My Own Private Idaho
1991movie
Van Sant leaves nothing out of My Own Private Idaho: not his visual sense, which saturates each exchange between Mike’s band of hustlers and the rest of the world in Godardian colors (specifically the Godard of Made in the USA, 1966), nor his literary one. The movie is full of the visual look and feel of words on the screen, from HAVE A NICE DAY, its final command, to the structuring of part of the narrative around Shakespeare’s Henry IV 1 and 2. The leader of the hustlers, Bob Pigeon (William Reichert), is based on Falstaff; his most beloved “son,” Prince Hal, is here named.
My Own Private Idaho was a more meandering affair, full of awkward stops, episodic bits, Shakespearian interludes, and the occasional intertitle to situate us. I was impressed by the weird autumnal palette (far from standard practice, even in off-Hollywood art movies), as well as the surprisingly gentle, similarly distinctive tone, but the hook escaped me to begin with.
