I scream, you scream, we all scream for Keanu Reeves

This week it's time to embrace the weirdness: narcolepsy, denim jackets, the one-two punch that is River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, and Idaho.

I'm referring, of course, to My Own Private Idaho (1991). Directed by Gus Van Sant, this is a movie that you'd swear makes you feel the chill through your windbreaker.

Gorgeous.

Phoenix and Reeves play Mike and Scott, two friends who hustle for cash and sleep, in Mike's case, anywhere and everywhere: gardens, the back of motorcycles, empty roads. His narcolepsy is the complicating element in his pursuit to find his mother, a journey which leads them from Idaho to Italy, and back again.

As Mike and Scott orbit around each other among bards and blank landscapes, the film becomes steadily more dream-like. It's just not a dream you've ever had before, or maybe one you've had so many times that you've forgotten how it ends. 

Does this look like a face to you?

Part of this is indubitably due to Gus Van Sant, whose track record for strangeness is high--he also directed Elephant, and, funnily enough, Good Will Hunting--but without Phoenix I feel the effect would be incomplete. 

His narration and unrequited love for Scott guide the film into what it is: a meditation, a novel, and a weird, strange masterpiece.

To sum up, in My Own Private Idaho not much happens, but what does happen--well, it's pretty interesting. So check it out. Embrace the weirdness.

Till next week.

Whiplash

Whiplash is the kind of film that you sit through white-knuckled, waiting to know what happens next. Miles Teller plays Andrew Neyman, a young drummer wunderkid--or, depending on the moment, not so wondrous. His ambition is to be the next Charlie Parker.

What follows is a chamber piece about what's inside of Andrew's head. We follow him as he is discovered by his college's most famous jazz director, Terence Fletcher, played by J.K. Simmons. It is not so much a discovery as a revealing, a veil lifted. 

Terence is mercurial and demanding and thrilling. Even as he tears Andrew down, there is a sense that his means will be justified by his ends. The push-pull relationship, heightened by the soundtrack,  translates into drama calculated to surprise.

There's no doubt that Whiplash is a good movie. Better, if you've ever played percussion. And yet there is one glaring flaw that cannot be overlooked: that is, there are no women in this film.

Of course there are actresses. There is an orchestra player and a lawyer and even a girlfriend. But there are no women. At no point are there two female people onscreen at the same time, much less speaking to one another. Andrew's mother is denoted by her absence, his girlfriend by her silence.

It is as though, encased in his own drama, there is no room in Andrew's head for much of anything besides Terence and his drum set. Fine. This is, after all, a movie about a boy.

But aren't we tired of art house films about boys?

Aren't there better things we could be spending our time on? If boys, why this type of story, with this perspective? Do we really have to accept this kind of under-the-table misogyny in our art? Can it even be art if it ignores half the audience? For that matter, where are the men? Terence isn't one. If it's a coming-of-age film there are no models, no real-life Charlie Parkers. There is no final exam, no test, no pass.

Leaving the theater, I wondered if in this alternate universe Andrew Neyman would ever grow up. Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. Whiplash could have been a great movie, but instead it settled for being a good one.