NYFF: Heavens, No!

The New York Film Festival has begun. Here's Glenn on the return of the Safdie brothers in 'Heaven Knows What'.

Heroin addicts roaming around the streets of New York City sounds like a good time at the movies, I know. Don’t storm the cinemas too quickly, okay? Okay, so I am being sarcastic, but anybody who sees the Safdie brothers’ Heaven Knows What is going to need a laugh and a heavy dose of sunshine after bearing witness to this very downbeat film from the makers of Daddy Longlegs (aka Go Get Some Rosemary). Like that 2010 film, the feature debut of Ben and Joshua Safdie as a directing partnership, Heaven Knows What is very confrontational in its imagery like somebody inspecting an open wound and poking it with a dirty finger.

Heaven Knows What is certainly a step up from that Independent Spirit winner, as the brothers become more assured in their craft and storytelling. ...more

Much like that prior film, inconveniently timed so as to appear as a part of the mumblecore onslaught, their latest film offers a portrait of a person, Harley (Arielle Holmes), who society has tried its hardest to ignore and vice versa. Adapted from Holmes’ own unpublished memoirs, the appropriately titled Mad Love in New York City (a better name for my two cents), the film opens with her attempting suicide right there on a busy Manhattan street just to spite her sometimes-boyfriend, Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones looking distractingly like Tommy Wiseau). She soon shacks up with Mike (Buddy Duress), but the allure of a life with sociopathic Ilya proves as irresistible as the drugs she injects on a daily basis.

Coming from Australia, I am well versed in films about drug addicts. We make more than our fair share, so for me Heaven Knows What wasn’t quite as confrontational as I suspect they intend the film to be. Much like New York, my home city of Melbourne is rife with characters of this sort and I admit to not exactly relishing the thought of spending 94 minutes with them. However, it’s to the Safdie brothers’ credit that they make the film as involving as they do.

The aural soundscape is impressive, filled with swirling synthesizers and curiously implemented sound effects that brush up alongside the natural environments like warm flesh against cool porcelain. The opening five minutes are an exceptional feat of sound design, especially as the opening credits play out over a scene of aggravation that appears at odds with the electronic music on the soundtrack. Filmed by cinematographer Sean Price Williams using glorious 16mm, the film favors extreme close-ups as well as highlighting the dirt and scum of their 72nd Street and Riverside Park filming locations while shunning shaky-cam. Its visuals echo the most obvious comparison, Jeffrey Schatzberg’s 1971 junkies-in-love drama The Panic in Needle Park, effectively creating an unsettling, nightmarish image of the Upper West Side.

A third act detour into horrific violence is actually warranted to alleviate the viewer from the stark, repetitive story plotting and character beats that extend the film beyond a too-long runtime. Despite its faults, the Safdie brothers and their screenwriting collaborator Ronald Bronstein have made an effective film that prizes form in a way many films of this kind do not. Not a great film, but one that excitingly suggests they have much stronger visions still to come. B-

Heaven Knows What screens on Thursday Oct 2nd (9pm) and Sunday Oct 5 (8pm). The directors' post-film press conference can be seen on YouTube.

Comments

[Amir]

I was more enthusiastic than you are - though coming from Tehran, I, too, have seen my fair share of films about drug addicts in my hometown. I found really engaging and heartfelt, perhaps because I knew the real life connection with her life.
What did you think of her performance?

[Glenn]

She was rather good, although it'll take a lot to approach the likes of Louise Harris in SNOWTOWN for that sort of grimy naturalistic bogan performance.