didn’t expect to see My Own Private Idaho again many years later, even though I was gradually getting rid of the term youth. .
The second time I watch this movie, I will still feel shocked. It is too artistic and bold; and the beauty and sadness of River stays forever, will not disappear or change color.
In the play, Idaho is a world where illusion and reality intersect. It is Mike's hometown and the place where he enters the dream to escape from reality.
This endless road "round the world" can even be said to be Mike's soul itself.
The beauty of Mike's character comes not only from River's blue eyes and golden hair, but also from
the qualities of purity, loneliness, keenness, slenderness, fragmentation, and a little bit of mockery he gave Mike.
In the oral sex scene at the beginning of the film, the director used a picture of a broken house falling from the sky and crashing into a metaphorical climax, which is a very beautiful and surreal performance technique.
Many surreal bridges are used in this play, such as the cover of a gay magazine, such as a freeze-frame sex scene, to add some sense of humor and irony to this slow play.
Mike, who is lonely and weak and earns money from the flesh, meets a boy who wants to betray his father.
Before they reached adulthood, when they didn't need to care about other things, their encounter was pure and beautiful, and they embarked on Mike's mother-hunting journey together.
Next to the orange campfire, Mike said intermittently in a squeaky voice:
"I don't know. For me, I can love someone. You know, it's not because of who paid the money."
"I love you, and... . you don't pay me. "It's
so beautiful, so pure, so beautiful that it makes people cry. I can't find a better adjective.
In the hopeless foreign land of looking for his mother, Mike watched his companion fall in love with another girl and drift away from him.
Every time the old wooden bed made a regular shaking sound from the next room, and every time they kissed in front of Mike, his expression was not the kind of heartache that we know well in movies or TV shows; it was a little helpless, With anxiety and helplessness.
In the end, he could only watch them leave, just as he had known for a long time that this day would come even if the girl didn't show up.
Mike returned to the old place of prostitution and gangsters, his life remained the same, but he never saw the boy again.
The way he was crying on the street was unbearable. But what was even more unbearable was that one day the boy proclaimed that he would not come back, and ignored all this with cold eyes.
After the two teenagers faced each other, Mike tilted his head and grinned,
shouting with other street prostitutes with screams, singing, and roaring the sadness in his body. Like a group of trapped beasts with nowhere to go.
The last scene is extremely beautiful
Mike on the Idaho road in his illusion, muttering:
"I'm a connoisseur of roads. I've been tasting roads my whole life.
This road will never end."
"It probably goes all around the world "
On this endless road, he will meet all kinds of people, but in the end only himself, alone, with no beginning and no end.
This ending looks very ominous, as if it predicted that River would freeze forever in this form.
Forever young, beautiful, with a world-weary attitude and a lonely soul, locked in that picture on his private road.
I even feel that the reason why River/Mike is so beautiful is because he perfectly interprets the loneliness, melancholy and despair of mankind, together with the tragic Greek fatalism, which is fragile, delicate, introverted, implicit, and unstable. His youthfulness was recorded.
Compared with Gus's later works, this film is not perfect in terms of editing rhythm, and it can even be said to be a bit self-indulgent. But it's because of this self-daughter that makes it so special.
What is certain is that it is not Gus, the director who knows best about shooting youth illusions, Mike will not be shaped so uniquely. It wasn't River, Mike wouldn't have such a soul, but he seemed to disappear in pieces at any time.
My Own Private Idaho, this is probably one of my favorite titles.
Whenever I talk about youth, I think of Mike standing on an endless highway,
his golden hair, combed back, misty eyes, and his slightly curled figure is
always alone, walking alone.
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