Innovative, Wow.

Rating: Null/10 (22 February 2003)

The story of four people who get too much into drugs, it poses several questions, not all of them about drugs. One of them is, how stylized can movies become before they are so thoroughly stylized that they lose their narrative roots? It's rather like music in some respects. At one end of the dimension, which I won't try to name, there is a simple tune like, oh, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," which is easy to remember, fun to whistle, cute, and rudimentary (although Mozart did some very odd things with it). At the other, three minutes and some seconds of silence. In movies, at the simple end, we can have, say, a one-hour film consisting of nothing but the same shot of the Empire State Building. At the other end of the dimension we might get something resembling what one sees in a kaleidoscope while stoned. (Or maybe we come back to the Empire State Building; maybe it's not a dimension at all, but a circle.)
This one certainly hasn't lost touch with the events it describes but it's pretty highly stylized too, as far as the direction, photography, editing, and sound are concerned. Sometimes this stylization works to support the narrative and sometimes it doesn. Sometimes it actually works against it. Example: all of the drugged-up scenes are in fast motion, including those involving, not just speed, but marijuana and heroin. The hyped-up action we get while Ellen Burstyn is on diet pills is evocative, peppy, full of accelerated business. But heroin doesn't work that way. And marijuana practically ablates one's sense of the passage of time so that, for instance, it sometimes seems to take half an hour to urinate -- so they tell me. If you stop using speed abruptly you can get some wizard hallucinations. But no one hallucinates on heroin, although this film suggests they do. The result is that the stylization is sometimes over the top, not slowing down enough to give us a chance to take a breath. It's nerve jangling and leaves the viewer a neural shambles. The performances are fine, by everyone concerned. In particular, Jennifer Connoley has by far her juiciest role and, somewhat surprisingly, is up to it. Burstyn is excellent too, her accent pretty well Brooklynized. But some of that shredding of sensibilities is unearned and unnecessary. The editing is increasingly jumpy and shocking, though it never leaves us in doubt of where we are or who we are with. The score is a blend of mostly scratchy, unpleasant electronics and ordinary sounds with the gain on high -- each pill accompanied by a "plop" on the sound track, each flick on a lighter by a "pfft," and so on. (Sometimes it sounds like a Popeye cartoon.) The photography too is highly distinctive. Fisheye lenses abound here. Cameras are fixed by harness onto an actor's body so that the actor's face and shoulders are immobile while the background seems to swivel around him and he walks and turns corners. The effect is so disturbing that it keeps your eyes glued to the screen.
I found Aranovsky's earlier film, Pi, plan irritating and depressing because of the high-contrast photography and other directorially imposed effects. This one is depressing too, but less irritating because, despite the high style, a story is being carried, and the story is about characters we care something about. They may be self absorbed, like the subject of "Pi," but they're hardly self confident. Their weaknesses are pathetic but entirely recognizable. Ellen Burstyn wants to lose weight so she can look good in that red dress, just as she did at her son's graduation. She pursues the cultural ideal of slenderness and youthfulness. Her son and his pardners in euphoria pursue the cultural ideal of pleasuring one's self. The drugs could be a neat stand in for the values that prevail in our community currently. Why else, except out of a desire to look good, would people buy a three-hundred-dollar simulacrum of a rowboat and use it so regularly? Why else, except out of a desire to feel pleased with one's self, would anyone buy a forty-thousand-dollar ten-gallon-per-mile Suburban Assault Vehicle with a revolving machine gun turret atop it? Hey! Look at me, everybody, I'm young, beautiful, and happy! Of course I can't figure out why I'm alive, but I don't ask myself that question.
This is an extremely innovative film, but the director has made clear his admiration of earlier movies, including "The Panic in Needle Park" (the same general idea), "The Godfather" (ominous oranges), "The Little Shop of Horrors" ("Feed me, Sara!"), and maybe "Koyaanisqatsi" (the acceleration of the cuts, tempo, and onscreen movements from moderato at the beginning to molto agitato towards the end).
It left me saddened and panting for breath. I'm not sure I'd like to sit through it too often, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted to miss it.