Review: Gonzo

The full title of the film is "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," but then I think that there is a flaw in that title, for what Thompson did was not "work," as his writing was purely for a thrill and in search of the truth, and I do not doubt that if any of us could have asked the man himself, he would not have referred to what he did as "work" either. Also, the title has been condensed on posters to simply read "Gonzo," which conjures mental images of the lovable Muppet; this is actually less off the mark, in a sense, as Thompson was figuratively (and later, thanks to "Doonesbury," literally) a cartoon in many ways.

This is one of the central themes explored in director Alex Gibney's (the Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side") documentary: the idea of a man becoming so renowned for living the life of a "character" that he was driven mad by the sudden necessity of living up to his own legend. Thompson, by the end of his life, was self-destructive, and not in the last-American-hero way that he (and many others) fancied him as living earlier in his life. If he was riding on the charming side of drunk for many years, he flung himself wildly to the dark side of it by the end. When he died in 2004, after shooting himself in the head, many hailed the fact that Thompson had prophetized dying in just this way decades earlier; he would take himself out when he was on top. However, Thompson's first wife attests that he was anything but; she talks of how she directly disagrees with all the people that canonized him, because today's world needed a man like him.

However, as the title suggests, the film is not just about his spiral, but about the long, surreal, often wonderful life he led as a young man. From an incident in his youth, where his richer friends were allowed to leave the town jail but he was incarcerated on his graduation day, Thompson long held to his belief that true honesty was the most powerful weapon against the powers-that-be. This was reinforced when he was sent to cover the infamous Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention, and many other enraging world events; most famously, his vicious lashing of the 1968 presidential campaigns for Humphrey and Nixon. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," his most famous work, came to be as the result of his hunt for the American Dream, a concept that he believed was far more tangible than most thought.

I could go on and on about his many exploits, but then I would be running off the entire film. One detail I must make mention of, that elevates this documentary beyond simple biography, is the eclectic cast of individuals that showed up to pay tribute to the man. Everyone from Jimmy Carter to Jimmy Buffett shows up to speak about the life and times of their friend. The film's best touch is the choice to have Johnny Depp read excerpts from Thompson's book throughout, occasionally waving a pistol around.

The strength of this film is that it refuses to simply idolize Thompson; the good is taken with the bad. Regardless of any one man's opinions, though, he was a recluse, a warrior, a pillar of honesty, a modern-day cowboy, a drunkard, a drug addict, an American icon, an idealist, a madman, and maybe, just maybe, a genius.