THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – MUST SEE
Phew! An hour and a half has already passed in the first film directed and played by Viggo Mortensen when, in an irrepressible but welcome fit of anger, his character, John, ends up throwing his four truths at his father, Willis (Lance Henriksen) to whom none of the markers of beaufitude will have been spared: scatology, misogyny, homophobia. There are then 22 minutes left in this feature film alternating the past and the present of its main character to reach its logical conclusion and, finally, appeased.
The present ? Gentle, clean and a bit of a skinny guy, John lives in Los Angeles with his partner Eric (Terry Chen), a nurse, and their daughter, Monica (Gabby Velis). A former army officer, he now works as an airline pilot. The daily? Palm trees, tolerance and barbecue. The past ? As a child, raised with his sister on an isolated farm in the Northeastern United States, John watched helplessly as his parents’ couple disintegrated, divided, as between two tendencies, between cooking a duck with his mother or a hunting party with his father. The daily life of the time? Cold winds, hunting parties and horseback riding.
Californian sun or northern blizzard, these two universes that everything opposes, socially and climatically, these two Americas, will come together while Willis gives more and more obvious signs of dementia. Listening only to his good heart and despite a quantity of bad memories attached to the father figure, John decides to welcome him into his home in order to convince this stubborn and hard-to-evil man to live the rest of his life on the edge. of the Pacific. You might as well wave a red rag in front of a bull.
A devil in his paradise
Willis balks, tests his son’s limits and, undoubtedly taken aback by so much leniency, begins to spout the worst nonsense on homosexuals in particular and Californians in general. Resilient, John cash in, cash in… After having risked his happiness by inviting a devil to his paradise, John ends up realizing that the transplant will not take, and accompanies his increasingly demented father back to his farm, buried in the snow. Until the 90e minute.
The idea for this film, partly autobiographical, came to Viggo Mortensen as he returned from his mother’s funeral while flying over the Atlantic. ” My spirit, he says, was invaded by countless memories of her and our family at different stages of our lives. ” Thus was born the scenario of this endearing or irritating film according to whether one applauds John’s anger, or whether one deplores his resignation.
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