"Everyone is accountable"
Click to viewSome may remember that I love the 1987 film Less Than Zero with an improbable vehemence. A not too faithful adaptation of an awful book by Bret Easton Ellis it didn't get particularly good reviews on release or in fact since and is routinely dismissed as a Brat Pack attempt at after school special.
Now given that the plot revolves around a group of flawlessly attractive, rich kids and their drug use I can see at least initially why the critics felt that appropriate. I mean from the outset it really does try it's hardest to suggest that it will be a glossy, superficial, stylised and ultimately meaningless look at drug addiction.
But to me it's always been that it presents a picture of overpowering shallowness only so that it can expose and centre itself on the despair and the neglect that lies behind these facades, upon the consequences of this mode of living.
I kind of feel like it's done such a good job at creating the universe that it wants people to chastise, that people don't notice at all that it is suggesting it's disapproval.
They think it is revelling in the emptiness when in actual fact it's just that the scarce scenes of very real, very casual depravity and awful sadness are much more affecting next to shiny perfection and potential.
It is empty in contemplation for a purpose.
Then again looking the opinions over I see that it's whiny Brett Easton Ellis fans who are most vocal in their hate of this film and as it seems like those people are the kind of twats who think that the book was more HARDCORE and meaningful just because it had unpleasant and extended depiction of rape and corpses in there then perhaps fuck all the critics of this film.
YOUR PRIORITIES ARE NOT MINE.
I've read the book and the thing is that Brett Easton Ellis wrote all the characters as total psychopaths, whereas the film has a universe more grounded in reality, which to me is necessary to create not just sympathy for the characters but also any interest in them whatsoever.
With it's rape and murder Ellis' preachy book, much like American Psycho, is so unfunny and hideous in it's execution as to loose it's actual satire of the priviledged.
It's more punishing and heavy handed and with all the hammering the lolz easily disintegrates.
For instance as is also the case with American Psycho some of his lines were brilliant but this film showcases them far better than the book did because it is more deft and subtle in it's treatment.
I don't know what my point is, except that Easton Ellis seems to be the writer of choice for people who need a point to be hammered into their skulls until they are aware of it and I'm not like that, it's an insensitivity or something.
Anyway back to the film.
The acting from almost all quarters is spot on.
Chiefly Robert Downey Jr as the neglected, childish, drug addicted Julian. It is his performance that makes the whole thing so sad. There is such reality within his performance. His eyes are so big and brown that it's almost a parody of the puppy dog always covered with a light film of tears. He is constantly trying to straighten up and always being kicked in the face and it is really painful to watch his character endure the things he does and which makes the ending so wrenching and the moral of the film so overt whilst not at all being twee.
Andrew McCarthy as Julian's friend Blaine, the film's protaganist is not so miraculous as Downey Jr but playing the straight man in the trio he perhaps isn't supposed to be. Jami Gertz as Blair the shallow party girl forced to become mother and a wife to Julian whilst in need of desperate aid herself is just brilliantly affecting also.
Ah Gertz, she is so beautiful and there is am overpowering numbness and emptiness that she conveys, a refusal to feel for the risk of breakdown that strikes me. Then onto the brilliant sleazy amoral Rip as played by James Spader. Rip is the essence of Brett Easton Ellis' universe, interestingly the only character from the book to retain his bisexuality - or so it is implied and totally two people, almost unrepetently psychopathic and amplification of the themes of the book should they be needed.
Yes the acting, well apart from Downey Jr, who as the most affected and compromised by drugs is mostly overwrought, is all about being vapid and airheaded but then it's all about the negativity that befalls those who adopt that tone to life.
It's apt.
Another factor in my adoration was the score by Thomas Newman, each beautiful emotional moment of the many contained in this film is pushed forwards by the music.
Thanks to some kind soul on youtube I have recently come upon a link to download the soundtrack, which was never released and I'm now listening to it and it just invokes the film and the passion and deep tragedy of the acting, striking me at my heart.
This track is called "I Need $50,000" and being soundtrack is very short but for a first time composer immense and really summons the scene in which it was played. It heightens the atmosphere or this supposedly shallow film to have something so soaring playing over the scenes.
It's just lovely loveliness, cinematic and sprawling and perfect.
I should try to find my DVD all this really makes me want to watch it again.
One day I will write slash for this film.
eta
OMG SOME EVIL PERSON DID A LESS THAN ZERO FANVID TO "I WISH I WAS A PUNK ROCKER"
....
???
WRY
*brb brane is braking*