Gus Van Sant at the Lausanne School of Art in Lausanne, 2017. ADRIEN SGANDURRA BEIGE
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True stories succeed with Gus Van Sant. After painting the life of a gay activist (Harvey Milk), reconstructing the deadly Columbine massacre in a labyrinth (Elephant), or imagining Kurt Cobain’s last breath (Last Days), his new film, “the Corde au cou,” for which he replaced Werner Herzog at short notice, retraces the improbable kidnapping of a broker’s son by one of his clients who felt cheated, Tony Kiritsis (excellent Bill Skarsgård). This ruined businessman intends, through this desperate maneuver, to recover his money and honor. We are in 1977, in Indianapolis, in the soft belly of an America caught between two oil shocks, and the case turns into a richly episodic television series that foreshadows the sensationalistic spectacles that news channels and social networks feed on today. Gus Van Sant draws from it a kind of vintage prelude to our society invaded by screens and the clash of crises, launching an unexpected return to Greece.
Do you remember the hostage-taking carried out by the real Tony Kiritsis in 1977?
I remember having read about it in the newspapers, without realizing the extent to which it was being watched on television, which was not my case. I was already settled in Los Angeles, where I was working…
