My Own Private Idaho

Gus Van Sant's iconic film returns us to Portland, the setting of his first film, Mala Noche (1985), and in particular its shifting world of junkies, thieves and rent boys. But this time it is in a more ambitious  and wistfully lyrical way.

River Phoenix plays Mike, a young homeless narcolept from the streets of Portland who makes a living turning tricks.  But the film opens with him stranded on an empty highway in the flat farming lands of Idaho, the potato state, falling into one of his sleeping episodes and grainy memories of his childhood. From here we scroll back in time to the main story of Mike’s adventures with Scott (Keanu Reeves), heir to a fortune who is slumming in Mike’s world prior to coming into an inheritance in a week.  From Portland they go in search of Mike’s long-lost mother, which takes them to Idaho and eventually Italy.

As the title suggests the film is a kind of impressionistic portrait of  Mike’s world as he hangs out in café’s swapping stories with other hustlers of trick gone wrong, lapses into childhood memories or hits the road with Scott on a stolen motorbike.

The film switches to a kind of Shakespearian prosody with the arrival of Bob  (William Richert), a kind of dharma bum and father figure (he recalls in some ways The Motorcycle Boy from Coppola’s Rumble Fish) to the wayward boys and girls who live in a derelict  hotel. Van Sant based the character on Falstaff from The Bard's “Henry IV”, taking some lines directly from the play or giving modern parlance an Elizabethan twist. There is no apparent reason for this but it is entertainingly brought off with Reaves doing a fine job with his Prince Hal persona.

Performances are all strong with Phoenix in his most memorable role as the bleary lost soul pathetically  betrayed by his childhood, Reeves bringing a carefree swagger to his role and Richert marvellous as the king of the blind.  The film is handsomely photographed by John Campbell and Eric Alan Edwards     

With its elliptical narrative and non-conventional dialogue not to mention seedy subject-matter My Own Private Idaho is not a film for everybody but it has empathy and integrity and who would ask for more?

FYI: Phoenix (real name River Jude Bottom) died of acute multiple drug intoxication involving lethal levels of cocaine and morphine at age 23 in 1993 outside The Viper Room, Johnny Depp's Los Angeles night club.

 

Want something different?