Down to the Bone

This movie telegraphs its tone in the first minute -- as others have pointed out, it's not exactly breezy. But it is well worth making the commitment to watch.

Farmiga's performance has integrity and guts, especially when she's interacting with the kids, but all her interactions with the secondary characters have a compelling spark of reality to them. She uses her whole body to say a line, the way real people sometimes do, especially when under stress. As in her other works, she commands every scene she's in. It's nice to see her own an entire film.

I felt the same subversive sweetness under the surface that many classic, superbly observed films seem to share, along with an astringently dry humor and personality, while remaining almost unrelentingly bleak on the surface. I found the final ten seconds particularly satisfying.

I caught this last night on PBS as the Independent movie in their usual Classic/Short/Independent lineup on Saturday nights knowing that Vera Farmiga was the lead and hoping that she'd turn in a raw, unaffected, moving performance. In the end, her performance was good but the movie and the material was not and nothing could save this film. The movie is about Irene (Farmiga), who is a cashier at a local supermarket, a Mother to 2 young boys, who has had a cocaine addiction since High School and wrestles with the need to get clean and change her life around.

Drab. Boring. Uninspiring. That would be 3 great words to describe this movie. Not much happens and while not much had to happen for it to be captivating or deemed a good film, the overall slow, monotonous way this film operates is enough to put anyone to sleep. It seems as if the movie starts at a certain tone, continues through that tone and ends in that same tone - no high points, no real low points, just one continuous tone that creates an overall dull movie.

I'd rate this movie a 3 out of 10. I get that the movie was going for realism but every movie should have at least one heart pounding moment where the audience cares about what is going to happen to one of the characters and this movie just didn't have that or really anything to raise the tone above drab.

Oh and a sidenote - the most annoying part of this move is the eldest of her two children. Someone needs to teach that actor to breathe out of his nose because every single scene he was in and there were many, all I could hear was him disgustingly breathing out of his mouth so loudly that I couldn't really concentrate on the dialogs or anything else but his sleep apnea like gasps of air. It was gross.

Having been intrigued by Vera Farmiga's idiosyncratic turn as a confused police psychologist in Martin Scorsese's viscerally impressive "The Departed", I was curious to see her in this critically acclaimed low-budget 2005 indie. As it turns out, she gives a startling, soul-bearing performance as Irene, a working class wife and mother with a cocaine dependency problem. The primary difference between this film and more conventionally moralizing addiction movies is how her drug-taking habit has so casually permeated her life.

Written (with Richard Lieske) and directed by first-timer Debra Granik, the film provides a documentary-like feel for Irene's downtrodden existence in New York's blue-collar-dominated Ulster County as a supermarket cashier, who has been likely a stoner for most of her adult life. Cut off by her drug dealer for falling behind on her payments, she pilfers one of her children's birthday checks and realizes the depths she has plumbed. Checking herself into rehab, Irene looks like she is on the road to recovery, but she is hamstrung by an affair that starts with Bob, a male nurse recovered from his own addiction. Compounded by her firing from the market and a husband who continues to enable her, she finds herself in a vicious circle of entangled dependency and dwindling hope.

The movie gets choppy and unnecessarily elliptical at times, although it is not as desultory as one would expect from the set-up. Don't expect any bravura set pieces for Farmiga, who is in almost every scene. It is the utter sense of emotional desolation she conveys in the small moments that resonates. Even when she shows how much she cares for her two sons or has moments of hope about a brighter future, there is a lingering melancholy that haunts all her scenes. Though clearly overshadowed, Hugh Dillon is quite good as Bob, as is Clint Jordan as husband Steve. I was surprised to find out from the informative commentary track by Granik and Farmiga that many of the supporting players were local non-actors. The 2006 DVD also includes the primitive but still impressive 1997 twenty-minute short, "Snake Feed", upon which the film is based.

I had the opportunity to see this film again at the Florida Film Festival (after having seen it screened at Sundance), and I have to say even though I was watching the film for a 2nd time, I still found myself completely engaged in the narrative. The film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature. At times, I nearly forgot that I was watching a film. Vera Farmiga gives a powerful and evocative performance, which must rank among the best in her career. Down to the Bone seems rooted in the cinematic schools of Cinema Verite and Neo-Realism, and the Director, Debra Granik, obviously seems devoted to the idea of making a film without the usual Hollywood bells and whistles. So, the film depicts the bleakness of drug addiction, but without sensationalizing it with the usual tropes: Overdoses, guns, car chases, etc...

The end of the film is left ambiguous, which forces the filmviewer to forego the simplicities of a stock ending; the audience is given the ability to draw their own conclusions. Your choice--does the film have a happy ending or not? Of course, this is not too dissimilar to the dilemmas that people face in real life.

This film is certainly not for everyone. It demands the focus and attention of the filmgoer. As such, Down to the Bone is geared more to the committed and sophisticated cinema enthusiast. The film features a minimalist soundtrack, from which it is difficult to draw the obvious emotive clues. The cinematography is original, as the viewer is exposed to a seemingly endless palette of grays. However, it is not an "easy" film to watch--there is no "eye candy" for the viewer.

Debra Granik's Feature Film Directoral debut shows tremendous promise, and I look forward to her future projects. I rate this film as very good: a 9 out of 10. Frankly, I'm at a loss in understanding why a dozen of IMDB users have rated this film just as a "2". Can the Film Juries at Sundance and Florida be so off the mark? I guess that the cliche is true: there really is no accounting for taste!

'Down to the Bone' is a mirror depiction of the lower-to-middle class struggle to keep clean while trying to overcome the perils of poverty and raise a family. It is not your typical run-of-the-mill addiction story either, revealing the darker sides of the problem and focusing on the lives it so often can tear apart. Vera Farmiga was the shining star in this role as Irene, a mother of two trying to keep her cocaine addiction a secret and save a marriage on the rocks. At 'Sundance' Vera took home 'The Special Jury Prize' for her performance and Director Debra Granik won the 'Director's Award.' It's no wonder that Martin Scorsese went out of his way to get her for her upcoming role in "The Departed." She is and will be a great actress in Hollywood for years to come. I look forward to her success in the future.