The self and its discontents
Over the years, the director Gus Van Sant has returned time and again to his favorite subject: our constant struggle with self-deception and our many, mostly failed attempts at self-discovery. Let’s start with some dreamy-eyed pharmacy thieves (Drugstore Cowboy), move to homeless hustlers (My Own Private Idaho), catch up to a hitchhiker with enormous thumbs (Even Cowgirls Get The Blues), watch an aspiring TV Newswoman (To Die For), and let’s not forget the genius mathematician janitor at M.I.T. with girl trouble and the world’s funniest psychologist (Good Will Hunting). Van Sant’s characters show what an illusion we can be to ourselves. Does he return to this ground in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot? Absolutely. Is it worth it to follow him yet again on this journey? Mostly.
A thicker and much more famous Joaquin Phoenix than we saw in To Die For plays John Callahan, a gardner with a nasty habit for swigging tequila before lunch. The script, by Van Sant, follows Callahan’s “quasi-memoir” Will the Real John Callahan Please Stand Up? He became a minor celebrity through his many comics, and died in 2010. Van Sant’s Callahan, like so many of his characters, could use a hard look at himself, and much drama is expended in addressing that situation.
What is essentially a basic film about recovery from addiction is made immensely more complex by slightly disorienting but effective cross cutting between the past and present. The technique acts to jumble our understanding of how the past informs the present, and leaves us thinking that we are forever trying make sense of our past while still trying to know ourselves in the present.
Callahan, who we learn by turns was adopted, and who knows very little about his birth mother, swills his way through an extended flashback, and eventually comes into the strong gravitational pull of one Dexter, played by a bloated Burt Reynolds-looking Jack Black. Mr Black, being Mr Black, gives us yet another performance liberally sprinkled with demonic smiles and impulsive outbursts, and ends a night of partying by wrapping a VW Beetle around a light pole at 90 miles an hour. Putting aside the burning question of whether a VW Beetle can actually do 90 miles an hour, the accident is enough to send the film around a sharp curve.
This central moment in the film gives editor David Marks (Van Sant has a co-editing credit) a chance to extend the fractured timeline by breaking up the accident as Callahan experiences it over and over, in slightly different ways at different times, further underscoring how we experience and re-experience in slightly different ways traumatic experiences. It’s a great technique, born partly of Tarantino and further back to Kurosawa, and works very well here.
Callahan’s wheelchair-bound recovery eventually leads him to a quite surreal but oddly effective epiphany aided by a hallucinatory conversation with the mother he never knew. This sounds like it couldn’t work, but we believe it, because Phoenix sells us so well on Callahan not quite believing it either.
When Callahan decides to get sober, we head into the film’s strongest section. Here we’re introduced to Donnie, played with long, flowing locks of blond hair, sew-up embroidered shirts, and delightful control by an impressive Jonah Hill. Donnie sponsors an A.A. group, and has gathered an ensemble of “piglets” to guide through their twelve steps. With Beth Ditto as Reba, the fantastic Udo Kier as Hans, and an unnerving Kim Gordon as Corky, Donnie has assembled quite a group. The film really shines when Donnie coaxes addiction stories from his group. Van Sant’s decision to have a comic actor play a character who is a recovering addict shepherd a group of recovering addicts through intense group therapy sessions was a stroke of casting genius, and Hill comes through with a very balanced performance.
Callahan eventually hits on cartooning to get on with the rest of his life, and eventually becomes a minor celebrity. The problem with the film is that it stubbornly wants to teach us about addiction and recovery, and all that, when it misses its real opportunity to use Callahan’s comics as a path to his newfound sense of self. Comics which appeared as one panel in print are irritatingly animated in the film, and treated only to illustrate Callahan’s growing sense of confidence.
Also irritating are a horribly miscast Carrie Brownstein as an uptight social worker, and Rooney Mara as one of the most unbelievable girlfriends to come along in a while.
Nonetheless, Phoenix’s Callahan is reason enough to catch the film. It’s been known for years that Robin Williams, in what seems like a misguided attempt to honor his friend Christopher Reeve, wanted to play Callahan. Van Sant even wrote a version of the script with Williams in mind. Lucky for us that we get Phoenix instead, as he has a very impressive talent for knowing how to hold back enough so that he pulls us into his face and his manner.
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Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot opens today in select Bay Area theaters.
