The journey has always been a crucial theme in cinema, whether of the emotional or psychological variety, where a character embarks on an arc of self discovery; or a geographical journey that takes characters to a new life in a new place. The latter, of course, is frequently a metaphor for the former. In America particularly the journey is a particularly potent dramatic theme. Discovered by explorers, populated by pioneers and later by immigrants from around the world, the nation and its psyche is built upon its ancestors’ journeys to a promised land.
Travel – the epic adventure on the open road – is often as attractive and evocative as the reason for that travel. Hence in cinema, for road movies like Easy Rider (1969)