The Origins of Cool.

The Source, a stirring, kaleidoscopic documentary about the Beat generation and its legacy, spans from the exultant 1940s photo of the young friends Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs to the Jeopardy show on which contestants could win money by asking, "Who were the Beats?" ("Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were part of this group of writers.") And it moves beyond, to the point of becoming a ghost story. "It's eternity all the time, so there's no point being nostalgic for eternity," Ginsberg (who died in 1997) is heard saying. But that wisdom runs counter to the moving experience of watching this film unfold.

Filmmaker Chuck Workman looks at many different facets of the Beats, an artistic and literary movement of the 1950s that condemned conformity and false values, and celebrated artistic freedom. But he doesn't treat them with kid-gloves reverence. This is a film in which Bob Hope, Alfred Hitchcock, and Fred Flintstone can each be seen sporting a goatee and beret in parody of the beatnik style.

KEROUAC ON TV

However well known the assorted Beat legends have become, there is a cumulative power to seeing so many of them evoked so colorfully in a single film. And even viewers who know a great deal about Kerouac, for example, may be surprised by his later talk-show appearances, like the one in which he blearily insists that the Vietnam War is a Vietnamese plot to garner American Jeeps.

The pictures seen here do a lot of the storytelling by themselves, especially when images of these rebels at their most young and beautiful are contrasted with scenes of their later years. Dazzling scenes of Neal Cassady dancing bare-chested, with the look of home-movie snippets and an air of utter joy and abandon, speak volumes about why Cassady became legendary even among his own friends. "He wasn't destined to grow old," Ferlinghetti says of him. "He was always young and he always will be."

In addition to offering a magic-bus trip down memory lane, The Source has serious work to do: capturing the spirit of Beat poetry, watching it evolve from passionate outpourings into a source of caricature, and following its effects on later generations. Several well-chosen actors bring the writing to life: Johnny Depp intoning Kerouac, John Turturro giving a fiercely emotional reading from Ginsberg's poem "Howl," and Dennis Hopper with the right hat and the right attitude for echoing Burroughs. Perhaps the purest expression of the Beat ethos comes slightly later, from author Ken Kesey, who is asked by an interviewer: "Mr. Kesey, do you feel that you have the right to do what you want, whatever you want, and still live in this world?"

Kesey answers: "I feel that a man has a right to be as big as he feels it in him to be."

Finally, there is the official recognition: commemorative ceremonies, Gap ads featuring Beats in khakis, and even Kerouac's words emblazoned on a coffee mug. The film could attack these crass exploitations, but instead, it finds them amusing. It has no doubt that the Beats still have true descendants, and that they keep the faith.