Director of “Elephant” and “Will Hunting”, Gus Van Sant offers Joaquin Phoenix the role of American comic book author John Callahan in “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”. Released in 2018 after a stint at Sundance and the Berlinale, the film can be (re)discovered starting tonight on Arte and throughout the rest of September on arte.tv.
Flowered shirt, stroller, night owl, prowler and drinker, John (Joaquin Phoenix), 21, hangs around in the 70s like a Californian reincarnation of Jack Kerouac. A little seedy, but charming and libertarian, he has allure, only the excesses of tequila in the early morning are making his brain curl. Then there will be that night, yet another tragic deviation when his sidekick Dexter (Jack Black) will fall asleep at the wheel on the way back from LA When he wakes up, nothing moves, except his head and hands, barely trembling. For John, life will resume in a wheelchair. Helped by his partner Annu (Rooney Mara) and the Alcoholics Anonymous therapies of the eccentric and hippie Donnie (Jonah Hill), he discovered a gift for satirical drawing and became the famous John Callahan!
He must love these tortuous and lame outsiders to tell them with such calm and voluptuousness: “Elephant” (2003), Kurt Cobain in “Last Days”, (2005), Sean Pean in “Harvey Milk” (2008) or even before “Good Will Hunting” (1998) with Matt Damon And Robin Williams. Hey! Speaking of Robin Williamsit was with him that it all began. The American actor and Van Sant had looked into the cartoonist’s life. In 1989, Williams bought the rights to adapt Callahan’s memoirs, but the unfinished drafts piled up, the years passed, Williams and Callahan would set sail and Van Sant would finish alone.
The result is a cocoon of tenderness, mainstream, but sober and delicate. The refined narration allows itself a few temporal twists and takes us on a journey through the cartoonist’s lives, before, during and after. The curtain opens: therapy with anonymous people then generic drawing before the beach and the shirt in the wind of a drunken but almost galloping John. Three shots, three eras. The tone is set.
Rooney Mara in “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”
© 2018 Amazon Content Services LLC/Scott Patrick Green
Rooney Mara, Jonah Hill, Joaquin Phoenixwhat can I say except that the three actors are enchanting in their reserve and modesty; like this scene where Annu accompanies John when he wakes up after the accident: He motionless, his body molded in an iron cage, she, at the bedside. Their eyes converse, around a bouquet of roses, from then on, she will visit him every week. The director works on emotions well known to cinema, but there is something of a watercolorist, a gentleness.
Orchestrated by the scores of Danny Elfmanthe resurrection of John Callahan is touching, a little melodramatic, quite conventional, but funny and light. “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” will also be an opportunity to (re)discover the wonderful humor of a scathing cartoonist. An illumination of the man before the artist, his reconstruction, his internal mechanics, his mother, the black coal of untamed nights, alcohol, forgiveness and finally, redemption.
3/5★
More information on “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”
A film to discover from September 18 on Arte and throughout the rest of September on arte.tv. Also available on:
Trailer for “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”
The Cineman editorial team also recommends:
