Movie review: Melancholia

I dragged Big Guns to see this film on Sunday night. There were only nine of us in the theater, which was awkward. (I'll explain shortly.)

I stand by my previous assessment of Lars von Trier and I still have a love/hate relationship with him. His films are so hard to watch, but riveting and I can't not watch. I don't know how he reaches that deep, disturbing place. It's not the subject matter. Plenty of movies have been made about depression and injustice and the evil people are capable of, but his are more visceral. I suppose I could try and analyze them frame by frame, but I would have to take breaks to smell flowers and pet kittens to prevent myself from drawing a warm bath and opening a vein or two.

Lars does not shy away from ugly or difficult. He makes you stay with it even as it gets uglier. It's gut wrenching and painful and frustrating watching his character, Justine (who he supposedly based on his own self) be depressed. You want to kill her or hospitalize her. (Here's why it was awkward to see with Big Guns; he was so emotionally involved and distraught, he started yelling at the screen: "You bitch!" "Don't do that." "What's wrong with her?") The story is also about her co-dependent sister who married very well, but continues to rescue and care for Justine. The third main character is the huge planet, Melancholia, previously hidden behind the sun and which may or may not crash into and annihilate Earth. (It's a metaphor for how depression--or melancholia--destroys everything.)

Like a student film, it's beautifully indulgent and rich with imagery. Like a Lars von Trier film, it upset me and made me want to dream a new ending.

Drugs: a chicken and an egg thing.

The agency I work for created these ads as part of a bigger campaign to curtail meth use in the U.S. They were directed by Darren Aronofsky of Requiem for a Dream fame, which, I guess, qualifies him as the drug director. The fact that he doesn't seem to have had a drug problem doesn't diminish the power of his work and these spots are powerful and disturbing, no question about that. They made me squeamish, uncomfortable, and just plain grossed out--almost too much so because I was detached from the experience. I could not relate. There was one ad that came close; a teenage girl at a house party approaches a group of kids smoking meth and asks to be included. That desire to fit in is so strong at that age.

I never used meth, nor was it ever offered to me and so I was completely detached from the experience of watching these ads. I suppose the idea is to scare kids straight, right? You show them the worst possible outcomes--physical deterioration, prostitution, death--and hope that it deters them from ever picking up. But what these ads fail to recognize is that death and depravity are part of the attraction; along with getting high, self destruction and annihilation are goals, not deterrents. An accidental overdose looks better on a death certificate than suicide. Get it?

For that reason, I'm not sure this approach works. It makes all the adults in the room feel good, but I'm not convinced it will thwart a drug addict from picking up.

Maybe I was more cynical than the average kid, but I remember having derision for anti-drug messages. (Then again, I came up during Nancy Reagan's "Just say No" years, which we mocked mercilessly. I even dressed as Nancy for Halloween and my friend accompanied me as a pre-sober Betty Ford.) This is what we knew then: the people behind the anti-drug campaigns were old and out of touch and didn't care about kids; they just wanted to control our behaviors. How else do you explain the continual slashing of education budgets and services to youth but a willingness to dump millions on ad agencies to produce anti-drug campaigns? What I know now: the agencies who benefited from the great fortune of cranking out this noble work often celebrate by getting good and high on legal drugs: alcohol.

I don't have an answer. I don't know how you stop an addict from acting like an addict. I only know what works after. Maybe these ads are not meant for addicts but for casual users, in which case what's the fucking point? Spend the money on schools.

The day of the O.D.

A close friend of mine in the program relapsed on my DOC. Not just a slight relapse, but a full, f-ing hospitalized/say-goodbye-to-your-friend overdose. Thankfully it didn't end in death, but what a way to cycle through an enormous range of emotions in 24 hours -- disbelief, shock, terror, grief, fear, fear, fear, worry, hope, relief, confusion, anger. Now I understand why the left behinds of addiction and suicide ask, "How could you do this to us? Wasn't my devotion enough? Why? Why? Why?" Here's the answer: "Because I'm an addict." Addicts don't take drugs, drink or O.D. to hurt others or spite the people in their life; they do it because it's their job when the Beast is running the show.

I feel a bit like a patsy. I'm angry that somebody who was advising me on my program was using while I was struggling with life. It hurts to be lied to. A part of me wanted the tables to be turned, for me to be in a bed pumped full of fentanyl and propofol and let somebody else do the worrying. Now I know what it feels like to be on both ends of the disease. Either way, it really sucks. Damn.