Mise En Scene: Star Brown

My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Directed by Gus Van Sant

This is an independent film about a narcoleptic rogue, Mike (River Phoneix) and his endearing friendship with Scott (Keanu Reeves). Together they travel the long roads surrounded by flat fields from Idaho to Portland with their own identities facing challenges with people American society. As outcasts, they run with the underground folk, selling their bodies to earn cash. Mike is a lost soul whose mother left him when he was only a baby and his distant memories of her trigger his narcolepsy in the most spontaneous situations. Like an older brother, Scott is there to take care of him. Scott’s character is based on the rebellious Prince Hal from Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” who is heir to his father’s wealth once he turns twenty-one. Scott is consciously aware of his vagrant ways in the eyes of his father, the Mayor and knows he will change and reform when time deems it. Throughout the movie we see the slow transformation of our vibrant protagonists sowing their wild oats on the urban streets as tricksters and thieves. The close relationship of Mike and Scott solidifies Mike’s romantic feelings for his companion. This leads them to embark on a journey in search for Mike’s mother landing them in Italy. There, Scott falls in love with a native, young woman abandoning his companion to start his life as an upstanding citizen in upper class society. Mike being abandoned again, continues on with the life he knows will never change—the long and lonely road that he repeatedly states as looking like a “fucked up face.”

The mise en scene in “My Own Private Idaho” is shelled in a dream-like world around Idaho and Portland settings. The recurring metaphorical setting of the desolate straight road in the middle of nowhere symbolizes the ever-present loneliness of Mike’s life. As a traumatized narcoleptic, this road in Idaho is most familiar to him since it is the trigger for his condition. This setting of the road is the opener and closure of the movie enveloping the it in one dreamlike story. There are repeated scenes of a country house, presented as Mike’s distant memories of his lost home. These settings portray the timeless and endlessness of Mike’s life emphasizing the mood of his abandonment. In a strange way, the quiet plains appear serene-like for such a wild ride of debauchery through a self-destructive character.

The movie travels back and forth from these nature settings of Idaho’s billowing clouds above the still plains to the loud, bustling city of Portland. Again, these shots emphasize the reality of Mike’s life—wakefulness to sudden dream-like trance.
The open skies above the horizon reinforce the “road less traveled” theme of being an outcast. There are many exterior shots that allow the underground characters to roam free in their world of misconduct. The diner is where all the rascals gather to regroup and tell stories of their worst “dates.” In one diner scene, Mike and Scott are sitting in a corner table conversing about their relationship and their personal lives. The scene is cut from the interior of the diner to the exterior. It splits the audience’s viewing to give the sense of sitting with the friends then cuts to being a stranger walking by the window peering in.

The composition in this movie was excellent in repeating angular shots, long shots of windy and angled roads and city buildings. The most engraved image that was repeatedly shot was the unbalanced composition of a long road getting narrower toward the center of the horizon. In the beginning and ending of the film, Mike is standing on the same road looking toward one direction and when he lifts his hand up and says the road looks like “someone’s face—like a fucked up face.” And when he says that, the lens narrows like the ending of the Loony Tunes cartoons. All the shots of the Idaho road are asymmetrical that emphasize the unbalance and chaos of Mike’s life as a drifter and his prison of the long road under the billowing clouds of his narcoleptic dreams.