On the Road with Judas (Sundance Film Review)

This is one of those films that takes forever to simply explain. Director J.J. Lask is in the film as himself, an author of the book On the Road with Judas, and in the film he has created the screenplay for his book. There is a fantastical interview show, where the characters of the book and the screenplay actors meet. Each version of the characters tell the love story they are embarking on. While oddly complex, Lask does a decent job of making it easy to understand. This is truly one of the cliché indie films. In true postmodern form, this film is all about taking a seemingly ordinary love story and telling it in an extraordinary way. People’s inability to move past broken hearts drives this story, causing all those emotional, love-sick, anti-Valentine’s day people to be reminded, once again, that they are alone and it’s their own fault. The end of this film accents this nicely. While the story of the major characters in the novel and screenplay is happening, a subplot about Lask occurs where he tries to convince the novel’s romantic interest to allow him to write the book and eventually screenplay about her. In the final moments of the film he is sleeping with her and talking to her about how she was portrayed. But when the camera pans back to the bed, she is gone. It’s a powerful moment that reveals that the paralyzing nature of love cannot change without choice.