Lauren RabainoHe was hailed as the founder of “Gonzo” journalism. He was revered as a counterculture icon. Now, the late Hunter S. Thompson has been immortalized on the big screen in Alex Gibney’s documentary, “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.”
Thompson is thoroughly celebrated in this film, which focuses on his journalism career’s peak years and finishes with the late years of his life leading to his suicide in 2005.
For Thompson fanatics, the documentary may not be a completely eye-opening experience. But for those who may only know him as the twisted mind behind the film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” viewers discover there is more to the man’s life than one spectacularly weird drug trip in the Nevada desert.
Thompson coined the term “Gonzo” in regard to his journalistic style, which involved throwing his life into the stories he covered.
The documentary follows Thompson’s account of being embedded within the Hell’s Angels motorcycle crew, with firsthand accounts of his experiences as narrated by Johnny Depp.
Thompson published “Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs” in 1966, thrusting the writer and his Gonzo style of journalism into the limelight.
The visual elements of the film are very solid. The personality of Thompson would not mesh well with a drab, boring narration style of people sitting in a room talking about him.
Instead, interspersed in the interviews are many illustrations of Thompson, and photos taken that make viewers feel like they are being sucked into his strange version of the world.
The documentary journeys into the political realm; Gibney devotes a large portion of the film to Thompson’s hilarious campaign for sheriff in Aspen, Colo. and his covering of the 1972 presidential election between George McGovern and Richard Nixon.
Thompson, reporting on the election for Rolling Stone magazine, despised Nixon and everything he stood for. When McGovern lost his bid to unseat Nixon, Thompson took it hard.
Gibney transitions from the disappointment of the 1972 election and moves to the 2004 election, drawing comparisons between Nixon and George W. Bush’s bids for re-election.
The film seems to hint that Bush’s re-election was the final straw for Thompson, who killed himself just months later.
The final scenes of the film are dedicated to Thompson’s strange last request, a fitting end to the trip that was his life.
If you have any interest in the life of Thompson, or if you enjoyed “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and all it stands for, go see “Gonzo.” It is another strange trip indeed.