Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot (Gus Van Sant, 2018) (Patreon)

A curious film. As I watched, I found myself wondering what my friends who are in Disability Studies would make of it, since in certain respects this strikes me as one of the most refreshing depictions of a paraplegic I've ever seen in film or television. John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix) is not only a complex individual and quite often a self-centered bastard. But he is determined to live his life with humor and even aggression, taking the fact of his spinal injury as a major challenge, and a serious inconvenience, but never a defining characteristic.

On the other hand, as related by Don't Worry, Callahan is definitely defined by his alcoholism, and as the film progresses, it shifts from a somewhat free-floating memory montage to a middlebrow (if effective) advertisement for the healing power of AA. Even the film's very form becomes bolted down, no longer following the odd reverie and instead marching us through the twelve steps.

This later tendency in the film involves a lot of hugging and learning, and that somewhat mitigates the funky humor and atmosphere that allows Van Sant's directorial personality to shine through. If I were being slyly allegorical, I could claim that this is intentional, since the ultimate lesson Callahan has to learn from AA and his sponsor (Jonah Hill) is to abandon his ego and give in to that Higher Power (in Callahan's case, Raquel Welch's pussy). So the idea of the film becoming less auteurist along the way does sort of feed into that elimination of self that is a part of Don't Worry's explicit theme. But I think it's probably more likely that this is a film that has certain biographical imperatives, only some of which allow for true directorial freedom.

A word about Phoenix's performance: it is solid, although not one of his strongest. He is certainly charismatic and more than satisfactorily anchors the film. As for the "cripping up" question -- whether it is ethical for an able-bodied performer to even be playing a paraplegic in the first place -- I think this is obviously a tough issue. Like other minority groups, the disabled have a long way to go before there is equality in the industry, and bypassing disabled actors for roles such as these does not help. At the same time, industry folks with Phoenix's and Van Sant's prestige can and should use their positions to at least fill as many supporting roles as possible with disabled actors, and I saw no real effort here to do this. So while the Callahan story certainly represents a better-than-average representation of disability, we have to wonder if there will come a time when we marvel that films like this were even made.