Let’s talk about drug movies. I, personally, love a good drug movie. Maybe it’s an obvious way for a filmmaker to express gritty, raw intensity, but if you can pull it off, you leave the viewer with, on one side of it, a bizarre ride of fun and insanity, or on the other side, an emotionally scarring portrait of a person who has reached the dregs of their being. Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [4], for example, is a hell of a lot of fun, following the great Hunter Thompson on his psychedelic-fueled romp through the city of the title. Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting [5] takes a whimsical look at a heroin-fueled life, but it starts to get darker. Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance [6], about a runaway hitman shacking up with a washed-up rock star who feeds him mushrooms, is pure, wonderful weirdness. Other great rides are Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly [7] and David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch [8]. We are here, however, to talk about the dankest of the dank. See, for example, Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream [9] or Jonas Akerlund’s Spun [10].
Or the point of this article: Heaven Knows What [11], directed by Ben and Joshua Safdie. Fictionalized from the memoir by Arielle Holmes – and starring Holmes as well – the film tells the story of Harley, a heroin addict. That makes life weird and dangerous enough, but when her lover Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) asks her to prove her love by slitting her wrists… well, it’s a drug movie.
Heaven Knows What plays at Village 8 as the latest installment in the Louisville Exclusives series. Village 8 is located at 4014 Dutchmans Lane. Further theater information and showtimes can be found at the Village 8 website [12].
Image: IMDB