January 19, 2001

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Gay director may be finding his next Oscar

Finding Forrester Columbia Pictures

Directed by Gus Van Sant

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Openly gay director Gus Van Sant is probably one of the most interesting auteurs of the modern American cinema. Starting off with such indie masterpieces as My Own Private Idaho and To Die For, to the blockbuster brilliance of Good Will Hunting, Van Sant has created cinematic images and celluloid characters that remain long after the projector or VCR turns off.

In My Own Private Idaho, one of his best and most daring films to date, Van Sant created a story of love and longing amongst two friends and hustlers played to pitch perfect precision by the late River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. This is one of the best films, gay or otherwise, to have emerged in the past two decades and will go down as one of the classics of independent film making. The chemistry between Phoenix and Reeves was disarming and unrequited love and lost opportunities were never so painfully depicted. One could argue that Van Sant is the only director ever to have elicited a great performance out of the usually monosyllabic Reeves. Phoenix should have been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar that year but his performance and the film were far too edgy for the Academy's conservative and sentimental tastes.

Gus Van Sant would have to wait approximately a decade before the Academy would give him the recognition he deserves. Directing Good Will Hunting brought Van Sant into the mainstream and took Hollywood films into the edgier and more independent vein of film making. Matt Damon cemented his status as a bona fide actor, Robin Williams finally won an acting Oscar and the film made a legend of Damon and Ben Affleck's screenwriting Oscar.

It seems that only three years later Oscars may be shining on Van Sant again, this time for his work on Finding Forrester, which just opened nationwide.

In Finding Forrester, Van Sant echoes many of the themes found in Good Will Hunting, adding to that mix the element of

race.

In Finding Forrester, Sean Connery plays William Forrester, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who, after his first masterpiece, disappeared leaving the world wondering what had become of such great literary promise.

Rob Brown

We meet Forrester in his advanced years, now a recluse and extremely eccentric, much like the literary genius J.D. Salinger.

Forrester's years of safety in his hideout and of writing but never publishing are invaded by Jamal Wallace, a brash 16-year

Sean Connery and Gus Van Sant.

old with writing aspirations of his own. The two eventually forge a friendship that forces both characters to dig deep to find their real selves. This is one of the oddest couplings in cinema, a cranky reclusive, yet incredibly scared older white man who collides with a young, wise-beyond-his-years, brilliant and fearless black teenager.

While it is obvious that Forrester becomes Jamal's mentor, Jamal is also mentoring the author in how to face the world outside of his dark, musty and decrepit apartment. In this relationship, both are forced to quickly abandon each other's misgivings and misperceptions about the other. This is ultimately a story about mutual awakenings as both the old and young journey towards a better sense of self and a bigger understanding of their place in the

cosmos.

Connery is perfect as Forrester and there is already a lot of Oscar buzz for a best actor nod. Connery balances the wry humor and the author's gravitas with finesse. He is funny and poignant all at once, never quite stepping into the mawkish sentimentality into which such a role could easily degenerate. Connery always brings an elegant dignity to his performances and Forrester is the best example of that in recent memory.

F. Murray Abraham, who will always be remembered for his brilliantly evil portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus, plays another angry, misanthropic teacher, Professor Crawford. Crawford (who teaches English at the prep school where Jamal is sent because of his incredible dexterity with the English language) becomes the thorn in the young man's side, making Jamal's life

miserable. Abraham is as good as always, letting the evil ooze slowly, trying to pollute Jamal's self-confidence, his talent and his future with a vengeance. Crawford isn't so much a villain as he is a very tragic and broken man whose personal failures and

self-loathing cause him to lash out at those better than himself.

Anna Paquin, who has lived up to the promise of her Oscar winning turn in The Piano, plays the rich white girl who forms a deep friendship with Jamal.

Paquin is one of the most self-assured young actresses out there and she doesn't miss a step here either.

But the real gold in the movie is newcomer Rob Brown who plays Jamal with sheer brilliance. Brown's performance is highly understated and he fills the screen with a freshness and magnetism that is hard to turn away from. Van Sant has found a young talent who is going to do great things if he continues to get more roles like Jamal. Brown is the perfect foil for Connery's recluse and the two generate so much warmth, humor and deep love on the screen that this becomes as much a story about friendship as it is about race, urban living and the lost promises of literary genius.

Van Sant's directing is well paced and sure-footed, allowing plenty of room for the friendship between Jamal and Forrester to develop organically and natu-. rally. Van Sant avoids many of the cliches that this movie could have degenerated into in a lesser director's hands. The climactic scene, a showdown between Jamal, Forrester and Crawford is a bit too Hollywood for Van Sant's edgier style but it is a minor flaw.

Finding Forrester, while similar in many ways to Good Will Hunting, doesn't have the edge that Damon and Affleck's script was able to sustain.

Nevertheless, Van Sant's films have more often than not focused on the status of the outsider, those that are marginalized and those who live, voluntarily or forcibly on the fringes of society. For all its deep issues, Forrester sometimes comes across as knowing all the answers a bit too easily. Nevertheless, this is a film that is worth watching because it has Sean Connery back in full form and it boasts one of the best debuts by a young actor in the past few years.

Van Sant has always been an exciting director and given his ability to blend the edgy with the mainstream it will be interesting to see what he comes up with next. It's good to know that unlike Forrester, Van Sant, after his first masterpiece, My Own Private Idaho, didn't go into hiding and rob us of some of the greater films of the past decade.

Kaizaad Kotwal is a Chronicle contributing writer in Columbus.