Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Roads Not Taken’ on Hulu, a Mournful Portrait of a Man in the Throes of Dementia

Now streaming on Hulu, The Roads Not Taken is the story of a man picturing the lives he might have lived while in the throes of dementia. The movie itself, from writer-director Sally Potter (Orlando) might have enjoyed a different life if its theatrical run wasn’t suddenly truncated by the COVID-19 lockdown. But an argument can be made that this drama and its raw emotions might be nicely suited to the intimacy of home viewing.

THE ROADS NOT TAKEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The phone rings, over and over. The intercom buzzes and buzzes and buzzes. Leo (Javier Bardem) lies in bed, awake, but not responding. Finally, his daughter Molly (Elle Fanning) opens the door and enters the apartment with Leo’s caretaker, and they’re relieved to see he’s OK — or at least in the same mentally blank state he usually inhabits. Smack in the heart of New York City, the apartment rumbles with every passing train, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s possibly agoraphobic, and verbally inarticulate with a chronically puzzled, lost expression. He has dentist and optometrist appointments this morning, so Molly’s work is cut out for her. She calls in to work and says she’ll be in by lunchtime.

The movie cuts to another scene, in a pink room in an adobe house. Leo awakens next to his wife Dolores (Salma Hayek); they verbally quarrel about doing something he deems “superstitious,” but she deems essential. She leaves. He chases the truck on foot, then hitches a ride with farmers hauling a truckload of corn. They drop him off, and he kneels next to a memorial site — cross, flowers, an air of sorrow — on the side of the road. Cut to another scene, on a Greek island, where Leo sits at a seaside bar with pen and notebook. Two young women sit at an adjacent table, and he asks them for advice on how to end his story. The one with the big smile and blonde hair, Anni (Milena Tscharntke), reminds him of his daughter, he says — the daughter he hasn’t seen for a long time. The women leave, and he follows, as a puppy might chase a child; he stumbles and falls on the rocks, and Anni helps him up, sits with him, talks with him.

Meanwhile, Molly navigates Leo in and out of taxis to the dentist, where he wets himself; she gives him her pants and is content to go bare-legged beneath her long coat. He opens the door of a moving cab, hits his head, bleeds, ends up in the emergency room. Her mother, his ex-wife, Rita (Laura Linney) arrives; clearly, her patience for him eroded long ago. Molly soldiers on, to a store for new pants for both of them, to the optometrist. She’s impatient with doctors, store customers, dentists who insist on referring to Leo in the third person, as if he isn’t in the room. He’s physically present, for certain. But mentally? We can’t be sure.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If Bardem’s cancer-stricken character from Biutiful was living in a Sliding Doors-type conceptual reality, the result would be in the same ballpark as The Roads Not Taken.

Performance Worth Watching: If Fanning keeps giving us performances like this one — and in 20th Century Women, and in The Neon Demon — she’ll land Oscar nominations. Her performance is heart wrenching as Molly tightropes between chasms of denial and acceptance of her father’s condition as she sacrifices her own well-being for his safety.

Memorable Dialogue: Molly tearfully addresses her dad in one of his rare lucid moments: “However far away you go, whatever they say, you are always you.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Potter reportedly cared for her brother as he struggled with dementia, so The Roads Not Taken comes from an honest and tangible emotional place. That’s perhaps why the scenes with Fanning and Bardem are so emotionally direct and effective; rife with astringent truths and raw emotion, these are the film’s strongest moments, when the actors render the screenplay’s melodrama potent and real.

The other realities inside Leo’s head are even more bleak. The Mexico timeline, where Leo pairs with a long-lost love from his youth, explores a different avenue of tragedy; the scenes on the Greek isle render him creatively fulfilled in his work as a writer (at least that’s how I interpreted the implications of the scenario), but emotionally isolated, and likely desperate for human contact. Potter weaves these scenes into the NYC narrative with a slightly clumsy hand, and the vibrant, sometimes visually poetic alternate timelines in Leo’s head seem to exist primarily as mechanisms of irony: He’s unable to communicate with Molly or function in his surroundings, and even the overwhelming bustle of New York can’t shake him from his psychological stasis.

All three realities are portraits of suffering, and I’m not sure the fictional ones are entirely necessary. Life is pain; the point is made. A better film exists, perhaps, in the story of Molly and Leo, about what their life used to be and what it has become. As it is, The Roads Not Taken at least ends with a moment of bittersweet hope, a ray of light, temporary as it may be, amidst the darkness. The movie seems to be reaching too far and too intently for profundity, when a simpler and more effective story is right there, within reach.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Fanning’s efforts make The Roads Not Taken a potentially cathartic watch, especially for those close to the subject matter — and if you don’t mind the movie’s depressing tone.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Roads Not Taken on Hulu