It’s always a crapshoot as to what you’re going to get with a Gus Van Sant film. It could be Drugstore Cowboy, Good Will Hunting, or Milk, or it could alternatively be Psycho, Gerry, or The Sea of Trees. He’s a filmmaker whose brand of art film can be anything from amazing to overwhelmingly pompous. And Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot definitely has a premise that’s strange enough to go either way. Luckily, this biographical film on the struggle of cartoonist John Callahan manages to avoid stylistic pitfalls for a more driven character journey.
An alcoholic with a troubled past, John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix) on a bar-hopping bender is severely injured in a car accident, becoming a quadriplegic. As he morosely recovers and continues to struggle with drink, he begins attending an Alcoholics Anonymous group run by a sponsor Donnie Green (Jonah Hill), eventually discovering a passion for drawing off-colour cartoons to cope with his condition.
There’s not a lot of unusual flourish to the narrative presentation of this film as Van Sant is sometimes prone to do. Sure it starts with contrasting timelines linked through speeches Callahan is giving, but for the most part it’s straightly told. And aside from some split screen transitions designed no doubt to evoke a comic panel, this movie isn’t heavily stylized. There are a couple weird moments, like when Van Sant literalizes a metaphor Callahan gave for a moment of inspiration, but more often than not it’s the story that takes precedence, and the erratic personality of its subject.
Despite the movie following Callahan’s finding a love of politically incorrect cartooning (the title coming from the punchline of one of his more famous sketches), that’s only a part of a grander story. His career isn’t as important as his journey out of addiction. This is actually one of the most in-depth movies about recovering from alcoholism that I’ve ever seen. It really takes its time with the process, never illustrating it as something easy to kick with a little bit of open vulnerability or discipline -in fact one scene actively mocks the self-pitying tragic backstory that movies often fall back on as an excuse. It highlights each of the traditional twelve steps to recovery, and how they can be more of a challenge than they seem. Even Callahan’s paralysis, the catalyst of these efforts and which itself takes a major toll on his emotions and behaviour, is the secondary struggle next to this main theme. After all, the accident in and of itself didn’t cause him to stop drinking, it rather fuelled his self-destructiveness, and he needed more help and reflection and a genuine desire to be better to make a difference.
Joaquin Phoenix has pretty much the same kind of track record as Van Sant, alternating between good, bad, and weird performances (his obnoxious method acting for I’m Still Here coming to mind). He does a pretty solid job here though, very comfortable playing a guy with a lot of sadness, anger, and a dark though sometimes inappropriate sense of humour. The biggest problem though is that much like Will Forte in A Futile and Stupid Gesture, it’s more than a little distracting how much older Phoenix is than the character he’s supposed to be playing, with Callahan having been twenty-one at the time of his accident, twenty-seven when he attained sobriety, and Phoenix presently in his early forties. Seeing him and Jack Black drunkenly careening from bar to bar comes off less like a couple irresponsible kids on a night out, and more like a pair of pathetic middle-aged men trying to foolhardily recapture their youth. And there are plenty of other instances throughout the film that service the conceit of this character being in his twenties. Acting-wise, the surprise of the movie is Jonah Hill as the warm, funny, and compassionate AA leader who’s Callahan’s greatest guide. Hill is really dedicated, jovial, but authoritative too, of a calibre you wouldn’t expect from him, and it’s his best performance since The Wolf of Wall Street. Rooney Mara is once again relegated to being merely the supportive girlfriend though. The cast also includes Carrie Brownstein, Beth Ditto, Kim Gordon, and a conspicuous Udo Kier.
There is something genuinely inspiring to Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, and it definitely feels like a heartfelt tribute to Callahan, and even programs like AA. It imbues a spirit of perseverance to this interesting story without getting too watered down in sentiment. It’s not likely to be one of Van Sant’s most memorable films, but it is a pleasantly agreeable and heartening one.
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