Regarding the lives of marginalized youths, this movie is not as cold and sober as "Taxi Driver" portrays. Gus seems to be telling a very ordinary story with a documentary objective perspective.
In the story, Michael is the product of incest. He is a male prostitute suffering from epilepsy. Scott is a wealthy boy who is pressured by the mayor’s father’s high expectations and can’t breathe and escapes from the family and the upper class. The initial disagreement doomed their different destinies. They made love with a man and were collected by the old bastard Bob. Robbing passersby, making fun of police and neighbors, and taking drugs. Michael has epilepsy and may pass out at any time. His mind is often full of illusions of being with his mother when he was young: roads, large clouds, blue sky, mother's fuzzy smile and lonely house.
At the beginning of the film, Michael was lying on the lonely road leading to Idaho. This big boy who had been selling his body for a living and wanted to find his mother fell in love with Scott. But Scott is different from him. When he hesitated and said cowardly in a low voice, "How close can we get, Scott?" Scott said that I have sex with men only for money. So he said sadly, but I love you and don't need you to give me money.
In the end Scott abandoned him. Not just him, but the whole chaotic fringe life. He inherited his father's estate at the age of 21, married an Italian girl he met on the way to Idaho, and became a gentleman of the upper class. And to the old bastard Bob, who once thought he was a spiritual mentor and taught him what freedom is, said coldly, I don't know you, old man. You have taught me a lot of bad things. But I have corrected it.
Bob died of a high fever, and Scott remained indifferent.
Michael returned to the highway. At this moment, his remaining hope is only the illusion after he passed out. He tried to find but always returned to the place where he started. Destiny refused to give him even hope.
Two different kinds of life appear repeatedly in the film: one is the chaotic reality, and the other is the solitary illusion of the old childhood house in Michael's mind. Director Gus is always watching Michael's heart with passion and compassion. Attempting to approach and observe infinitely, stripped of the outer shell of secular, moral, religious and human nature, repeatedly let the audience enter the heart of this individual and feel the kind of loneliness.
At the end of the film, Michael relapsed into epilepsy and fell on the road. His luggage was stolen by two truck drivers. After that, a stranger's car drove by and he was carried into the car. After the car disappeared from the field of vision, only large clouds, blue sky and straight road with no end remained.
Leading actor River Phoenix won the Venetian actor with a wonderful performance in this film, but then began to take drugs, two years later, that is, in 1993, died of heart failure caused by drug use. It seems that the end of this film foreshadows everything.
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