As a fan of the works of William Shakespeare, I really get a kick out of seeing the different variations film has done for the works of the Bard of Avon. Maybe one of the strangest I've seen is 1991's My Own Private Idaho.
The plot lifts a bit, including dialogue, from Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I and Part II. Not the whole play, since the story of a prince coming of age and realizing his responsibilities while helping his father fight off various rebellions doesn't really fit completely into a story about teenage prostitutes in modern day Portland. Yes, Shakespeare's plays titled "Henry IV" are more about his son, the future Henry V, but he's a heck of a lot more interesting, given Shakespeare pairs him off with the completely fictional fat knight Falstaff, and then proceeds to eventually cut him off and be England's great warrior king (unlike Richard the Lionhearted, Henry came back to England after winning his big war). To accommodate Shakespeare's play, writer/director Gus Van Sant plops a Prince Hal stand-in in the form of Keanu Reeves' Scott Favor, son of the mayor of Portland, a teenage runaway selling his body for sex, mostly to gay men, but he makes it clear he's not really into the gay stuff if he's not being paid for it. Scott's Falstaff is an overweight homeless man named Bob who leads a gang of thieves, most of whom double for hustlers like Scott and his friend Mike Waters.
Van Sant does some interesting stuff here with the plays. It isn't enough to borrow the plot, but he actually drops Shakespeare's actual lines into the movie here and there, mostly from Bob, with a name change here and there...and it works. It really works. The language is more formal, maybe a bit archaic, but it still conveys a hell of a punch. Given Van Sant doesn't seem interested in making a particularly realistic film, why not have some iambic pentameter? He even gives Shakespeare a writer's by-line in the closing credits.
But the Shakespeare is not the real plot as it turns out. River Phoenix's Mike is the real focus of the film. He's a hustler, but actually gay since he's in love with his wealthy friend Scott, he suffers from narcolepsy and may fall asleep at the drop of a hat, and he really misses the mother who abandoned him as a child. Scott offers to help Mike find his long lost mom, which takes the pair from the mean streets of Portland to a largely deserted road in the middle of Idaho (the same patch Mike begins and ends the film in), and finally to Rome, where Mike's mom went, but didn't stay. There, Scott meets an Italian girl, falls in love, and leaves Scott to his own devices. Here, like with Prince Hal, Scott assumes his responsibilities and rejects his old life, doing so to Bob directly but implying as much for Mike who he never speaks to again in the course of the movie.
Van Sant also does one of the more unusual sex scene techniques I've seen. Rather than show the sex, he has his actors pose still for a series of shots. These aren't still shots as you can see the actors breathing, and it happens twice. The first is a gay threesome between Scott, Mike, and Udo Kier's eccentric German character Hans. The second is between Scott and his new Italian girlfriend Carmella, played by Italian actress Chiara Caselli. The second scene neatly displays the moment when Scott embraces his role as the mayor's son and comes home, Carmella in tow (she silently stays with him for the rest of the movie).
Now, personally, I'm no fan of Keanu Reeves. I think he's largely a wooden actor who does best when he doesn't really talk much, like in The Matrix. Sylvester Stallone displays a similar ability for First Blood until his weepy monologue at the end of the movie. Here, though, given it is an inherently unrealistic movie, with dialogue that at times strives for the high theatrical, it actually works. He isn't as good as Phoenix by a long shot, but he makes this role work somehow.
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