Everybody hurts

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2003)

Everybody hurts. Three young New York junkies. A lonely mother. A hedonistic drug dealer. A cruel Wall Street banker. A North Carolina prison guard. A Bible Belt doctor...
And, as Harry cleverly points out, everybody has his or her fix...
Harry's (and his friends') pain is having feelings, sensitivity and compassion in the cruel, isolating, materialistic world of the U.S. of A. His fix is heroine. When he takes it , the reality is gone for a little while and he lives a beautiful dream. He laughs. He's happy.
Harry's mother's pain is loneliness and low self-esteem, typical to U.S. women, so conditioned to be good mothers, good wives and good looking. Nothing more (an excellent movie "Safe", with Julianne Moore, shows that perfectly). Her fix is television, food and appreciation of her neighbors, all of this leading to her final demise.
Tim's fix is sex. He's so unattractive that the only way for him to get it is paying for it. With heroine (it's addictive so they will come back...). And his way to get heroine is to organize sickening sex parties for wealthy NYC bankers, who cheer up two naked women having an anal intercourse on the table. They stick money into their mouths. They degrade them beyond belief. Why? Because they possess an inherit cruelty fueled since childhood by violent cartoons, displayed since childhood by torturing bugs? Because their boss degraded them this morning and they want to forget?
And the only reason the women do it is because they want heroine, the escape, the short dream... One of the women is Harry's love, beautiful Marion, as Tim calls her, lady Marion from a Robin Hood tale ... Even Tim has a dream...
Prison guard's fix is revenge, he leads an unhappy painful, trained, conditioned life. So he gets back at prisoners, 'those dirty New York junkies'...
Doctor's fix is following the Bible. A junkie is bad. The Bible (although 2000 years old) is good. Put the junkie to prison and you will go to heaven...
But what started this whole exposure of misery and inadequacy, was a young boy Harry and his girlfriend, Marion, who wanted to escape from a cruel, loveless, money-driven world. Who wanted to have a dream...