Gus Van Sant in six films

After seven years away, US filmmaker Gus Van Sant returns with a new film screening out of competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where he will also collect a lifetime award.

The 73-year-old US director, based in Portland, Oregon, has kept his audiences guessing throughout a near-five-decade career that has yielded Oscar-winning pictures such as “Good Will Hunting” and “Milk”.

Hiw work moved through phases ranging from experimental to crowd-pleasing, covering subjects including artists, activists and killers.

“I’m not the least bit adventurous by nature, so I probably like getting close to those who are,” he said in a 2016 interview.

“I’ve been influenced by others and I think we could say all my inspirations have come from chance encounters.”

Here are six of his most emblematic works:

– ‘My Own Private Idaho’ (1991) –

Just shy of his 40th birthday, Gus Van Sant’s third feature was a turning point, raising his profile with two of the hottest young talents in Hollywood.

The involvement of Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, who played drug addicts and hustlers, was a huge boost for Van Sant’s film.

With its shots of lonely highways, grungy streets and diners, the aesthetic recalled that of photographer William Eggleston. The film became an instant indie hit.

Phoenix, who had become a close friend of Van Sant, won several awards but two years later died of an overdose at the age of 23 — adding a note of melancholy for future viewers of the film.

– ‘To Die For’ (1995) –

The first sharp turn in Van Sant’s career came with this dark comedy about a devilishly ambitious weather presenter, played by Nicole Kidman.

Shooting a studio movie with a hefty budget and working within the codes of genre cinema, the movie was well received by critics and audiences, and kicked off a more mainstream Hollywood phase.

– ‘Good Will Hunting’ (1997) –

Doing the rounds in mid-90s Hollywood was a script in search of a director, penned by young actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Van Sant was immediately drawn to the tale of two friends whose lives change when one working as a janitor at MIT university discovers he has a flare for physics.

The resulting film changed the fortunes of its young actors as well as sprinkling Hollywood stardust on Van Sant.

Out of nine Oscar nominations, “Good Will Hunting” scooped best screenplay and best supporting actor for Robin Williams.

– ‘Elephant’ (2003) –

At the start of the new century Van Sant entered a new, experimental phase.

The first film in his “death trilogy” left many critics confused, and producers wary.

“Gerry” in 2002 was a near-silent movie starring Damon and Casey Affleck as hikers who get lost in the Californian desert and seem doomed.

A similarly muted US response followed with the next in the trilogy, “Elephant”, in which Van Sant broached the sensitive topic of the Columbine High School massacre of 1999.

His anti-dramatic approach to the horrifying story found a far more receptive audience in France, however, scooping the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

– ‘Milk’ (2008) –

The film that brought Van Sant back into the Hollywood fold inaugurated another new phase, addressing political activism.

In this biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, Van Sant addressed a theme often latent in his work but never tackled head-on: homosexuality.

Openly gay since his twenties, many of Van Sant’s films have involved strong bonds of male friendship.

Sean Penn played Milk, who was assassinated while in office in 1978, in a performance that won him the best actor Oscar.

– ‘Promised Land’ (2012) –

Van Sant reunited with Damon in another political drama, about a natural gas salesman who questions his company’s policy of buying land for fracking.

Asked that year by The Oregonian newspaper if he would continue to mix experimental with mainstream work, Van Sant hinted that at 60 he had started worrying more about audience reception.

There are, he said, “more accommodating ways to think about what subjects you’re choosing. To be less defiant makes more sense now than it did before.”

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