Sadly Over-hyped

One of my all time favorites.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Hollywood makes two kinds of movies about drug users: morality tales and stoner comedies. The gritty stories escalate into disaster or death for the users. The stoner films are escapist and absurd. Network and cable TV makes its contributions with documentaries primarily focused on law enforcement and grim images of the 10% of users on the edge of death. Even a show like Intervention obsesses on pathology. Down to the Bone is something entirely different.The film is so naturalistic in its acting and writing that it resembles a documentary or stage play more than a theatrical feature. Plotting is minimal and devoid of red herrings or dramatic heightening. There is just one arc, a woman's effort to navigate getting clean. This is a long look at a real struggle to cope with a real set of problems. Many of those problems stem not from her use but from the complications of trying to be clean. She just can't deal with the mood and energy problems and her attempts to cope don't work. Relationships deteriorate in specific realistic ways. So many details are right. That complexity is practically unique in a script though it is fundamental to the complexity of addiction.It also happens to be shot like a no budget documentary, using basic video cameras, minimal sound design, available light and seemingly not even a color timing adjustment. Unfortunately in 2004 this was what this filmmaker on an ultra low budget could manage. In 2014 this project would have been shot in HD and digitally tweaked to visually support the story and compensate for the color balance and contrast issues. That was Hollywood technology then; it's film student technology now.So the viewer must decide to make the trade off. Because almost no funding was needed, the director was free to create a story that ignores the standard clichés and genre conventions. In return, we get all the eye candy of a small town local news broadcast. The audience for this type of film is tiny but I am grateful it exists. See it on its own terms and you'll love it.

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.

'Down to the Bone' is a mirror depiction of the lower-to-middle class struggle to keep clean while trying to overcome the perils of poverty and raise a family. It is not your typical run-of-the-mill addiction story either, revealing the darker sides of the problem and focusing on the lives it so often can tear apart. Vera Farmiga was the shining star in this role as Irene, a mother of two trying to keep her cocaine addiction a secret and save a marriage on the rocks. At 'Sundance' Vera took home 'The Special Jury Prize' for her performance and Director Debra Granik won the 'Director's Award.' It's no wonder that Martin Scorsese went out of his way to get her for her upcoming role in "The Departed." She is and will be a great actress in Hollywood for years to come. I look forward to her success in the future.

"Down to the Bone" is about Irene (Vera Farmiga) and Bob (Hugh Dillon) who relapse together after getting clean from drugs. Irene is a supermarket cashier and is married to Steve (Clint Jordan), who's friendly but clueless about addiction, since he enables Irene thoughtlessly both before and after recovery. They have two little boys.The first thing you notice is how effortlessly natural Farmiga is in her scenes with the boys. It gradually sinks in also that this movie avoids drug rehab clichés. Irene isn't having wild fun. All she needs is a little bit to get by – every day. When her stash runs out, she gets anxious; and when she tries to use grandma's birthday check for one of the boys to score and gets rebuffed by her dealer, she checks into a realistically ugly and ordinary rehab program. This film also excels for the specific feel of its upstate New York locations.Appropriately, this gray, hard time of Irene's rehab and her attempt to stay clean comes in the long upstate winter. A male nurse named Bob met Irene at Halloween and then there was a little sizzle of attraction, the lighting of cigarettes. Bob turns out to be working at the rehab clinic and takes a personal interest – too personal – in her. At first he does all the right things – or does he? He gets a little too close on institutional time.Irene leaves rehab too soon – after only one week – because of her job and kids. She can't handle her job straight and gets fired from the store. Irene's Latina pal from rehab, Lucy (Caridad de la Cruz), who cleans houses with her after that, warns her she's "thirteenth-stepping" – a 12-step term meaning to risk clean time in risky romancing with another recovering addict – in this case Bob – to fill the big void left when drugs are withdrawn.Bob is an interesting, specific person. Hugh Dillon's performance is up to the level of Farmiga's. Originally the model or recovery, Bob's improper "thirteenth-stepping" relationship with Irene – which she initiates – but both are ready for this mistake – leads him back to a worse addiction than hers – heroin – which he's been off of for five years. Together, they are poison for each other. They soon get into a situation leading to an arrest for possession. They drive to the city and she gets a piercing and they buy the boys the pet snake they've been wanting. While she's being pierced, Bob scores a bag and goes back out. After the arrest, Steve kicks Irene out. She gets a suspended sentence with treatment, including rehab and 250 hours of NA meetings in a year. If she deviates, she goes to jail.This may be it, the "bottom" leading to lasting recovery for Irene. But this is a knowing and realistic version of the drug recovery experience and it lacks simple climaxes or resumption's. Irene is still cleaning houses with Lucy, still dealing with her kids and their pet snake (which becomes an obvious, if gentle, symbol of temptation), and Bob's still around ""helping" along his Methadone doses with illegally acquired barbiturates and lying to Irene about it.As the film ends, Irene kicks Bob out of her house and he says "I'll never get clean alone." Catch-22: he'll never get clean with her, either."Down to the Bone," though indie gold, is, frankly, only a tiny blip on the big screen. Though it won prizes at Sundance few will see it or want to. Though it achieves a remarkable degree of authenticity, it could use some sharper editing – and some smiles. For addicts ready for recovery, getting high usually has stopped being fun. But this movie forgets that it ever was fun, and strangers to the drug life may wonder what's going on here. But then, they never do understand: that's why there are 12-step meetings, which the movie might have said more about, since most addicts who make it, in America anyway, do it through the Twelve Steps, going to meetings, getting a sponsor, and working the steps. Rehab alone rarely does the trick. This is the kind of movie that, for good or ill, Sundance loves but mainstream audiences avoid. It's very good, but also very grim.