Original title: Don’t worry, he won’t get far on foot · Gus Van Sant · USA · 2018 · Script: Gus Van Sant · Performers: Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonah Hill, Jack Black…
Original title: Whitney · Kevin Macdonald · United States · 2018 · Script: Kevin Macdonald · Interpreters: Documentary film.
The interest that, as long as, shows American cinema for stories related to all types of addictions. There are many examples of this, from The man with the golden arm, movie in which, back in the fifties, Otto Preminguer told us about heroin dependence, going through classics like Days of wine and roses, de Blake Edwards, if we talk about alcohol, or more recent tapes like Leaving las Vegas, by Mike Figgis (bueno, recent, no; that this is already from the nineties). However, apart from showing the havoc that these addictions cause on those who suffer from them, Is there still something new to contribute regarding this issue??
The latest production by North American director Gus Van Sant is presented on this question., Don't worry, you won't get far on foot, long title referring to the biography of cartoonist John Michael Callahan, on which it is based. Callahan's life didn't have much meaning. Addicted to alcohol from a very early age, at twenty-three years old he suffers, after a drunken night, a traffic accident that leaves him disabled from the waist down. However, The serious consequences of this incident will not change your dependence on drinking. Emotionally anchored to the search for a mother who gave him up for adoption, One day Callahan suffers an epiphany that makes him wonder how far his problem has taken him and he decides to remedy it.. Callahan will have to build a new future for himself and that is when he discovers his talent for drawing..
Con Don't worry… we are not, Of course, before the best of the author of films like Elephant o Paranoid Park. Those visual essays are far away, a line of expression that, waiting for what I can do in the future, seems to have abandoned. In this regard, even recognizing the longing we feel for those formal experiments, we have nothing to object. Each director takes his career where it suits him best.. However, The problem arises when we ask ourselves what Van Sant may have found in Callahan's life that is of interest to him., whether plastic or merely argumentative.
As scriptwriter and editor of this piece and many of his previous works, Van Sant is, first of all, a good storyteller. The director of Last days In this case, he raises an apparently simple artifact, built on the basis of flashbacks in a game of reflections between the past and present of its protagonist that allows him to shape the narrative until it gives it the appropriate rhythm. The film begins with Callahan giving a lecture to a packed auditorium.. From that moment, Van Sant will alternate the different moments that, little by little, They give an account of Callahan's fall into hell until they put together his speech.
But leaving aside this clever exercise in style, perhaps one of the points on which Van Sant has set his sights, It has to do with valuing this Callahan as an example of the long tradition of the counterculture of his country. And here we will find one of the most interesting elements of this feature film.. After the traffic accident that left him tied to a wheelchair, Callahan resumes his life as a comic artist for various publications. As we will see throughout the film, Callahan's work respects no taboo. In their strokes they are portrayed, without any consideration, all classes and identities of North American society: el And Live Klan, racial prejudices, Politics, everything passes through his acidic and irreverent eye. Soon Callahan's talent will face readers divided between those who admire his cartoons and those who find them offensive.. In the hands of Van Sant, Callahan's work rises, So, as a reaction to the culture of political correctness that prevails today in almost any public debate. Are there limits to humor?, We are wondering. John Michael Callahan skipped them all.
But this very interesting debate is drowned out by that story of addictions that, because of its size, focuses the attention of most of the film. and here, and without daring to despise Van Sant's attempts to make us aware of this matter, We can't help but wonder what's so new about this.. TRUE, through the mouth of his character, Van Sant comes to tell us not to worry. What, after the fall, there is salvation. That there is no more possible answer to our problems than the part that we have to take responsibility for our decisions.. However, This simple life lesson does not seem sufficient to justify this deployment of resources. It is then that we wonder if perhaps the director's visual tricks, that device so virtuous that dazzles us, It's just a disguise to cover up a story that lacks punch.. It is very possible that, in our case, the distance that culturally separates us from the real John Callahan is enough to raise, as spectators, a wall of empathy towards him. However, It is no less true that, if we remove the artifice, What we are left with is a story so schematic that it fails to involve us emotionally.. Why should we feel especially invested in the story of John Callahan? What makes your case worth our attention? Why are your circumstances so significant?? At the end of the session we are not able to answer these questions.
