"After college, he moved to Los Angeles to try his luck in films, and he spent long afternoons in cafes on Hollywood Boulevard staring at the destitute kids on the street - the boy-men who had come to the city full of dreams and had soon ended up selling themselves or stealing or begging to make ends meet. He was fascinated by them. 'I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before. And in general movies weren't made about street hustlers. Midnight Cowboy was a famous street hustler movie, but in general this was a place Hollywood didn't go, and that was something I was attracted to.'Throughout this article, it seems that Van Sant referenced to art in almost every single question.
Many directors style is affected by their upbringing, perhaps specific occurences of their lives. Van Sant's inspiration and style is very difficult to pinpoint as many of his films evoke a different mood, however he does this with a unique and artistic vision, sometimes immpossible to spot unless you are looking for it.
"Van Sant says there was something repressed in his family. 'It was an upper-middle-class, bucolic environment and then there's all this trouble under the surface ... People do things like play golf.' He says 'golf' with some distaste, though he has been a keen player himself."According to this article, Gus Van Sant originally studied to become an artist. Apparently though the competition in this field was extremely high and it was almost impossible for a large amount of students to achieve their dream due to the unbalanced ratio of aspiring artists to galleries, therefore he turned to film. He apparently only made his first movie at the age of 30 despite having moved to LA at the age of 19.
However he did not loose touch of his passion for painting, instead his unique artistic vision some argue is what makes his films so visually interesting and adding an extra dimension to the narrative.
Certainly watching some of his films, I got this artistic vibe just through the composition of his shots. It made me pay attention and created a stronger relationship between myself and the characters on screen. The colouring is also special in a certain way. Watching Good Will Hunting, there were these warnm and golden tones evident from the opening titles of the movie. Restless seemed to use just as vivid tones but more in the hues of soft grey/blue hues, which made bold colour use stand out so much more.
Before watching Good Will Hunting I was expecting an average drama with a feel good ending that I would like and forget about the next day. Not only am I still thinking about it a month later but I remember certain shot sequences and moments during this film that just stood out to me in the way they were constructed- how stongly they reflected the mood of what was going on in an unexpected way and epowered the meaning of the scene. This may have been due to the over-analytical-media-student side of me coming out a bit though.
"While his movies are not camp, they have a particular sensibility. From the off, there was something ecstatic in his directing. You could identify Van Sant films by their giddy images of flying hats and cows and exploding houses, dusty highways, time-lapse photography and fake home-video footage. At times, you could identify them from artistic overindulgence - his crazy desire to incorporate Henry IV into My Own Private Idaho almost destroyed the movie"I think it's very difficult to pin point exactly what Gus Van Sant's style truly is (for me) because he has these two types of films: the Hollywood and the Indie. But one thing they both have in common is this tinge of artisism (as I mentioned before). After looking through trailers, creating a mood board, reading articles and interviews and watching a couple films I still found it hard to pick out an entire list of similarities amongst his movies. I've compiled what I could from the research I conducted below :
- Troubled young adults (tend to be male protagonsits)
- Vivid colour palette
- Tend to be dramas
- Follows the characters- many close ups establishing a closer relationship between the viewer and the character on screen
- Use of dramatic long shot (so far seen in GWH, Restless and Elephant)
- Searching for identity
- Artistic in terms of mise-en-scene
- Realistic but not raw
- Quirky (mostly his independent films)
" While his movies are not camp, they have a particular sensibility. From the off, there was something ecstatic in his directing. You could identify Van Sant films by their giddy images of flying hats and cows and exploding houses, dusty highways, time-lapse photography and fake home-video footage. At times, you could identify them from artistic overindulgence - his crazy desire to incorporate Henry IV into My Own Private Idaho almost destroyed the movie"Personally I found this directors study to be both really interesting and difficult. After only seeing a couple films and not really knowing much about Van Sant's life I'm almost scared to be too generalising about his work because his movies are all so different and difficult to identify. Yet it was so inspirational discovering his passion for painting and exploring another movie which did not fail to impress (Restless). I think of the films I have watched so far there is this closeness in his shots to the character, one that isn't as evident in other films, which drew me in and evoked feeling rather than just using shots for the purpose of observation where you don't feel a connection, as such, with the character. Van Sant is truly a great director.
Quotes taken from this article here > http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/jan/24/features.weekend1
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