Better Things

Three times i've seen this without being able to write about it. Watching it feels as painful as the pain its trying to show.

"It hurts when we love somebody. Because loving is a painful thing. That is its nature. Our loving is hurting us" reads dumpy adolescent Gail (what is the book? My guess is R D Laing)

"Love hurts" is the over-riding (sometimes overbearing) theme of the film. The thematic treatment supplants any kind of plot or through-run story.

Therefore condense drama to concentrate emotion: still the life, compose the frame, minimalise the dialogue. No panning or tracking or moving off with camera. Stay still. Be here. With this that hurts. The effect is to feel oppressively overloaded on monochromal, monotonal, misery.

This is all stylistically engaging. Racing in the car fast down a dark country lane; all the sound is cut except for the 2 boys talking – like being immersed inside the bubble of them, cut off from the outside, focused right in to the heart of their isolation.

Better Things is relentlessly, almost - courageously - grim. A lot of very miserable face going on. Faces without smiles, without warmth, lacking, unwarmed by love. Faces of lads are all so null and void its hard to distinguish one from the other.

All is shadow and blue inertia, with very little light to provide contrast.

This isn't so much about the perils of doing drugs. It's about how difficult it is to love when love feels out of reach. Deprived of love, life disappears, becomes denuded – gets gloomily unbearable. Seems to be the message.

Disturbingly, the setting isn't inner-city London, Manchester – but the least place you'd expect to see urban anomie and alienation, – the supposedly "lovely" Costwolds.

I'll be saving this film. Doubt I'll want to watch it another 3 times though.

An utterly dark and depressing movie: which is also probably why I've enjoyed it so much... Its theme easily reminds us of "Requiem For A Dream" or "Trainspotting" (another British masterpiece); its heavy, discomforting atmosphere of deep sadness and unrecoverable loss, as well as its long, silent frames of bleak, grief-stricken faces, marked by unspeakable pain and suffering, are reminiscent of "Another Day"; and its overall "dragged out" or "self indulgent" artistic approach is evocative of "Elephant", or Bela Tarr's "Satantango".

This film is nothing less than a raw and torturous foray into the very heart of darkness and despair; its main subject, as set forth in the very first lines of the movie, is nothing else than the excruciating agony of existence, from whose unbearable hollowness or emptiness the characters seek shelter in drugs, lust, or isolation. From this perspective alone, an obvious link can be drawn to Louis Malle's "The Fire Within", a masterpiece of the 1960's French New Wave cinema, or to its modern-day Nordic 'remake', "Oslo, August 31".

Then again, it is obviously not a film for everyone, and neither are those mentioned above, to whom this movie is more or less comparable... After all, not everybody enjoys his or her cup of coffee dark, with NO sugar...

I found this film was more about love than drugs and depression. She say's 'why did she think falling in love would make things better' etc etc. When someone dies and you know you could have stopped or hindered them except that you would have done the same in their circumstances 'it hurts' it's the nature of love to understand yet still grieve. The film has old people in it, any one else notice that? He loves her even though she cheated on him, he can't escape because he loves her, yet his love for her rips him to shreds, all he wants is to be with her, to have what he thought they always had. the guy who overdoses is suffering the same pain, he wants what they had always had before she died, no matter how awful it was, at least they had something. Old and young, we just want what we had before it turned sour. Nothing to do with drugs or adultery just people wanting what they perceived as good. Well done, I loved the film.

I feel that this is a well executed film. In the film there is a real sense of desperation, loss and despair, and I feel that this is accentuated in the way that it is shot and also the music that is used. A sense of reality features very prominently within the film and although there isn't much in common with me and any of the characters, I find myself feeling sorry for them but also getting angry at the same time with some of them over the drug use. I actually felt quite shell shocked at the end, not because of the ending or the drug use but because there was lots going on within the film. Everyone had their own little narrative, which was neatly woven into the main theme of the film. I liked the monologue from the girl at the beginning of the film and also how we came back to it at the end. Overall an interesting film and as I say in my summary could have been a little shorter.

Its a pity that some of the dialogue is almost blasted out by trying to keep the real-life noise of passing cars or wind - probably done in an artistic way to represent something, but its annoying! its a pity as the acting is pretty much superb from a no-name cast... but the film is overlong and dwells too much on miserable looking people looking miserable...understandable given some of the topics, but... I think it is supposed to be as much about love and relationships overcoming events and anxieties... but it stretches itself pretty thin by the end