Review of Candy (2006)
November 16th 2011 23:22
There's an already seldom-mentioned 2006 film called Candy (starring Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish, Geoffrey Rush; directed by Neil Armfield). Basically, as most reviewers pointed out, it's an Australian version of Requiem for a Dream -- young couple starts off flirting with drugs, and what follows is a downward spiral -- alienation from family, theft, prostitution, abortion, etc.
It plays out somewhat formulaically and slightly sanctimoniously (albeit it's based on true events), and one could reduce it to the South Park quote "Drugs are bad."
To spoil the ending, Abbie spends a while in hospital recuperating, and the last scene involves her coming to say goodbye to Heath, putting the final nail in -- kicking her addiction not only to drugs but also to the relationship.
One of the things that sticks in my memory (or perhaps I've imagined it) are the curious feelings at this point. Everything you've been through is "an incident" -- curiously self-contained -- a bubble outside of time -- with characters essentially left in the same position they start out in. All the drama is like a dream/nightmare that never really happened: you look back on it with mixed feelings, but also with faded, muted feelings -- like sadness or nostalgia, rather than anger or passion.
A sense of unreality -- as if that chapter of your life is now closed and happened to a different person.
A sense of impossibility -- that life, that relationship is impossible; the distance is uncrossable; I'm such a different person now from what I was then, there's been so much water under the bridge, that there's just no way; it's not even a question.
I walked out of the cinema, and I liked the film, and I definitely liked the performances, but my girlfriend seemed rather scarred from the experience. She asked me what I thought, I told her the film was "life-affirming", and she was charmingly shocked.
Now, "life-affirming" was of course meant to be provocative; but I was also trying to say something about how I felt. It wasn't simply a wind up. I could sense the adjective was somehow appropriate, but couldn't at the time have told you in what way it applied.
Flash forward five years. I'm still not sure what I meant; and, of course, I've changed -- I'm trying to reconstruct what a different version of me said. But it seems to me that, when it comes down to it, there was a bunch of different ideas I had, and I meant the adjective to touch on each of the ideas, to open up different lines of thought. For instance:
-- the two characters come through the drugs by close of movie; drugs are bad; so it's ultimately a happy ending;
-- the film is full of living, full of different experiences and emotions;
-- the film wants to be faithful to life, to how things really were, watching the small details -- it doesn't glamorize or stylize (in contrast with Requiem); sets, acting, script are naturalistic; it's perhaps not that different from a Dogme film;
-- the film values experience in itself -- both the highs and the lows;
-- there is beauty even in the darkest moments;
-- with its distanced and grander emotions at close of movie, the film poeticizes life, elevates the humdrum of human existence.
It plays out somewhat formulaically and slightly sanctimoniously (albeit it's based on true events), and one could reduce it to the South Park quote "Drugs are bad."
To spoil the ending, Abbie spends a while in hospital recuperating, and the last scene involves her coming to say goodbye to Heath, putting the final nail in -- kicking her addiction not only to drugs but also to the relationship.
One of the things that sticks in my memory (or perhaps I've imagined it) are the curious feelings at this point. Everything you've been through is "an incident" -- curiously self-contained -- a bubble outside of time -- with characters essentially left in the same position they start out in. All the drama is like a dream/nightmare that never really happened: you look back on it with mixed feelings, but also with faded, muted feelings -- like sadness or nostalgia, rather than anger or passion.
A sense of unreality -- as if that chapter of your life is now closed and happened to a different person.
A sense of impossibility -- that life, that relationship is impossible; the distance is uncrossable; I'm such a different person now from what I was then, there's been so much water under the bridge, that there's just no way; it's not even a question.
***
I walked out of the cinema, and I liked the film, and I definitely liked the performances, but my girlfriend seemed rather scarred from the experience. She asked me what I thought, I told her the film was "life-affirming", and she was charmingly shocked.
Now, "life-affirming" was of course meant to be provocative; but I was also trying to say something about how I felt. It wasn't simply a wind up. I could sense the adjective was somehow appropriate, but couldn't at the time have told you in what way it applied.
Flash forward five years. I'm still not sure what I meant; and, of course, I've changed -- I'm trying to reconstruct what a different version of me said. But it seems to me that, when it comes down to it, there was a bunch of different ideas I had, and I meant the adjective to touch on each of the ideas, to open up different lines of thought. For instance:
-- the two characters come through the drugs by close of movie; drugs are bad; so it's ultimately a happy ending;
-- the film is full of living, full of different experiences and emotions;
-- the film wants to be faithful to life, to how things really were, watching the small details -- it doesn't glamorize or stylize (in contrast with Requiem); sets, acting, script are naturalistic; it's perhaps not that different from a Dogme film;
-- the film values experience in itself -- both the highs and the lows;
-- there is beauty even in the darkest moments;
-- with its distanced and grander emotions at close of movie, the film poeticizes life, elevates the humdrum of human existence.
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