My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.35pm
This is a 35mm screening.
Chicago Reader review:
Gus Van Sant's 1990 feature, his best prior to Elephant,
is a simultaneously heartbreaking and exhilarating road movie about two
male hustlers (River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves) in the Pacific
Northwest. Phoenix, a narcoleptic from a broken home, is essentially
looking for a family, while Reeves, whose father is mayor of Portland,
is mainly fleeing his. The style is so eclectic that it may take some
getting used to, but Van Sant, working from his own story for the first
time, brings such lyrical focus to his characters and his poetry that
almost everything works. Even the parts that show some strain—like the
film's extended hommageto Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight—are
exciting for their sheer audacity. Phoenix was never better, and Reeves
does his best with a part that's largely Shakespeare's Hal as filtered
through Welles.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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