Sound Sleeper

By Stefan Kanfer

Like Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces before it, Goin' Down the Road is one of the new "road" films in which a stretch of asphalt provides the metaphoric core. Pete (Doug McGrath) and his pal Joey (Paul Bradley) are two wistful roustabouts from the Canadian Maritime Provinces. With 30 bucks and an abused Chevrolet labeled "My Nova Scotia Home," they pick up and head for Toronto.

It is only a question of time before the yokels discover the rottenness of the Big Apple. Unskilled and inarticulate, they dream of opportunity, but the only jobs they can pick up are loading crates for $80 a week. The only girls they can pick up are either imbecilic or overeager--so much so that Joey gets one pregnant and marries her in a seizure of romantic guilt. The jobs evaporate; to survive, the trio becomes a menage a trois. The bad luck persists with the tenacity of winter. Tn lunatic desperation, the men commit a petty crime that escalates into violence. The only way out is the way west, and once again the Nova Scotia Home consumes the miles.

In spirit. Goin' Down the Road is closer to the intimacies of Marty than to the paranoid swagger of Easy Rider. It is weakest when its score laments "just another victim of the rainbow." It is persuasive and forceful when it studies the social pathology of urban outpatients, men who chivy and moon, boasting of the rural splendors that they once fled, dreaming of the Big Strike, and buying color television sets on time.

Canadian Director Donald Shebib, who made the film on the minute budget of $82,000, has a sense of place that is as certain as his sense of mood and character. The metallic touch of downtown and the dolor of the provinces are both conveyed with an empathy that requires no comment. If there are fewer dramatic crescendos, there are even fewer false notes. If there are crudities of editing, there is a delicate palette of local color. Like the scene from a window, the view is curtailed and cornered, but within the frame it is unblinking and whole.

Canadian film has become a connoisseur's delight. But like its best actresses--Genevieve Bujold, Joanna Shimkus, Margot Kidder--it can no longer be contained at the border. If Shebib can make a polished sleeper for less than one-twentieth the cost of, say, Getting Straight, what could he do with $2,000,000? If there is any justice in the film world (or any astute Hollywood money), the answer to that question should be forthcoming soon.

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