CHASING THE LIGHT

OLIVER STONE | MONORAY

The adjective “storm-tossed” occurs more than once in the opening stretches of Chasing The Light. Though the Platoon helmer’s directorial light has dimmed a little lately, Oliver Stone’s early years brim with drama in his elemental memoir, an often arresting read in the vein of fellow maverick Sam Fuller’s exclamatory autobiography.

True to form, Stone grabs your attention fast with a snapshot of

Salvador’s (1986) high-risk, no-budget shoot. From there, he rewinds to his father’s impulsive (Oliver approves) pursuit of his mother and his own conception on a choppy ocean voyage, all detailed in vividly cinematic terms.

When Stone hits Vietnam, the waters turn choppier still. He writes brilliantly on being young, lost and reckless, and with punchy immediacy on the sensory assault of war. Those senses sharpened, he comes to see his camera as an extension of them as he embraces filmmaking, though his progress is – duly – storm-tossed.

Years of “hope and penury” and “raw, naked” failure follow, conveyed in a mix of mythical metaphors and torrid tales of off-screen Hollywood manoeuvres. From cocaine to Conan, tantalising could-have-beens – Pacino as Ron Kovic – emerge as he flings open the window on a bygone era. But Stone’s actual breakthroughs thrill, too. The shoots for Salvador and Platoon are desperate and dangerous, the pay-offs giddily exhilarating. He ends with Platoon’s Oscar glory and a harbinger of “the storm that was coming”, ever the tease. Sequel, please? Kevin Harley