Captivating, but one can’t shake that nagging feeling that self-indulgence is afoot.
Effectively a collage of footage shot by author Ken Kesey during one of his many psychedelic excursions across America with Neal Cassady and their band of Merry Pranksters in the mid-1960s, Magic Trip serves as a fitting homage to an era immortalised by its legendary drug culture.
Filmed on their travels over the years, with little purpose other than to chronicle their acid-fuelled journey, Kesey and his friends amassed hours of footage. Despite botched attempts to edit the tapes by the pranksters themselves, the footage had remained largely unedited and otherwise forgotten until 2005 when director Alex Gibney happened upon and decided to resurrect them for a modern audience.
Here, pieced together for the first time by Gibney and editing partner Alison Ellwood, Kesey’s home videos are meticulously reconstructed and combined with a plethora of archive materials, ranging from audio recordings of Kesey’s first dalliance with acid, radio interviews and reconstructions of transcripts from the pranksters themselves. All these elements combine to provide a vivid picture of an America all but lost to the passing of time.
Today, Kesey’s images take on a whole new meaning, providing a unique glimpse of 1960s drug-addled America for a very different generation but while Gibney’s fascination with the subject is plain to see, it’s often jarringly apparent that the film is tailored to a far more niche audience than it initially lets on.
Stanley Tucci’s voiceover narration cleverly links together audio snippets in the style of a radio interview, but these occasional moments of exposition do little to provide much-needed historical context for the uninitiated.
Contextual gripes aside, however, there’s no disputing that Gibney and Ellwood’s agonising reconstruction of the tapes makes for a compelling and unparalleled insight in to a period of American history a period long since passed, but never forgotten. The real question is whether or not anyone below a certain age is likely to care.
A visual insight in to a strangely elusive part of the American Dream.
Captivating, but one can’t shake that nagging feeling that self-indulgence is afoot.
Regularly fascinating, but often somewhat inaccessible in its lack of historical context for the uninitiated.
