There's something about self-destructing behaviour that can be really attractive. I think it's mainly the kind of sick pleasure one gets from torturing oneself like that. And how it kind of takes a certain amount of courage, or cowardice you could interpret, to do that. It's something that I don't think I could ever do, something I don't think I could have in me, but there's a fear inside me that, just maybe, it is possible.
That's the fascinating aspect of it. How one idea/object/thing can take over someone and someone can just become completely dependent on it. How this chemical can alter one's senses and dull one's strongest feelings of love towards another. I think that's a really important part of "Christiane F". What makes this film different from others like "Trainspotting" and "Pulp Fiction" is how young the actors are. And it's so real, they're nude and depicting scenes of all kinds of disturbing nature and thus they contain a kind of raw energy because they're so naive and inexperienced with the world but at the same time, they're seen and done things that most of us in the audience could never even imagine, let alone try.
Of course, nowadays, because of safeguarding laws and so on, underage young people could quite rightly never partake in showing such horror. Therefore, to see it now, and know it was based on a true story of the 1970s/80s in West Berlin and other parts of Europe, is shocking and does evoke a sense of catharsis in the audience.
But the most interesting part of our reaction is how we want to almost be a part of that world; to understand why this drug is so magnetising; to forget and run away from our own problems and have only one. Where is the next fix coming from?
The fact that the main actress is very attractive and seems to fit the "heroin chic"model willowy elegant but strong figure also helps perpetuate the audience's desire to join this world. Curiosity takes over us and it's so odd and off and surprising to ourselves even, because we know how wrong it is, how horrible the drug is. Christiane herself also has this internal battle of suppressing her desire to try the drug. Or maybe wanting to try the drug isn't due to curiosity, perhaps it's because of our fundamentally human need to fit in with the crowd. Make friends. Be popular. Be cool.
But these are just some of my thoughts. It's an interesting film. You should watch it. But try not to get influenced by it. Suppress those desires. You don't need drugs to be cool!!! God, I sound like some sad PSHCE teacher... If you do experiment, don't steal money from your family. That is wrong. At least steal from some douche on the street. And don't do it all for some dumb boy/girl/person you are attracted to either. You'll fuck your life up and I really don't want you to do that.
Here are some film stills because unfortunately teenagers and drugs is just a very stylish mixture and thus the atmosphere and the way the film was made very dark and bleak looking just works:
What's interesting is that David Bowie made the soundtrack for the film and his song "Heroes" is quite prominent in the film, especially in the opening scenes depicting the easiness of youth and also creating an ominous setting because we learn that these kids are the "bad" ones who steal and get high and sleep together. It's interesting because heroin itself (the name of which is officially diamorphine) was patented in the 1900s by a German company trying to sell it as medicine with the name "heroin" coming from the German word "heroisch" (heroic) as the first users described the sensation as making them feel heroic.
Bit of black humour is always welcome.
Stills like this capture the twisted beauty of the film itself, though the actress Natja Brunckhorst is the owner of extraordinary personal beauty.
It's a sad film about a sad person. The person it's based on (Christiane Felscherinow) has never really lived the "good" life as she suffered a lot of abuse and neglect as a child leading to her addiction and she's never recovered from the addiction. The saddest part is perhaps how she even takes pride in her heroin addiction calling it a part of her now and that it has even made her life good because she's now become famous and has met David Bowie and so on. It's so sad. I don't want to make any assumptions on her happiness and mental health state but it's sad that she's become complacent and accepts even welcomes such chaos. I don't know. It's hard to put this into words.
There's a really good article that's also kind of a film review of this and also kind of an analysis of our culture's obsession with heroin and how it influences art in a sort of positive way:
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/dec/22/art-heroin-christiane-f
No comments:
Post a Comment