When Speed Is Necessity But No Longer A Thrill
Then Road Becomes A Philosophy

I don’t usually write about movies. Mostly because I end up watching movies like Godfather, GoodFellas which leave me speechless or like Mithun Da’s Loha, Shera which leave me mentally paralyzed. Not quite often do I get a chance to watch something, which reings my thoughts for the next few days. One such movie was Vanishing Point. Watched it three days ago, it still refuses to leave my mind.

Released in 1971, this movie may look like just another adrenaline pump flick from its posters. At least that’s how the director wanted it to be. But it didn’t take many days from its release for them to realize that it had achieved a cult status.

*************************************************************
SPOILER WARNING
*************************************************************

The Story is as simple as you can imagine. In fact, if someone were to tell the story, it wouldn’t even take them 5 minutes to cover it, unless they start blabbering about the cinematic excellence. A 1971 Dodge Challenger, Alpine White, with a Supercharged Magnum engine - a never tiring driver - a blind radio jockey - desert bound highways of American West - Cops - and a search for end. Throw all of these together and you’ve got yourself Vanishing Point.

The movie stars Barry Newman (named Kowalski) as a car delivery driver. His job is to pick up cars from one city and drop them off to another (all legally). The movie does provide glimpses of his previous life, where he was in Vietnam War, then as a law enforcement officer and finally ending up as a professional race car and motorbike driver. But that was before he joined this serene job. He uses Speed to keep him going and keeps pushing himself over the fatigue limit. When he picks up a Dodge Challenger from Denver to be delivered to San Francisco, he makes a bet with his friend that he can deliver this car in 15 hours, which was highly impossible unless he drove like a maniac. Beginning with a simple chase where two highway patrol cops on motorbike try to pull him over for speeding, Kowalski takes the plunge at the point of no return - The Vanishing Point. From here, it was either jail or death. But this journey to the end had its share of surprises, from snake catchers to nude bike riders.

But the deepest moments of the movie was the telepathic bond that developed between Kowalski and Super Soul (played by Cleavon Little), a blind African American Radio Jockey at a radio station named KOW. He keeps listening to police frequencies to update his fans of all the action going on around them. Beginning of this chase was no different for him. But as the chase progresses and he follows the account of Kowalski’s actions, both start feeling the link between them. Super Soul helps Kowalski with the location of police traps and setups (courtesy: listening to police frequency). He “talks” to Kowalski through his radio (to which Kowalski is tuned in) and in the process gets attacked by (probably) KKK members in the process. This doesn’t deter him from resuming his strange relationship. And when he gets back to the station from hospital, he declares on air, what will probably be remembered as the most famous lines from this movie:

This radio station was named Kowalski, in honour of the last American heroes to whom speed means freedom of the soul. The question is not when you ‘ll stop, but who is gonna stop them

This was, of course, preceded by a scene where they had put the letters “WALSKI” in front of this radio station named “KOW”. Near the end, police cars setup two bulldozers on the road to stop him. At the first go, Kowalski takes a screeching U-turn in front of the bulldozers and goes off road into the barren desert, where he stops his car, gets out and thinks. Next scene shows him riding full throttle towards the two bulldozers, with the sun gleaming through the slit between two bulldozer plates, and finally crashes full speed into them, giving a very content smile before that.

Vanishing Point usually refers to a point at which parallel lines seem to converge. Stand at one end of a long straight road and you’ll be able to see this at the other end. In a painter’s perspective, this is the end. For Kowalski, perhaps this was the beginning. The beginning of freedom.