Benning’s latest work fits in perfectly with his extensive oeuvre of landscape films. In small roads, Benning films 47 roads in the USA. Not only expansive landscapes crossed by trains, but also narrow lanes where only an occasional animal or vehicle passes.
The ne plus ultra of road movies, small roads is precisely what its title indicates. James Benning claims his film is best described by making a list of the 47 roads in question and the cars that drive on them, which together denote a circular journey through America’s west and south over the seasons.
But let’s speak in grander terms: small roads is digital cinema as virtuoso landscape painting, depicting each two-lane blacktop from a central perspective, each 16:9 countryside highway glistening under the hot sun, shrouded in fog, or coated with a dusting of mid-winter snow. In its execution, small roads most resembles Benning’s final 16mm masterpiece RR, in that the action (or here, stasis) inside the frame determines the length of each shot; but with each shot being a careful, invisible digital composite, the suddenly prolific Benning is up to more than just 'looking and listening'.