“Americano”: A Backpacker Travel Movie Worth Seeing?

Too few travel-themed movies capture the spirit of travel as we see it at World Hum. “Before Sunrise” did. So, too, did “The Motorcycle Diaries.” This new film in limited release, Americano, sounds like it has potential. It focuses on a recent college graduate played by Joshua Jackson who is contemplating his future as his trip to Europe winds down during Pamplona’s San Fermin festival. Interestingly, actors in the movie were filmed as they participated in the actual Running of the Bulls.  In a three-paragraph review in today’s Los Angeles Times, critic Kevin Crust praises the film: “Writer-director Kevin Noland effectively utilizes his fine young cast and the natural beauty and rich culture of northern Spain in amiably posing timeless questions of youth.”

The film’s Web site includes a statement from Noland:

What inspired the story? That enchanting feeling of waking up in a foreign country at dawn and looking out the window and realizing you are totally surrounded by adventure. I wanted to capture the beauty of truly experiencing other cultures. I wanted to show why it’s important to step outside our system and look at it from a different perspective. Life is a mysterious entity held together through a web of diversity. How boring the world would be if there was one terrain, one language, one way of doing things. Divided we stand.

I knew in order to provoke people to travel I would have to put the audience inside a mysterious world most have never experienced. Therefore, the choice was made to take an enormous, albeit calculated risk. In the process of bringing this story to the screen, the cast and crew literally risked their lives. They actually ran with the bulls to bring a level of reality to the picture that would allow the audience to experience the “awakening” of Chris McKinley. Joshua Jackson even slapped a charging bull as it was captured on camera. Furthermore, we enlisted a professional Spanish bullfighter to allow us to film him during an actual bullfight at the San Fermin festival. Shooting real time inside a packed arena had not been done until AMERICANO, which allowed me to provoke important discussions of cultural relativism.

Noland concludes, “The power of travel has become a movement of enlightenment. I hope AMERICANO inspires further exploration of one’s self through the world of other cultures.”

“Americano” opens today in Los Angeles and April 14 in New York.

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