The Blue issue.

True Blue: homosexuality in the auteur trilogy of Gus Van Sant.
Barry Jenkins

Gus Van Sant is gay; very gay. Like…San Francisco, rainbow flag and damn proud of it gay. After a career begun with queer and indie classics Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, the director fell into a creative funk that saw him quiet his thematic impulses to shepherd Hollywood fare such as Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. United by a technique heavily influenced by the contemplative aesthetic of Bela Tarr, the trilogy of 2002's Gerry, 2003's Elephant and 2005's Last Days serves as a bellwether event in the evolution of Van Sants' craft. Where Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester feel devoid of their director's influence, Gerry et al are filled with Van Sant's thematic focus on homosexuality. Watching them won't make you gay, but such an effect would not surprise. Van Sant's nuance is stunning.

Last Days (2005) is the final installment of Van Sant's trilogy. In its own words “inspired in part by the last days of Kurt Cobain…(nevertheless) a work of fiction,” the film posits Michael Pitt as drugged out rocker Blake (i.e. Cobain), a rambling mess of a guy bobbing about his farmhouse in the inlands of Washington State. As Van Sant's auteur series goes, the film boasts the most explicit depiction of homosexuality in the form of both male/male and (surprisingly) female/female sexual intimacy, yet proves to be the least homosexual of the trio in terms of focus, mood and theme.

Though each film of the trilogy is rooted in some real world event—the true story of lost hikers in Utah for Gerry, the slayings of Columbine High in Elephant, and the life and death of Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain herein—Last Days presents Van Sant at his most restrained, adhering steadfastly to the historical fiction of Cobain's passing. In so doing, his common theme of homosexual longing is pushed to the periphery; a periphery peopled by Blake's slumming entourage as portrayed in the bisexual couplings of Lukas Haas/Nicole Vicius and Scott Green/Asia Argento. As Pitt wilts to the floor amidst sappy Boyz 2 Men videos and soggy mac-n-cheese meals, the others engage in various combinations of bi-sexual interplay owing more to Van Sant's interpretation of their freewheeling lifestyle than an overriding statement of homosexual purpose. And more to the point, no matter the exploits of Haas and company, the film's focus is consummately aimed at Michael Pitt's Blake.

A generous interpretation of Last Days finds Van Sant representing bi and homosexuality as no different than the norm, thus not requiring the thematic impart viewers are prone to associate with actions they so seldom see on film or acknowledge in day to day life. A less heady reading sums that against the backdrop of Kurt Cobain's infamy, homosexuality as a theme becomes forcibly resigned.

Elephant (2003) may be the most controversial film of Van Sant's career. A commentary loosely based on the Columbine High shootings of 1999, the film sets a voyeuristic eye on the events leading up to two teenagers' killing spree on their unsuspecting schoolmates. Filmed almost exclusively from the vantage point of a prowling camera fixed directly behind or in front of the characters, the movie cultivates a detached point of view that objectively recreates the tension and anxiety festering amongst teens in high schools across America. The effect is the impression of a film absent an agenda, Van Sant taking no steps toward theorizing a cause for the catastrophe but rather recreating an average high school day followed by the well-known tragedy. On the premise that the seamless narrative progression from one to the next bears witness to the real life version's undetectable cause, Elephant is chilling social cinema.

That is until the film's brief, but troubling second act in which Van Sant breaks from the comfort of his delineated timeline of “the day” and opts instead to journey back with the film's assassins. Here the auteur presents elements specific to the characters, moving beyond the generics of the high school experience to sketch assault rifle toting kids who perform Beethoven, play first person shooters and, in his boldest stroke, strip naked to exchange a passionate kiss in a final shower together. The shower scene and kiss are obvious physical representations of homosexuality, yet the director clouds them in mystery. As if to de-emphasize the act, the boys rob the moment of its homosexuality by rationalizing the event as their last chance to kiss someone, anyone before heading into an inescapable fate. Similarly, the night before this very scene the two sleep in the same room yet in different beds.

