Movie Review: Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Gus Van Sant.

Written by: Gus Van Sant and John Callahan and Jack Gibson & William Andrew Eatman based on the book by John Callahan.

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix (John Callahan), Jonah Hill (Donnie), Rooney Mara (Annu), Jack Black (Dexter), Tony Greenhand (Tim), Beth Ditto (Reba), Mark Webber (Mike), Ronnie Adrian (Martingale), Kim Gordon (Corky), Udo Kier (Hans), Carrie Brownstein (Suzanne).

 

I remember listening to Gus Van Sant’s interview with Marc Maron around the time Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot came out in theaters, where Van Sant mentioned that this was a project first brought to him by Robin Williams years ago, and the whole thing just didn’t come together – that Van Sant had a tough time cracking how to tell the story. When it came back to him again, he thought he figured it out – but I don’t think he really did. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is an odd movie, as it seems to want to combine two things that Van Sant can do very well – the kind of inspirational “Oscar bait” (although I hate that term) film about overcoming adversity that Van Sant did well with Good Will Hunting and Milk, and something more expressionistic and daring – more interested in fleeting moments, than the story itself – which has defined much of Van Sant’s work since 2000 in films like Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park. It’s an uneasy mixture that has scenes butting up against each other in strange ways, and the whole movie never really coheres. There are moments that work, but they are few and far between. Out of the talented ensemble cast, really only Joaquin Phoenix, and in one scene Jack Black, are all that good. There is a movie here, somewhere, but Van Sant didn’t crack it.

 

The story centers on John Callahan (Phoenix), an alcoholic who is paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident – although even that doesn’t stop his drinking, at least not right away. He will eventually decide to get sober – and joins AA, in a group led by Donnie (Jonah Hill). Also helping in his recovery is his comic work – he always did it, but pretty much had to reteach himself to draw after the accident, and his comics are defined by their crude drawings, and humor that often offended people. He also starts a relationship of sorts with Annu (Rooney Mara), a Swedish woman he meets when she is in charge of his physical therapy.

 

The film drifts back and forth in time, although I found it hard to discern any real rhyme or reason in the way Van Sant structured the film. The drifting timeline allows Van Sant to vary the scenes a little bit – so we don’t get scenes of him getting drunk stacked one on top of the other, or scenes in those AA meetings stacked in the same way. It doesn’t really help – the movie is still over-repetitive – but it does a little.

 

Honestly, I think the scenes in AA are the weakest ones in the film. The scenes seemed design to give the various character’s deep monologues to deliver, and awards friendly clips of dialogue, but most of it rings hollow – cliché upon cliché. It doesn’t help that I don’t think Hill is very good as Donnie – Hill is a talented actor, but here, I don’t think he really gets a handle on this character. He doesn’t want to make him into a gay stereotype, but it comes close anyway. None of the other members of the group are given much of anything to do. But I need to correct myself, because these are not the weakest scenes in the film – those would be anything involving Rooney Mara. It isn’t Mara’s fault – she is one of the best actresses currently working right now – but Annu is such a nothing of a role. You kind of want to call her a manic pixie dream girl, but she isn’t even given that much depth. It’s one of the worst written/conceived roles I can remember.

 

The best moments are basically of Phoenix by himself – as he is drifting through either his alcoholism, or trying to come through it – or trying to find the mother who gave him up for adoption. Jack Black shows up in two sequences of the movie – the first, he is basically doing the same old Jack Black shtick, as Dexter, a drinking buddy of Callahan’s, who was driving the car when the accident happened. The next is years later in the scene we are expecting when the two get together again – but this time, those deeply felt emotions are earned, and they work as they don’t anywhere else in the movie.

 

It’s been a difficult decade for Van Sant in terms of his films – I didn’t even realize until I was looking at his filmography that I missed his last two films – Promised Land, an eco-drama and would be awards player that never took off, and Sea of Trees, his critically maligned Cannes entry, that I don’t think ever saw a real release in North America. He hasn’t really had a hit of any kind since 2008’s Milk – and the quartet of films that I think represent the best work of his career – Gerry, Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park – is even further behind him. I’m not ready to write off Gus Van Sant – Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot has moments that work, and work in a very Gus Van Sant kind of way. But he didn’t really figure out how to bring this movie together – and the result shows that.

