The film directed by Gus Van Sant "Don't Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot", which tells about the life of paralyzed cartoonist John Callahan, is not at all like the previous works of the director. I think that against the background of the latest paintings by Van Sant, one way or another talking to the audience about death, this work looks like an anthem to optimism and vitality (and is also replete with very funny and absolutely not politically correct cartoons).
In the picture, a deliberately careless caricature, several cowboys on the prairie. They look at an empty wheelchair, and one says to the other: "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot" The phrase and picture in the film’s title belong to John Callahan, an American cartoonist who remained paralyzed after a car accident - due to a spinal cord injury, he not only lost his legs, but almost didn’t work his hands. Despite this, Callahan got out of the depression, quit drinking and became famous throughout the country for his witty and evil drawings. In addition, eight years after his death about him took a picture of Gus Van Sant.
It is difficult not to draw parallels between the career of the director and his hero. Gus Van Sant has gone through several professional crises. He, the author of the independent hits "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho", was accused of selling the soul to the mainstream twenty years ago, when he took down the Oscar-winning "Good Will Hunting", desperately scolded for an empty formalism in a remake of "Psycho", was finally buried after the blissful "Finding Forrester". Then they again chanted for the experimental "Gerry" and "Elephant" ("Golden Palm" in Cannes-2003). They were again blamed for "Promised Land" and actually destroyed for the unfortunate "The Sea of Trees", which they did not even let out to hire - and this despite the leading roles of Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts. Van Sant endured everything and was reborn from the ashes again: his new painting is fascinating, touching, convincing.
"Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot" is a film in which it is extremely difficult to identify a former innovator. Despite the eccentric headline, this is a decent movie that contains all the elements necessary for success: a fascinating biography at the heart of the script, a story of collapse and subsequent restoration, a super-idea of the "American dream" and a star cast. Innocent viewers should like this picture, touch them and even make them remember the name of the main character, which until now only experts could know about. Is this a capitulation or a calculating game for the public?
To begin with, the project for this biopic for Van Sant is not a conjuncture story, but a personal one. Callahan hails from Portland, where the director has been living since the early 1980s, they were well acquainted. The plan of this film they hatched together. Callahan was initially bribed by the fact that Robin Williams was to play his role (it was right after the success of "Good Will Hunting"). Now that both the hero and the actor have died, Van Sant has made the film a peculiar manifesto of the unexpected optimism and love of life.
It is curious that the place of Williams in the leading role and in a wheelchair was taken by Joaquin Phoenix, an eminent American actor of modern times, whose career began in distant 1995 with the role in Van Sant's comedy "To Die For". It is impossible not to recall that two years before this debut, the elder brother of Joaquin, actor River Phoenix, who played his best role in My Own Private Idaho, died tragically early from a drug overdose.
The theme of self-destruction is what Gus Van Sant is obsessed with from his first paintings. No matter how bright and life-affirming his new film may be, it directly reflects the thoughts that have been chasing the director over the years. The alcoholism and suicidal tendencies of Callahan, an orphan who grew up in a foster family and never found a job for himself, force us to immediately recall the same "Drugstore Cowboy"; his restlessness and loneliness - "My Own Private Idaho"; unrealized creative ambitions - "To Die For".
"Gerry", "Elephant", "Last Days" "Paranoid Park" "Milk" "Restless" "The Sea of Trees"- in the second half of his career, Gus Van Sant turned himself into a chief specialist in death, and Filmography - in a kind of martyrology, genre diverse dance macabre. Against this background, "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot"seems like a small personal revolution. After all, he talks about a man who lost the little that he had, but miraculously survived - and was forced to move on. "The time to die" suddenly ended - it was "time to live."
Phoenix demonstrates the whole range of acting techniques: desperately comedian and crying, riding a wheelchair and turning into a vegetable, losing weight and getting fat, getting older and younger. His hero repeatedly takes to the stage - at a meeting of anonymous alcoholics, in a group of psychological support and, finally, at a meeting with fans who have gathered enough to fill a rather large conference room. Gus Van Sant likewise presents itself to the public, at the same time proud of and embarrassed by the late but natural transformation of the alternative and the romantic into a middle-aged prosperous tradesman, appealing to eternal values and normative humanism.
Of course, it is also important who sits in the hall in front of the hero. Precious Phoenix placed in a decent frame. Excellent job Jonah Hill in the role of guru, Jack Black brand color - a casual acquaintance at a party, whose recklessness and led to the accident, good Rooney Mara - bright angel, the love for which made the hero to believe in himself. It is nice to see next to them, albeit in tiny roles, Udo Kier and Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, as if they were two living reminders of the director's countercultural past. Once, Gordon advised Van Sant and helped pick up music for "Last Days", a film about Kurt Cobain’s death. Here behind the scenes lulling and cozy melodies of the composer Danny Elfman.
Still, the best therapy for Callahan is not giving up alcohol, not reconciling with family traumas, not the habit of disability, and not even true friends, but creativity. This theme appears in the film gradually and remains, as it were, in the background. However, the caricatures themselves, hooliganism and defiantly politically incorrect - the author finds warm words for Ku Klux Klan, laughs at sexual minorities, dwarfs, intellectuals and, of course, disabled people - perhaps the most interesting thing that appears on the screen.
Gus Van Sant is a very serious director, but in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot" the main salvation from respectable boredom of the traditional biopic suddenly becomes humor. Perhaps, approaching old age, Van Sant became a conservative, but with new convictions he also gained the gift of self-irony.