small roads

The ne plus ultra of road movies, small roads is precisely what its title indicates. James Benning claims his film is best described by making a list of the 47 roads in question and the cars that drive on them, which together denote a circular journey through America’s west and south over the seasons.
But let’s speak in grander terms: small roads is digital cinema as virtuoso landscape painting, depicting each two-lane blacktop from a central perspective, each 16:9 countryside highway glistening under the hot sun, shrouded in fog, or coated with a dusting of mid-winter snow. In its execution, small roads most resembles Benning’s final 16mm masterpiece RR, in that the action (or here, stasis) inside the frame determines the length of each shot; but with each shot being a careful, invisible digital composite, the suddenly prolific Benning is up to more than just ‘looking and listening’.

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