Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon Movie 7: My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Sometimes you have to wait to write about something you watched.  It allows the movie itself to settle in.  You can distance yourself from the material enough to not simply have initial thoughts.  Certain works deserve a little bit of thought to help you better understand what they have shown you.  My Own Private Idaho is one of these movies and even with a three day buffer, I don’t know if I am any nearer a complete understanding.

The seventh film in the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon, My Own Private Idaho, is a 1991 film that was directed by Gus Van Sant and starred River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves.  It is about guy 1 trying to find the life he never had, and guy 2 dealing with the life he must leave behind.  There is also a little bit of male hustling involved.

I’ll cover the usual stuff quickly.  Direction wise, I thought it was well done.  There is something that Van Sant has to his direction.  I would call it a complex simplicity.  Not many directors do it and I like how he works it.  The acting is pretty good for the most part.  The only person that stands out as not so great would be Flea.  Yes, that Flea.  The bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Even Keanu was good in this.  His usual style was here, but it worked with his character.  The music must have been good because it didn’t strike me as out of place.  Not good enough to be memorable, but not bad enough to make me dislike it.  The movie looked good.  That’s always a plus.  And the writing.  There is some great writing in this film, which I shall now elaborate on.

My Own Private Idaho is a loose, but not too loose, adaptation of Shakespeare’s trilogy of plays Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V.  Those make up the arc of the character that Keanu Reeves portrays.  The three plays were stripped down to what was included in this film as the entire arc for that character.  What an arc it is.  A man who is not yet a man realizing that he is going to need to change his life in the near future in a major way and dealing with what will come of that change.  That arc is probably the part of My Own Private Idaho that I like the most, which is only fitting since I believe it to be the central plot of the movie.  And although that is the main plot, Keanu Reeves is not the star of the movie.  That would be one Mr. River Phoenix.

There isn’t much of an arc to Phoenix’s character in My Own Private Idaho.  I would say he doesn’t grow all that much throughout the movie and is basically the same person at the end that he was at the beginning.  But I don’t think that is the point of the character.  I believe that...I think the character is Mike...I believe that Mike is our Shakespeare surrogate in this movie.  He’s there to serve the part of the narrator or, in the case of the plays that it is based on, the writer.  He lets us in on the story of Keanu’s character.  Mike is the audience, watching his friend go through this transition period.  Mike gets his own arc, sure, but it’s nowhere near as big or important as his friend’s.  Mike’s arc is there to allow him along for the ride of his friend’s bigger, deeper arc.

Outside of the characters themselves, the source material was a middle ages set tale that occurred during a wartime period.  The translation of that to a modern prostitution setting was well done.  It’s an unexpected take on a classic work that is successful in ways that couldn’t have been predicted.  I only know the plot of the source material from Wikipedia, but from what I understand of it and what was omitted in this adaptation, My Own Private Idaho is worthy of the material that it adapted.

Now, understand that this movie isn’t for everyone.  It takes a while to get going, and even then, it’s not overly exciting.  My Own Private Idaho takes its time in telling a story.  It starts slow but when it gets going, it gets going.  In a story sense, not an action sense.  This isn’t a blockbuster.  Do not go into this movie expecting lots of gunplay and explosions.  You won’t find that here.  You’ll find a well crafted story that builds dramatically.  It works well, not perfectly, but very well.  So, take whatever I just said as a recommendation or not.

Next up is A Double Life.  This is a film noir based on Othello, I think.  If I’m remembering correctly.  Three movies left in the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon.  I’m going to have to hurry these ones up if I’m going to finish within this month.