Movie Review: Restless

Restless ** ½

Directed by: Gus Van Sant.

Written by: Jason Lew.

Starring: Henry Hopper (Enoch Brae), Mia Wasikowska (Annabel Cotton), Ryo Kase (Hiroshi Takahashi), Schuyler Fisk (Elizabeth Cotton), Lusia Strus (Rachel Cotton), Jane Adams (Mabel).

The films of Gus Van Sant have been obsessed with death for a decade now. There was his so called “Death Trilogy” starting in 2002 with Gerry, where Matt Damon and Casey Affleck walked around in the desert until one killed the Elephant, based on the Columbine massacre and 2005’s Last Days, about Kurt Cobain’s suicide. He followed those up with the similarly styled Paranoid Park in 2008, about a skateboarder who accidently kills a security guard. Through these four movies, Van Sant has examined death by friend, death by stranger, death by self and death by accident. All four of the films were great in their own way – not looking to explain why things happened, but simply observing them. When he did make a mainstream film, it was 2008’s Milk, which was also a film that pulls us along towards death – and the specter of death hangs over every frame. Perhaps that’s why he made Restless. Like those other films, we know early on that the film will end with someone dying. But unlike those other films, it isn’t a dark examination of death, but more like a fantasy. Mia Wasikowska’s Annabel is the healthiest looking end stage cancer patient I’ve ever seen. She must have the same kind that Ali McGraw had in Love Story that simply made he look more beautiful, rather than the reality of withering away to nothing. So while Restless ends the same way as Van Sant’s other recent films, it’s comforting rather than sad.

The movie opens with Enoch (Henry Hopper, son of Dennis), a teenager whose parents died in a car accident not long ago, and is still not over it. He was in the car when it happened and ended up in a coma for months – so when he woke up, he not only discovered his parents were dead, but also buried, and everyone else moving on. Now, he spends his time splayed out on the concrete drawing chalk outline around himself, and attending funerals. He is also visited occasionally by Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), a WWII Japanese kamikaze pilot, although whether he’s delusional, playing make believe or really haunted is never explained. He is much like Harold from Harold and Maude, 40 years ago.

It’s at one of these funerals he first sets eyes on Annabel (Wasikowska), wearing an Annie Hall style big, floppy hat. She’s beautiful, and smiles at him. Their first meeting doesn’t go so well, but eventually, they warm to each other. She tells him she has cancer and has 3 months to live. He’s okay with that – it actually fits in with his death obsession nicely. She doesn’t want to talk about it – she wants to live in the moment, and have a normal teenage romance with Enoch before she goes.

The performances by Hopper and Wasikowska go a long way to making this movie palatable. Hopper looks much like his father – has the same sort of crooked grin, strange charm and off kilter eyes. I have no doubts that he’ll end up playing many psychopaths like his dad did. But here, he uses all of this to develop a strange charm. Enoch should be a lot creepier than he is, given his actions, but Hopper makes you like the kid, and feel sorry for him. Wasikowska is, to use that overused critical phrase, radiant as Annabel. Her sweet, open face, her charming smile, her Mia Farrow haircut makes you fall in love with her easily.

The film is, of course, a fantasy. Cancer isn’t really like this, but we like to think it is, if only so it’s easier on us and our loved ones when eventually we die, as we all will. But in the hands of Hopper, Wasikowska and Van Sant (aided tremendously by Harris Savides’s excellent cinematography) it almost works. Yes, the film manipulates you, tries hard to milk tears out of you, but you almost don’t care because so much of the movie is so charming. But the film goes a little too far – tries to become a little too hip and clever for its own good, with its indie rock soundtrack and too many stylistic flourishes. I don’t begrudge Van Sant for wanting to make a cheerier movie than he has made in a decade – I am surprised it has taken him this long to do so in fact. And while the film is undeniably his, it remains perhaps the most minor, low key work of his career.