Heart Beat (1979)
Director: John Byrum


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Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide

A minor (low budget) gem, with Nolte ambling ruefully through twenty years of the
American Dream as Neal Cassady, the superman-hero-hobo-lover of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road. Based on the autobiography of Carolyn Cassady (who is played with
calm brilliance by Spacek), the movie centres on her triangular life with two men,
warily sidestepping the hype and narcissism of Beat mythology and the parallel
temptation to indulge in an essay on Literary Genius. Instead, out of an episodic
narrative emerges a quiet contemplation of the vast spaces and suburban dreams
of the postwar period, a glowingly designed, occasionally tacky epic of America
from the Bomb to the Pill.