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Love Always, Carolyn
Maria Ramström and Malin Korkeasalo (Sweden, International Spectrum)
Tuesday, May 3, 7 p.m.
Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles Street)
Thursday, May 5, 12:45 p.m.
TIFF Bell Lightbox 2 (350 King Street West)
Sunday, May 8, 9 p.m.
Cumberland 3 (159 Cumberland Street)
In a way it’s still kind of astonishing that the Beat generation remains so present in the American imagination. You’d think at this stage of capitalism, it’d be impossible to entertain the dream of escaping, fleet-footed, across America, effectively dropping out of civilization. But as if they’re trying to reassert the fantasy itself, pics about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and all those other scruffy ne’er-do-wells keep rolling out.
And there’s Love Always, Carolyn, a film about the later life of Neal Cassady’s widow and Jack Kerouac’s lover. There are some really great, bitterly funny moments here, as when a collector of first editions of beat novels comes scampering in her door to inspect an inscription in a book and fawns about its value as Carolyn grumbles in the background. For years, she’s been at odds with all the warm-fuzzy swooning about the beats in her life, whose myths rarely fit the real men. Kerouac depicted her husband as a loose canon buzzing with energy and authenticity; she thought he was a deadbeat dad for taking off on her and her children to go road-tripping down to Mexico with his buddies.
In this sense, Love Always, Carolyn attempts to undermine the self-printed legends of the beat generation. But at the end of the day, it only ends up recertifying them. After all, if they weren’t important, would we otherwise be interested in watching a movie about Neal Cassady’s widow? Or seeing Neal Cassady’s son speak at beat conventions? That said, if you’re a real beat-head, Love Always, Carolyn should tide you over until that film about Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s uncle’s barber’s cat secures a release.