Heav­en Knows What

Empa­thy cours­es through every rot­ten vein, artery and cap­il­lary of this dynam­ic, free-float­ing slab of grim gut­ter poet­ry from Joshua and Ben­ny Safdie. It’s a beau­ti­ful film about beau­ti­ful losers, human flot­sam who ded­i­cate their lives to weigh­ing up the lure of human con­tact against the instant high of the nee­dle. Is it pos­si­ble to have both?

The film focus­es on Harley, played by one-time junkie and tran­sient, Arielle Holmes. With­in min­utes of the kick-off, she has decid­ed to set­tle a con­tin­u­ing rift with on-off para­mour, Ilya (Caleb Landry-Jones), by whip­ping out a box-cut­ter and slic­ing her wrist. This is nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma riv­en by naked impulse, set in a world where dif­fer­ent rules of engage­ment apply.

By open­ing the film on a moment which most con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tives would drop at the end, we’re placed in a sta­tus of high alert, wait­ing for things to pos­si­bly get even worse. Holmes is extra­or­di­nary in the lead, her bel­low­ing per­for­mance throbs with a bare­ly-masked sor­row, but under­neath, a bruised dig­ni­ty and defi­ance. She isn’t try­ing to project a stylised, movie-like ren­di­tion of her­self from years back. There are no moments where she reflects on her sit­u­a­tion, think­ing, hop­ing, dream­ing (though there are night­mares, maybe). She some­how chan­nels pure impul­sive­ness and blithe­ly presents its pros and cons. The wak­ing state of her char­ac­ter is dri­ven by split-sec­ond deci­sions and phys­i­cal desires. There’s no time to think or con­sid­er options. There’s work to be done.

Akin to John Cas­savetes’ 1959 break­through fea­ture, Shad­ows, Heav­en Knows What hands over a seg­ment of time rather than a round­ed nar­ra­tive. We join and leave Harley at what seem like two fair­ly arbi­trary junc­tures in her drab, by-the-minute exis­tence. The cycle of her tor­ment is end­less: bor­row some mon­ey; score some drugs; bor­row more mon­ey; score more drugs; evade peo­ple to whom you owe mon­ey; bor­row drugs; scream; fight; curl up in a ball; repeat. But as the film creeps towards his sud­den con­clu­sion, it seems like the Safdies have nes­tled a sub­tle, Romeo and Juli­et-like love sto­ry at the film’s core. It’s why this film is beautiful.

Much cel­lu­loid has been expend­ed on the sub­ject of liv­ing with addic­tion, but this is a rare case of a work in which addic­tion is a con­text rather than a sub­ject. It’s not try­ing to act as an exposé of a social sub-stra­tum or even a behav­iour­al study – it just offers a bit time in the com­pa­ny of real, frag­ile, uncom­mu­nica­tive, self-destruc­tive peo­ple who are trapped between worlds. Yet in furtive­ly mask­ing its social con­science, its polit­i­cal impact is con­sid­er­able, but also mean­ing­ful and objec­tive. Ariel Pink’s bizarre, exper­i­men­tal sound­track is the sole, clang­ing reminder that this is only a movie.