A lesson...

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2007)

I first saw the other comments on this movie, and wanted to see it. I can't explain why. I'm the kind of person that doesn't just watch movies for entertainment, I enjoy a lot of movies that make you really think. The storyline isn't difficult to understand... Harry, his mother Sara, his best friend, Tyrone, and his girlfriend Marion, are the main characters, and during each scene we observe how the effects of drug use (both "prescribed medical" and illegal) cause their lives to change in ways they would never have foreseen.
Harry is a regular drug user, along with Marion and Tyrone. While the boys crave a life without struggling to find money for their next fix, Marion (while also being of the same frame of mind) is also a designer and wants to open a fashion store, if only she had the money. In contrast Harry's mother, Sara, lives alone, where the television is her best friend. After a phone call inviting her on her favourite show, she is obsessed with fitting into her "red dress" that she wore to Harry's graduation so that she can wear it when she's called to be a contestant on the show. You can sense her despair when she takes it out of her closet after years without use and trying to put it on, when she finds that she just can't zip it up. After trying a very boring diet that her friend suggests, she goes to a doctor about diet pills, which, after several months, she becomes addicted to, with effects that I can only describe as being... intense.
When I first sat down to watch this movie, I somehow assumed that all the characters would be young, naive, carefree.... No doubt, the things that Marion did in attempts to get cash to feed her addiction are horrific... but to see the effect that it had on Sara really makes you think about how dramatic people's actions can be when they crave something enough, despite their age group.
I was in tears at some of the things I saw. While some might sit there and think "ugh, this is degrading and far-fetched", I feel the need to say they're wrong, and that it happens more than you would care to imagine. The end titles took me slightly by surprise, and then silence. I can't explain to you how I was feeling, no words can describe it. I see now that anyone who sees this as "entertainment" are cold-hearted. All I can say, is that it's a lesson, and it'll probably mean something different to everyone that is taught by it.
It's worth it to watch it once, definitely, maybe even twice. But I couldn't watch it again.