Posts about Gus Van Sant (RSS, JSON)

2PM — You can depict drug addiction from the perspective of an outsider in a moralising way: Look at those people and their miserable lives at the edge of society. Pay attention in school, learn a profession, find a well-paying job. Don’t become one of them.

Or you show their human side, which they have despite the crimes they commit, as a tight-knit group of friends, family almost, as they try to navigate their lives. “Drugstore Cowboy” does the latter, which is why it’s so good.

Robert Ebert:

This is not a movie about bad people, but about sick people. They stick together and try to help one another in the face of the increasing desperation of their lives. The movie is narrated by Dillon, whose flat voice doesn’t try to dramatize the material; he could be telling his story at an AA meeting. He knows it is sad but he also knows it is true, and he is not trying to glamorize it, simply trying to understand it.