I hope your Halloween went well and that you’re all safe and
sound. Ok, ready for some post-Halloween
shit? Originally I was going to do
Vampire Mania but things developed into something quite different. Sorry, sometimes this happens. So as a peace offering here’s part of the
segment I had planned, The Addiction.
Abel Ferrara’s vampire picture was pretty good. He’s a spotty director and I was worried that
this was going to be boring but he made it work. It’s a simple story of a newly formed vampire
named Kathy, Lili Taylor (Ransom, High
Fidelity), that struggles with her new identity. She has an insatiable thirst that she can’t
quench no matter how many throats she bites.
The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s filmed in black
and white and I don’t totally understand why.
There was a big resurgence of its use during the 90’s with films like Schindler’s List, Ed Wood, Kafka, Shadows
and Fog, Dead Man and parts of Natural
Born Killers. Maybe Ferrara wanted
to jump on that bandwagon. Most of the
time in The Addiction the use of
black and white isn’t that remarkable but every once in a while you’ll get a
shot or a scene that’s very beautiful and/or eerie. I don’t think it would’ve made a huge
difference to shoot this thing in color but at the same time I understand the
need to change things up creatively and the way Ferrara went about the
cinematography works perfectly fine.
Now I haven’t seen Lili Taylor in that many roles but this
is the best I’ve seen her. She pulls off
being conflicted and tortured well. But
Christopher Walken as the veteran vampire that offers words of wisdom steals
the show. He’s only in this for a couple
of minutes but he nails the part and it made me want to watch a whole movie
just about his character. Other notables
include Annabella Sciorra (The Hand That
Rocks the Cradle) who plays the vampire that turns Kathy and Edie Falco (The Sopranos, Oz) who is Kathy’s friend.
I feel like I should warn you guys that this film is pretty
damn arty and fairly pretentious. The
entire thing is a metaphor for drug addiction. I mean it is called The Addiction after all.
There’s a lot of talk about how vampires are actually kinda weak because
they are defined by their constant need for blood. They’ll walk the streets late at night and consort
with strangers to get what they crave.
Friends, mentors and colleagues are affected as well by the disease
because they are who the addict turns to.
Ferrara even has Kathy go into extreme pain and convulse when she can’t
get a blood fix (Walken actually uses the word “fix” too) and then stumble over
herself wandering on the street all strung out when she’s had too much. I think the parallels are convincing and well
done which makes the movie fascinating and takes away from the pomposity a
little. I like this angle of vampirism
and how Ferrara portrays these creatures as both ferocious and pathetic at the
same time.
Russell Simmons produced this and up until this point he
hadn’t done a serious drama yet. It’s a curious
choice because I guess he wanted to show how drug addiction destroys society
but didn’t want to make a clichéd picture with a message that beat people over
the head. If that’s what Simmons was
going for then he pretty much got it.
However, I don’t think anyone saw this.
That’s too bad.
This one is more of a thinking man’s movie. There’s a lot of philosophy which went over
my head but there’s also some real cool vampire shit, especially the feeding
frenzy ending. None of it is very scary
or creepy. It’s refreshing though. I think you should see it.
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