[An ongoing series of posts demarcating the highlight and lowlight of a particular theme, body of work, or significant category of film. Feel free to offer alternative suggestions in the comment section]
No doubt there are many people thinking the placement of these films ought to be reversed, and on the spectrum of Gus Van Sant there are those who respond more to his more conventional Hollywood cinema than to his Béla Tarr experimentations. The usual suspects of what are considered misfires in his body of work are to me inoffensive: I like Good Will Hunting a lot and for all the uproar over his remake of Psycho I found it fascinating as an experiment. To me Van Sant is one of the few filmmakers I am willing to plunge into the unknown with; if his name is on it I will watch it. While I have not yet seen Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (which I hear is awful) nor Mala Noche, there is enough of a spread of his films that I have seen that the verdict bears some weight behind it, even if it’s only my opinion, man.
HIT: Gerry
Gerry comes up a lot on Row Three, it’s a go-to film for several of us ardent fans of Van Sant’s sparse mortality poem. When defending languid pacing, or the purest of experimental cinema, Gerry is usually the first film we bring up. Widely criticized at Cannes, when Gerry premiered at TIFF there was a strong split in opinion on whether it was a masterpiece or wankery. When I finally caught it in the cinema I obviously leaned toward the opinion of the former. The first in his life cycle trilogy (followed by Elephant and Last Days) and the first of Béla Tarr’s influence on Van Sant, Gerry struck me like a bolt of lightning. The effect was not so immediate of course, but my expectations felt jolted, the very act of what it is to watch movies came unstuck in this depiction of two guys walking in a desert. The narrative impetus set aside, the tacit experience became more emphatic, the rhythm of walking, of repetition keeping me mesmerized. Not a fan of Andy Warhol’s experimental films of excessive pacing and static focus, nor of Vincent Gallo’s empty repetition in Brown Bunny, Gerry felt full of import in every shot. What seems sparse and drawn out has, for me, an inner fire to it that keeps me riveted (I have watched it three times in the cinema, and is a film that works best when one is prevented from any interruptions). What exactly it is that calls to me, I can scarcely put into words other than to say it is on a tacit level that I feel drawn in by the lived-in experience of mortality, of futility in the face of an unrelenting mother nature (a feeling I also get strongly from Terrence Malick’s Thin Red Line). Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel is an added bonus, the song being one of my all time favorite pieces of music, and for what little Matt Damon and Casey Affleck say or do anything in the film, they enrich the experience. Mostly it’s in the editing, the use of landscape, the slowing down of consciousness.
MISS: To Die For
Had I gone only on my nostalgia of the film when I saw it in the nineties, To Die For would be higher in my esteem than it is now. On rewatch, I was awestruck by how poorly it has aged. When it premiered at TIFF there was none of the divisive opinion that Gerry was met with, Gus Vant Sant had made a masterpiece and Nicole Kidman had given an Oscar-worthy performance. It was edgy and dark and satirically funny and fifteen years later virtually none of that remains. The performances are still admirable, Kidman is over-acting but the character she is playing, Suzanne Stone, a fame-obsessed cable-television newscaster, is in keeping with this level of theatrics. Joaquin Pheonix is also good as the young punk whom Suzanne seduces and convinces to murder her husband. But everything else is a disaster. The score by Danny Elfman feels cutesy, the faux-documentary approach seems so dated and awkwardly done, and even the theme of celebrity obsession, after so many reality television shows, just feels driven into the ground by this point. Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers had come out the year before and was ten times the commentary and visual flare of Van Sant’s tongue-in-cheek folly. The twists and turns of the domestic murder also feel done better elsewhere (Fargo the year after) and most of the comedic elements, particularly playing off of Suzanne’s obsessive nature, were unfunny even cringe-worthy attempts at hammering home the satire. To Die For does not seem to have much of a cult following fifteen years later, and there’s a very good reason for that.
revisit the trailer and Arvo Part’s beautiful beautiful song
I didn’t even realize To Die For was Gus van Sant. I saw it ages ago and wasn’t that impressed; definitely was disappointed given the good things I’d heard about it. I’d meant to revisit it at some point to see what I’d missed, but maybe it’s not worth it.
Certain films do not age well and To Die For is very much one of them.
Definitely agree with this. I loved it (really loved it) when I saw it way back when it came out (or shortly thereafter, I can’t recall) but recently I sat down and re-watched it with someone who had never seen it before and I was honestly embarrassed by how dated it felt since I had sort of been hyping it.
It does have some redeeming qualities as I still did love Kidman and Phoenix together, but I was bored by about half way through the film and just wanted it to end. Made me sad.
wrote this a year and a half ago but always good to have someone come to my defense! So dated.
Just reacting to the headline of the article before going out the door here.
