Down to the Bone

I saw this because I enjoyed the intense experience of Debra Granik's more recent film, "Winter's Bone". This film, similarly titled "Down to the Bone", covers somewhat the same emotional range. It is a very bleak story, but not entirely the most accomplished one. The problem with attempting an unpredictable story of addiction is in following the predictable life of an addict. This film is neither complex enough or well executed enough to really give us a new way of seeing things. Better cinematography could have helped. Using very cheap digital equipment (though probably more high tech as of 2004), Granik and cinematographer Michael McDonough take "Down to the Bone" in a more vérité-style direction. But the production values are low and poor even by normal documentary standards. This is a style that would only have great merit if this truly was a documentary, and not a dramatic film. The use of a soundtrack and other cinematic devices detracts from any possible grittiness that could have added to the feel.

The truth and power lies in the acting, as understated as it is here. It's refreshing to see human lives without a lot of exaggeration or demonstrative emoting. Vera Farmiga is the best thing going here, and I found her style compelling. The other performances are all good, and never feel any less than real. In the end, something about this film feels unfinished. Debra Granik has gone on to do a much better picture with "Winter's Bone". This is in interesting starting place, but it just isn't enough more than that.

Farmiga in one of her earlier works (and the earliest work I've ever seen from her) is just mesmerizing. At this point to rave about her is to say the expected, but she plays a different sort of character in this one, not quite something I'd seen her do before and so she does things differently but also is fearless in a very compromising, familiar way. She's riveting to watch, and that's the beauty of her acting in pretty much everything I see her in. The supporting cast also does some fine work, but no one could hold a candle to Farmiga, or even try to really. Also interesting to see Debra Granik from Winter's Bone and how she grew to become an even better filmmaker.

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.

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.

"Down to the Bone" follows in the tradition of classic addiction and rehab movies (such as "Clean and Sober"), but it doesn't stoop to any clichés.

The key to the story's credibility is the director's documentary style, the use of authentic, working class locales in Upstate New York, and terrific acting.

Debut director Debra Granik and co-writer Richard Lieske don't follow the typical trajectory of horrific addiction experiences ("Lost Weekend," "Leaving Las Vegas," "Requiem for a Dream," etc.), though there's some frightening close calls, but quietly build an accretion of how a drug habit affects a mother and her family in her daily life as a cashier and living in a house her ne'er do well husband never finishes renovating. With no explication or back story, "Irene"s life plays out for us completely through what we see in grainy digital video and the characters' inarticulate interactions.

Rehab is only the half-way point in a continuing struggle (and we have seen the 12-steps many times but perhaps not this drearily matter-of-factly) and the film is brilliant at demonstrating just how difficult it is to quit when everywhere there are not only triggers for physical need but how those around her benefited in some way from her behavior when she was high and keep encouraging her to indulge. Lapsing is cynically referred to as "the 13th step." None of these insights are hammered home redundantly as we see her frustrations and resiliency.

I've noted Vera Farmiga in various TV series, but here she reveals guts, strength and range below her fragile beauty as she very believably, step by step, gives "Irene" backbone. Her chemistry with a seductively magnetic Hugh Dillon is terrific as their relationship goes from attraction to risk to independence.

Though at one point New York City is a bit tritely used as a tempting source for drugs, the primary settings in snowy Kingston and Ulster County, with its downscale stores, weatherbeaten houses, high unemployment and desolate highway scapes set the characters in a very believable, multi-racial setting.

There is a bit of heavy-handed symbolism with a pet snake, but the young children are terrifically natural, especially in their whiney-ness and physical reactions.

The soundtrack unobtrusively includes an interesting selection of indie rock, including by Dillon's band.