You might wonder, what kind of movie is Two-Lane Blacktop for? The cover might suggest a road movie, or the premise that it's about drag racers going across the country, one in a grey Chevy and the other in a GTO, would make it an action or chase movie. Or having the random pairing of music stars Dennis Wilson (Beach Boys) and James Taylor (the latter in his only film), accompanied by Warren Oates, would make it an oddity of movie casting. It is a road movie, but in the same sense that Camus' The Stranger is a movie about murder. One has to hearken back to Ebert's saying of a movie's interest not being in what it's about but how it's about it. This is a film where we keep getting sidetracked from the conventions and get into a framework that's contemplative, quiet a lot of times.<br /><br />Indeed the big word for Two-Lane Blacktop is alienation. The way it was made itself was alienating (in a possible tip-of-the-hat to Godard with Breathless, the cast didn't get the script, despite being written by a brilliant novelist named Rudy Wurlitzer), its characters alienating to each other even as they never get too aggressive or over-active. In fact, it's a truly fascinating study of inertness; these characters only have to suggest, or barely even that, how they're outcasts. Little physical gestures like the way that Taylor's Driver stops to hear love-making in a motel room, stands by the door a moment partially frozen, and then sits with knees folded to the chest for what would appear to be quite a while. Or just those interactions the Driver, Mechanic, GTO and Girl have when they stop to get a bite to eat or get gas or a new part.<br /><br />It's a chase movie, therefore, without the chase. This will frustrate most viewers not ready for it, that much should be clear. There is no real 'story', and whenever things look like they're about to pick up in terms of "things happening", like the scene where the GTO is pulled over by the cop and Driver to stops to give an unnecessary lie or when Girl makes the decision to ride with GTO, other things take its place to suddenly move it into just being about something else entirely. Maybe that is, in a sense, why it's a pure road movie. We're on it with them, it's sincerely realistic (if maybe leaning toward the super-stoic), and it's gorgeous to look at almost all of the time. Not just the obvious of the cars on route 66, but little things like the compositions at night of the riders in the car, the steadiness that adds to the minimalism.<br /><br />From its performances by professional (Oates and Stanton's walk-on) and non (everybody else), to the sturdy visual obsession with the physical prowess of 60s/70s cars, it's ultimately a great movie to just watch by yourself, in your home late at night, and sit and really think about what you saw. Again, not for everyone. But as an acquired taste, you could do a lot worse.