road to somewhere

It’s no secret that here at Black Tomato we’re fans of the road trip. Our affection for the open highways and hidden byways has taken us to India’s Himalayan gravel tracks, Switzerland’s magnetic race tracks and California’s sun-melded highways.  We’re the first to recgonise there’s a heavy dose of nostalgia woven into the pursuit of freedom that starts behind the steering wheel… so for the ultimate in vintage celluloid inspiration we probed our favourite insider film expert, Paul Hanford, for his definitive road movie.

The thing that defines the road movie is, well, road. And lots of it. The European Endless of Germany’s Autobahns and the American freeways work because they go on and on and on, letting the narratives unfold into Homeric proportions. This didn’t deter Chris Petit however from illuminating a journey from London to Bristol into mythic proportions. The little seen 1979 cult gem, Radio On, attempts to do this.

As a student during the Britpop wars, I’d haul my battered Polo each term from Dorset to Edinburgh. It’d take a working day: wipe my eyes awake at 9am, arrive back in the evening, this having included a few coffee and Ginsters stops. OK, its not the full length and breadth of the UK but more than covers England. A day is hardly epic, short on that road movie key: existential dilemma; running into The Man overcharging horrendously for pick n mix at Watford Gap is unlikely to turn my battered Polo into a symbol of freedom. Yet Radio On turns a short journey of aprox 120 miles into something blurry, mystic and potentially epic.

Partly down to the black and white photography reminiscent of Anton Corbijn’s Joy Division photos; partly its soundtrack of Berlin era Bowie and Kraftwerk, and possibly the over seeing hand that German road movie auteur Wim Wenders as producer gives the film an oblique edge, like trying to decipher a Neolithic rune. Adding that the driver spends a great deal of the time not driving, but stopping, getting out and looking moody, Radio On’s nods to nourish thriller can be taken or leaven, but what emerges is a document of rural British life, only 30 years old, yet already fading from our collective consciousness like Snickers being called Marathon.

Radio On proves, if you pace yourself, you can turn a trip to the Cost Cutter into Ulysses.