The same problems (or very similar) Kevin Macdonald's latest documentary drags down, Whitney, portrait of what was one of the brightest stars in the pop music cosmos of the eighties and nineties of the last century: singer Whitney Houston. The person responsible for bringing songs like that famous one to the top of the charts I will always love you, He was at the height of his career when he disappeared from the public scene.. May you remember, This absence from the front page was so discreet that, despite its undoubted success, no one noticed it. Until, one fine day, Some images captured by a tabloid showed us an emaciated and, as they told us, consumed by drugs. What had become of that sweet face that dazzled millions of people around the world?? Six years after his death, This documentary tries to answer that mystery.
The first doubt that arises after watching Kevin Macdonald's documentary (Oscar winner for One Day in September and responsible for much more interesting works such as The last king of Scotland, one of his few fiction films) arises when we ask ourselves what justifies the release in commercial theaters of a work that, formally, It's nothing more than a television exercise. Only the popularity of the central figure object of his musings, could validate the distribution of a film that adheres to the classic resources of the genre: talking heads to illustrate statements, seasoned by archive images more or less revealing of what they are telling. A material that, as the promotion says, although it is presented to the public for the first time, does not justify the attention that this film has received since its premiere at the last Cannes festival.
Macdonald's documentary is based on two fundamental poles. On the one hand, the presence of the interviewees, Among them are the singer's entire family and rapper Bobby Brown., Houston's husband and, according to some statements, responsible party for the addiction that would end his life. The other asset focuses on the photographs provided by the family itself and the record of domestic recordings. (essential for this type of work), performed by the singer's close friend, Robyn Crawford. But neither one nor the other material is so relevant as to justify its interest.. An exclusive can have little significance if it fails to explain what was hidden or, as happens in Whitney, In the end everything is so open that we feel that nothing has concluded.
It is obvious that, as the press discovered, Whitney Houston suffered from an uncontrolled drug dependency. In this sense, The documentary opens several avenues of investigation. The first of them points to the social origin of the singer. Houston, next to his brothers, They were overwhelmed by the lights of fame and all the money that it was going to bring them for years.. Another clearly addresses her relationship with her husband, a man jealous of her success and with whom she wanted to form the family that she had not had and that would become another of her personal failures.. The third would point towards his friend Robyn Crawford, with whom he is said to have had an intimate relationship. And so, until a fourth line that would be directed towards childhood trauma and that, out of deference to potential spectators, we will not reveal. All this together, composes the figure of a woman overwhelmed by life's circumstances.
However, The problem is that none of these lines is fully supported as the ultimate reason for its dramatic ending., leaving everything in the field of ambiguity. And if Macdonald had wanted to conclude that sometimes the reasons that push a person to self-destruct cannot be revealed, it would have been interesting. But not. Rather, what you try, is trying to hide that any of the clues you have followed lead you to a bottomless tunnel.
Apart from those intimate images, Kevin Macdonald enlivens his work with other visual documents from the time that illuminated the singer's life. De Ronald Reagan a Bill Clinton, passing through the explosion of the MTV network and up to George Bush Sr., The history of Houston is linked to the recent history of the United States of America. Is it possible that Houston was, like other singers (let's think, For example, and Michael Jackson, who was a good friend of) reflection and circumstance of that time? This is perhaps the most accurate proposal that this work makes for us.. That and the review of the training period and the career of a singer who had one of the most powerful voices of recent decades and whose talent places her among the greatest divas.. It's when Whitney opens her mouth to release the first notes of a song, when the work reaches a certain emotional height. what a voice, sirs! GERARDO LEON
