My Own Private Idaho (The Criterion Collection)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Keanu Reeves, River PhoenixBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Italian (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-01
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of My Own Private Idaho (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Shakespeare, Narcolepsy, Love, Dickens, Desires - Brilliant!
Summary: 5 Stars
Existence originates from a biological father and mother that conceive offspring which they nurture into childhood and later adolescence. Eventually this teen turns into an adult who often is a reflection of what the child acquired or missed during the years of parental rearing. Thus, existence is the accumulation of what the parents have provided for their beloved child. My Own Private Idaho depicts Mike Waters' (River Phoenix) existence, as it shows that he desires to experience fond childhood memories. The internal desires appear in Mike's dreams, as he often falls into sudden slumber that habitually crawls upon him through his sleeping disorder, narcolepsy.
The story opens in a remote location in Idaho, along a rarely traveled highway, where Mike stands and waits for someone to pick him up. This moment has symbolic value to Mike's existence, as he seems to be stuck somewhere in his own development while he waits for someone to save him from his isolation. Yet, no one comes to his rescue as his narcolepsy takes control of him and puts him asleep.
For much of the film Mike seems to be asleep while dreaming of his mother and his youthful years. Dreams generated through his narcolepsy create an imaginative haven of warmth and motherly care. In essence, the narcolepsy gives the impression that it is a defense mechanism for Mike, which appears to be triggered during stressful situations. The narcolepsy also has a symbolical value as it shows his innocent search for motherly affection and his vulnerability, which can be compared to a child's defenselessness to exposure unless someone is taking care of the child.
Despite the condition that Mike possesses, he drifts around in Seattle making his living as a male street prostitute that sells his body to those who want to buy his company for a few hours. The few hours provides a small opportunity for him to receive some form of affection, which he desperately needs. When an older woman picks him up for the services that he provides he has a narcoleptic attack since the woman reminds him of his mother. Two young men that are also visiting this woman carry Mike out. One of these men is Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) with whom Mike eventually falls in love.
The second time Mike meets Scott is in the arms of him, as Mike is recovering from a bout of narcolepsy in Portland. In Portland the audience gets to meet a wide range of characters that all have a dark and muddled past from which they all seem to try to escape. One of these characters, Bob Pigeon (William Richert), brings to mind Charles Dickens' Fagin from Oliver Twist who is the leader for a group of young thieves, which is cleverly woven together with a Shakespearean touch. The combination of Scott and Bob brings to mind two infamous characters, Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff, from Henry IV. This scene seems to be out of place, yet it somehow the director Gus Van Sant pulls it off and makes it credible.
Scott, the son of the wealthy Mayor of Portland, provides a similar image, as Prince Hal does in Henry IV. First he is supportive of his friends, as he set out with Mike to find his lost mother whom he has not seen for many years. Along the journey they begin to drift apart, as Scott begins to embrace his roots in the aristocracy of Portland. Mike is left to his own device, as Scott turns his back to the world in which he learned about belonging, human cruelty, and love.
Van Sant gives the story an artistic touch through Shakespeare, wonderful mise-en-scene, and how he frames each scene, which provides a vision that travels on a path between slumber and consciousness. Emotions drift with the characters' actions, as they help in building a mutual foundation that rests on their unstable backgrounds. Backgrounds without nurturing love and affection seem to leave people in a state of sadness, melancholy, and despair while trying to find their own existence through others. Van Sant delivers this notion together with several other ideas to the audience in a complex, dark, and disconnected tale of belonging, love, rejection, and much more, which leaves the viewers in deep contemplation.
Summary of My Own Private Idaho (The Criterion Collection)
River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves star in director Gus Van Sant?s haunting tale of two young street hustlers: Mike Waters, a sensitive narcoleptic who dreams of the mother who abandoned him, and Scott Favor, wayward son of the mayor of Portland and the object of Mike?s desire. Navigating a volatile world of junkies, thieves, and johns, Mike takes Scott on a quest from the grungy streets to the open highways of the Pacific Northwest, in search of an elusive place called "home." Groundbreaking and visually dazzling, My Own Private Idaho is a stirring look at unrequited love and life at society?s margins.Mapping the spaces between fortune and degeneracy, Shakespeare and street cant, Europe and the Pacific Northwest, and gay and straight, My Own Private Idaho is the 1991 masterpiece by director Gus Van Sant. River Phoenix gave the most generous and memory-searing performance of his tragically shortened career as Mike Waters, a narcoleptic street hustler in search of his mother. His best friend, Scott, played by Keanu Reeves, is a son of privilege who fosters plans of rejoining the moneyed world of his father after gallivanting with assorted urchins and ne'er-do-wells. The beautifully symmetrical story that emerges between the two is one of friendship, yearning for lost time, and sexual identity conveyed with a poet's eye for landscape. The camera lingers on abandoned houses in golden fields and time-lapse clouds, providing what T.S. Eliot called "the objective correlative"--external representations of interior emotional states. We're treated to striking iconic sequences like a barn falling from the sky and still-life scenes of carnal entanglement. The supporting cast is a rogues' gallery that includes Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Udo Kier, director William Richert, and a variety of "nonactors" pulled literally off the street to provide documentary veracity to a film that gleefully careens into riffs on Henry IV. It's beautiful.
What's also beautiful is the Criterion Collection's treatment of the film's DVD debut. The director-approved transfer successfully conveys the warmth of the film's palette of oranges and browns, and preserves the whimsical atmospherics of the yodeling country music soundtrack. Many members of the original crew contribute their fond memories to the documentary features, which include a conversation between Phoenix's sister Rain and producer Laurie Parker. There are also two lengthy audio-only conversations--one between Van Sant and Velvet Goldmine director Todd Haynes, and another between author J.T. Leroy and filmmaker Jonathan Caouette about their experiences on the street. The deleted scenes mostly suggest alternate endings that Van Sant wisely left on the cutting room floor. A superb example of a beloved film on DVD. --Ryan Boudinot
Stills from My Own Private Idaho (click for larger image)
 The Cast |  River Phoenix |  Keanu Reeves |
 Keanu and River |  Udo Kier |  Gus Van Sant |
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