yourself, are you watching?
You are watching people figure out how to live at the end of the world, how to relate to one another and find joy in the middle of loss and uncertainty. Whether or not the scenario is staged, the human heart of it is absolutely real. “Gasoline Rainbow” is a little like “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets,” in that the five teenagers at its center, playing versions of themselves, are looking for a “party at the end of the world” that they’ve heard about. But mostly they are there to be with one another, and it’s obvious their real personalities are part of the story.
The five travelers — Tony Aburto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia, Makai Garza — are all friends in Wiley, Ore. (a town which, incidentally, doesn’t exist). They’re seeking “one last fun adventure we can all do together” before they have to return home and get real jobs. These are kids who didn’t like school and didn’t like home life. In another movie, they’d be delinquents running from the law.
