Gasoline Rainbow review – glows brightly

The precariousness of youth, the excitement of discovery and the overwhelming truth that you have to be the master of your own destiny sits at the heart of the Ross brothers latest experiment in hybrid filmmaking. Gasoline Rainbow is a fictional road trip movie that was seeded during lockdown. The pair came up with a set of scenarios and guided five high-school graduates from their hometown of Wiley, Oregon to the Pacific coast.

Nathaly, Makai, Tony, Nichole and Micah are all on the cusp of adulthood and painfully aware that this short break from reality is a rare chance to grasp at pure freedom. Crammed into a dodgy campervan, the kids improvise their dialogue while the brothers focus on their behaviour, comic observations and the awe-inspiring natural beauty around them. Early in the film they sing along to Guns N’ Roses, then quickly turn their attention to dreaming about how wonderful it would have been to go clubbing in the 1990s. This is all while they are messaging on their iPhones (a mind-blowing technological advancement to those who came of age during the ’90s).

The film as, “The cast of Streetwise navigating the wild roads of Easy Rider.” If you watch Martin Bell’s Streetwise documentary from 1984 now, it offers an alarming time-capsule of diminishing hope felt by disenfranchised Seattle kids living on the streets. The real recorded voiceover of the young cast of Gasoline Rainbow that plays over the film is clearly a nod to Bell’s documentary. Even though the scenarios are manufactured, the emotions are disarmingly raw; naïve yet depressingly worldweary. This is a generation that has been born into a time where climate change is beyond a pressing issue and the directors thrust the young cast into enchanting scenes of euphoric nature.

The people they meet on their journey include some nomadic punks who teach them how to ride the rails and a skateboarder who dons a sea captain hat and refers to himself as ‘nautical by nature.’ They are all runaways. Some have rebelled from hateful upbringings and others are recovering from addiction issues. Visually the film acknowledges the digital age with multiple drunk selfies and snapshots of landscapes and cities, while sonically it is a curious experiment in juxtaposition. The soundtrack is a reminder of how music can shape and influence a person while also acting as a generational connector.

The fashion of the ’90s is vibrantly alive via the enthusiasm of the teenagers; there are hints of Harmony Korine’s dirtbag opus, Gummo, in places but this strikes a more poetic note in its portrayal of Gen Z by taking its lead from T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’. It amounts to more than just ‘a heap of broken images’ – it’s a warming depiction of friendship as family.

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