In Brief: ‘The Source’

The Source, a documentary about the Beats, brings together an astonishing assortment of clips from the past 50 years of counterculturedom and then Mixmasters them into a hailstorm of fragments interspersed with dramatized performances by Johnny Depp, John Turturro, and Dennis Hopper (who was born to read Burroughs). Director Chuck Workman, who assembles those great-moments-in-movies montages for the Oscars, applies the same technique here: Everything is so lickety-split that very little sinks in. What’s the point of a movie about the Beats if it doesn’t get you high?

In Brief: ‘The Source’