The event begs the question: is homosexuality embodied more in a physical act or in one's opinion of their sexual self? Judging by Van Sant's decisions here—it would seem unwise for a homosexual director to posit a film with so vicious a crime on the dogged notion of latent homosexuality manifesting itself through violence—Elephant states a case for neither, with all sexuality in the film filtered through the lens of adolescent insecurity. Such a notion becomes even clearer as glimpsed in the roundtable discussion Van Sant choreographs early in the film amongst a class of self-described gay students. “How can you tell someone's gay?” asks a student, “Can you tell just by looking at them?” In this context, the film presents its clearest aspirations towards homosexuality as a function of theme: in this world of teenagers it is nothing more than another question to be reconciled, no more important than a myriad of emotions directly tied to the maze of adolescence. For his part, Van Sant tows the line rigorously, giving what's obviously a focal point of all his work no more sway than it merits in the context of his setting. How much one accepts that notion plays an incredible role in determining their perception of homosexuality as a thematic point in Elephant, whether grossly abused as a knee jerk rationalization for heinous actions or given due process as an act of curiosity in a film of self-seeking kids.

Taken from the true-life story of two hikers lost in the desert, Gerry (2002) is the most enigmatic picture of the set, an ethereal exercise in minimalism. The film stars Matt Damon, Casey Affleck and the rolling landscape of the American Southwest in a literal and subliminal struggle observed through cinematographer Harris Savides' impeccable eye. Despite a narrative where nothing beyond the protagonists' wandering happens, Van Sant and company create an atmosphere so palpably filled with dread, longing and dementia that the narrative limitations of such a slight setup are completely enlivened under the will of invigorated aesthetics.

There is an undeniable sensuality to the filmmaking in Gerry. Composed of uninterrupted shots gazing upon either its two male leads or the rugged elegance of nature, the film is—like Elephant and Last Days—a voyeuristic experience suffused with a sense of the personal. As the two unnamed hikers searching for salvation, Damon and Affleck are as indifferent of dramatic manipulation as the hills and valleys; Van Sant creates no subplot of emotional connections past, present or future for them to speak of. Instead, we watch their unfiltered actions absent of exposition and, more so than anything found in the narrative, create our conclusions on the foundation of Van Sant's employ of filmic techniques. As a result, the movie is charged with homoeroticism, a phenomena owing to the associative effect of authorship in a work of art. As a homosexual filmmaker creating a project of two same-sex characters completely removed from the associations of society, Van Sant's point of view overwhelms all else. Over the course of Gerry's ninety-minute running time, boyish gab gives way to the immensities of circumstance as the film becomes impossibly romantic, culminating in an embrace between Damon and Affleck equal parts sexual, tragic and mystic.

In the press kit for Gerry, Van Sant states, “What we did in Gerry…I've never done this before, where I try to go back to the beginning of the cinema as if there had been no industrial revolution. The desert is one of those places where the industry doesn't really seem to apply. It's still alive.” It is unclear whether Elephant and Last Days were projects Van Sant was working on at the time of Gerry, but that they were the progression of a filmic agenda begun with Gerry is undeniable. In this way it is readily apparent that, in regards to homosexuality as a theme in the director's work, the first film of the trilogy presents the most unrestrained depiction. Gerry finds Van Sant totally exposed, his concerns and observations apparent in every frame of this first foray into a “new cinema.” Whereas in the physical depiction of homosexuality, the trilogy evolves from evocation (Gerry) to provocation (Elephant) to consummation (Last Days), in terms of thematic impart the cycle runs in reverse: Gerry is the consummate Van Sant film of homosexual subtext. Its status as such despite the absence of explicit homosexual imagery is a study in the technical sway of a contemplative cinema. That the final two films of the trilogy manage a homosexual undercurrent despite their pop-cultural/societal gravitas is Van Sant's influence as well, a testament to the osmotic relationship between an auteur and his/her work.