A Vision of the U.S. That Still Feels Urgent

Read Time:5 Minute, 28 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Route One/USA
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Genre: Documentary
Year Released: 1989, Icarus Films Blu-ray 2025
Runtime: 4h 14m (254m, presented in two parts)
Director(s): Robert Kramer
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.icarusfilms.com, www.vinegarsyndrome.com/, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: There’s no such thing as a simple road trip in Robert Kramer’s world. ROUTE ONE/USA isn’t about sightseeing or making the best time—it’s about the soul of a country through the lens of lives most people drive past without noticing. Originally released in 1989 and newly restored for a 2025 Blu-ray debut by Icarus Films and Vinegar Syndrome, this epic, four-hour-plus documentary stands as one of the most quietly radical explorations of America ever captured on camera.

Kramer, having spent years abroad, returns to the United States not with nostalgia but with a mission. His emphasis is on the word “back”—not “home.” To make sense of a fractured national identity, he travels the entire span of Route 1, stretching from the Canadian border down to Key West, Florida. He brings with him a companion: Doc, a fictional character portrayed by Paul McIsaac. This clever narrative enables the film to occupy a unique, compelling space between fiction and vérité, seamlessly merging staged introspection with spontaneous human encounters.

Though marketed as a road movie, the film offers little in the way of picturesque highway imagery. Instead, Kramer focuses on the stops—the intersections of lives and stories. From a Native American reserve in Maine to a homeless shelter serving Thanksgiving dinner in the South, each segment peels back a layer of America’s contradictions. We meet factory workers, evangelical preachers, political figures, and disillusioned veterans. We pass through the sacred (Walden Pond, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial) and the absurd (a sermon linking Disney to anti-apartheid movements). In the background, the presidential campaigns of Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson add to the era’s cultural and political chaos.

What emerges is less a travelogue and more a sprawling philosophical journal. Doc, though fictional, is empathetic and authentic in a way that anchors the viewer. He listens, questions, and provides an emotional plotline that allows these fragmented stories to connect without feeling like a greatest-hits compilation of American woes. His presence—melancholic and observant—gives voice to the film’s underlying meditation: how do you live with clarity in a nation built on contradictions?

Visually, Kramer’s camera is patient and precise. He finds rhythm not just in movement but in machinery, ritual, and routine. There’s poetry in watching Monopoly pieces being manufactured or sardines being tinned in a canning facility. These moments ground the film, emphasizing the systems and structures that are often overlooked in cinematic storytelling. He invests his lens with a quiet activism, suggesting that the political isn’t just about policy—it’s about process, labor, and belief.

Despite being filmed nearly four decades ago, ROUTE ONE/USA feels eerily omnipresent, maybe even more so today than when it was first filmed. The questions posed about race, religion, labor, and national identity remain relevant. If anything, the film’s refusal to offer resolution or reassurance makes it even more essential today. This is not a work designed to wrap up with a neat conclusion. It’s sprawling, meditative, and often deliberately slow—testing the viewer in ways that are both challenging and rewarding.

The 2025 Blu-ray edition gives the film new life in a stunning restoration. The release includes the feature-length companion documentary LOOKING FOR ROBERT by Richard Copans and a detailed booklet with an essay by Erika Balsom that contextualizes Kramer’s place in the cinematic and political landscape. It’s a release curated with reverence, acknowledging Kramer not just as a filmmaker but as a thinker whose work deserves continued examination.

If there’s a barrier to entry, it’s the runtime. At over four hours in length, this is a demanding watch. It doesn’t cater to short attention spans or reward casual viewing. But for those willing to meet it on its terms, the payoff is real. This is a film that doesn’t try to answer America’s problems but forces you to confront them, one stop at a time. I think the best part about my experience is that I didn’t know the film ran this long until I dove in. Even then, it never really feels like 4 hours.

ROUTE ONE/USA is as much a state of mind as it is a documentary. It’s about observation, contemplation, and confrontation. It doesn't entertain so much as it invites. And in its long stretches of stillness, in its curious detours and unresolved conversations, it finds something quietly monumental. Kramer might have been looking for a country, but what he captured was a mirror—flawed, cracked, but unmistakably real. I would be genuinely interested to see how closely the film resembles its original version if it were made today. Sure, new cars, different clothes, etc., but I think a lot of the feel of those towns, those sermons, and those people would remain.

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[photo courtesy of ICARUS FILMS, VINEGAR SYNDROME, OCN DISTRIBUTION]

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