Rot: YOu are insane. TO DIE FOR is bloody fantastic. Sure Gerry is probably a slightly better film, but wow. MISS – I don’t think so. If there is a GVS miss, there are better films to pick from Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, Psycho can more or less all be considered failures of filmmaking, they are trite and overly sentimental or too jokey.
I still like GWH well enough. Nothing amazing, but solid film. But yeah, FF and Psycho are retarded for different reasons.
Still as a director, Van Sant is extremely hit or miss with me. I remember not liking To Die For (co-starring a very young Joaquin Phoenix) when I saw it oh so long ago. I’ve wanted to give it another chance lately though. Maybe a rewatched & reconsidered double feature for me with both of these films I didn’t really care for upon first viewing.
and I ask when did you last see To Die For?
Good Will Hunting and Psycho I genuinely like. I suspect when I see Let Me In it will not bother me as much as it did you if its a virtual copy of Let the Right One In, because I have no qualms about Van Sant’s Psycho or the american remake of Funny Games.
I completely forgot Van Sant made Finding Forrester, that I have not seen.
Last time I saw To Die For was probably when it first came out on video. But like I said, I want to give it a second shot.
I haven’t seen Last Days yet either (though I own it); the first(?) part of the trilogy I believe.
Gerry is Birth, Elephant Adolescence, Last Days Last Days.
I was asking Kurt actually… I was a big fan of the film until I rewatched it recently… thats a drastic rewatched reconsidered.
Last time I saw TO DIE FOR was within 2 years. Did a bit of a GVS marathon at the time, watching nearly everything, it was around when we did My Own Private Idaho for The Movie Club Podcast. I admit that Finding Forrester, Psycho and Good Will Hunting were not on the Marathon.
I quite like Good Will Hunting I just hate the terrible cheesy ass score.
isn’t it Danny Elfman? Like To Die For (the score of which he also did) Elfman has not aged well either.
I like that score alot… Danny Elfman is fine, you guys are crazy.
I really like Good Will Hunting and I liked Milk. I haven’t seen this guys weird stuff, I’ve only seen the first 20 minutes of Gerry, don’t know if I can comfortably say I know what its about or not.
If you have seen the first 20 minutes of Gerry you can comfortably say you know what it is about
But the experience works uninterrupted I think… it will break you down, and you will either fall asleep or find something profound in it.
You all will appreciate this. My brother received a call from Gus himself for casting as an extra while filming Promised Land down in Pittsburgh over the course of three days. Apparently, Gus likes to speak with extras personally and plays a big hand in deciding which to cast. He just told my brother to shave his mustache and he’s good to go for filming on May 15-18.
Awesome, what is the film? Restless didnt get much positive attention when it came out but I liked it a lot. He can do no wrong in this part of his career for me
I’m with you. I’m a huge fan of Gus. My brother knows directors and movies, but he didn’t seem to realize the significant of who he was talking to (“Well, yeah, he directed GOOD WILL HUNTING, right?”). The movie is called “Promised Land” and according to IMDb, it’s about a” salesman for a natural gas company experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town, where his corporation wants to tap into the available resources.”
The movie has Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt, Hal Holbrook. My brother said that he was told he in going to be in two scenes: a bar scene and… something else that I already forgot. No clue if he’ll be around any of these actors or not, but it should be pretty neat for him to see a director like Gus in action (as long as it’s not simply second unit stuff being filmed).
A update on my brother in Gus’s latest movie Promised Land:
He has been down in Pittsburgh for the past two days for a scene in a bar and he will be going back tomorrow to film a town hall meeting. Here’s what he told me:
*Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Titus Welliver, and Frances McDormand were in the bar scene with him
*Matt Damon gets his ass kicked
*Rosemarie DeWitt was on set, but was not in the scene
*My brother described two people from movies that they were in and I figured out that it was Emily Blunt and Ron Livingston who were on set (but not in the movie) because of their significant others (John and Rosemarie).
*They filmed 14 hours both days
*They fed him pretty good food
*Frances McDormand was the only one to chat up the extras (I explained to my brother that was to be expected, it’s a professional environment and they had a schedule)
Oh – and Krasinski sings Bruce Springsteen on stage.
Titus Welliver needs to be in more films.
Agreed… although he’s not short on work. He’s one of those been-in-everything type of actors.
Silas from Deadwood? He’s in tonnes of stuff, he always reminds me of a slightly more badass version of James Nesbitt
he is in a tonne of tv, but outside of Ben Affleck movies he hasn’t had enough big screen time.
Also a fan of Restless even if I didn’t outright love it and I fully understand why it went under the radar last September — http://www.rowthree.com/2011/09/08/tiff-review-restless/
oh so a big film I guess by the cast. Nice.