07-25-2020, 02:46 PM
Heaven Knows What (2014)
In retrospect 'Heaven Knows What' looks like the last step before the Safdie Brothers crystallised their style with 'Good Time' and 'Uncut Gems'. It's still got the looser, documentary style of their earlier films, with a grim grey reality to the visuals but the script has more structure and it introduces their distinctive trippy 70s-style Synthesiser scoring. It stars Arielle Holmes as a version of herself, based on an unpublished memoir she wrote about her experiences of being a homeless heroin addict in New York. Her performance is raw, real and mesmerising, her eyes are so expressive, going all the way from soporific delirium, to wide eyed intensity. The woozy mental hospital opening credits scene done in one shot, in close-up but shot from a distance, slightly in slowmo, with no sound or dialogue, just synth music is disturbing and disorientating. Holmes' character Harley claims to be madly in love with Ilya, a fellow addict but he's only occasionally sweet and mostly nasty and cruel, even egging her on to commit suicide, so you are left to wonder if this is genuinely helpless love in the bleakest and most harrowing of situations, or just another form of self destruction, along with the needle and the razor blade. A lot of the cast are real people, shot without permits, or are playing versions of themselves, some of the actors and the people they portray are sadly now dead, or in prison... hopefully at least Holmes found a way out through making this movie.
NSFW Red band trailer:
In retrospect 'Heaven Knows What' looks like the last step before the Safdie Brothers crystallised their style with 'Good Time' and 'Uncut Gems'. It's still got the looser, documentary style of their earlier films, with a grim grey reality to the visuals but the script has more structure and it introduces their distinctive trippy 70s-style Synthesiser scoring. It stars Arielle Holmes as a version of herself, based on an unpublished memoir she wrote about her experiences of being a homeless heroin addict in New York. Her performance is raw, real and mesmerising, her eyes are so expressive, going all the way from soporific delirium, to wide eyed intensity. The woozy mental hospital opening credits scene done in one shot, in close-up but shot from a distance, slightly in slowmo, with no sound or dialogue, just synth music is disturbing and disorientating. Holmes' character Harley claims to be madly in love with Ilya, a fellow addict but he's only occasionally sweet and mostly nasty and cruel, even egging her on to commit suicide, so you are left to wonder if this is genuinely helpless love in the bleakest and most harrowing of situations, or just another form of self destruction, along with the needle and the razor blade. A lot of the cast are real people, shot without permits, or are playing versions of themselves, some of the actors and the people they portray are sadly now dead, or in prison... hopefully at least Holmes found a way out through making this movie.
NSFW Red band trailer:
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