The Royal Road

Name: The Royal Road
Genre: History, Documentary
Released: October 30, 2015
Duration: 65 min
Rating: 65

2015

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Generally favorable reviews based on 6 Critic Reviews

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The Royal Road

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Movie Details & Credits

Film Collaborative, The | Release Date: October 30, 2015 | Not Rated

Summary: A cinematic essay in defense of remembering, The Royal Road offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity, the pursuit of unavailable women and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban CaliforniaA cinematic essay in defense of remembering, The Royal Road offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity, the pursuit of unavailable women and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes, and featuring a voiceover cameo by Tony Kushner.… Expand

Director: Jenni Olson

Genre(s): History, Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 65 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Melissa Anderson

Oct 27, 2015

As personal as it is political, Olson's meditative project offers a profound lesson on intimacy and history — and the ways in which both are distorted and remade by memory. Read full review

The Playlist Drew Taylor

Oct 26, 2015

What keeps The Royal Road from feeling like its trapped in amber is the genuine heartbreak that Olson clearly feels, the rawness of her emotions and her dedicated willingness to share. Read full review

Dennis Harvey

Oct 26, 2015

While this free-ranging agenda might easily have seemed overly random or pretentious, Olson’s confessional tenor lends it all a stream-of-consciousness intimacy. Read full review

Boyd van Hoeij

Oct 26, 2015

If this ambitious film never quite coheres into a single whole, something that an artificial division into several chapters only helps to underline, it does provide a lot to chew on along the way. Read full review

Clayton Dillard

Oct 26, 2015

The cumulative effect is altogether perplexing, as it's difficult to tell if Olson's trying to upend clichés or settle for them. Read full review

Glenn Kenny

Oct 29, 2015

Ms. Olson’s images are often captivating, but too often undercut by the aforementioned aspiring-to-the-dialectical voice-over, which is awkwardly written, and delivered with a lack of affect that grows tedious over the course of an hour. Read full review

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