Heaven Knows What
Perhaps all pleasure is only relief
Directed by Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie
France & United States, 2014
What is this film really about? I suppose the title is about as good an answer as you will get. It’s the key question that ReidsonFilm grappled with when watching Heaven Knows What. Is it possible to make a film about drug addiction without romanticizing the ‘junkie lifestyle’? Make no mistake, this 2014 film by Josh and Benny Safdie does its best to show you the destructive potential of heroin dependence, and the acrid emptiness of a life on the margins. The 15 minute sequence that starts the film ends with a character buying a razor and opening an artery in her wrist while her friends look on - it’s an intense and discomfiting watch, and yet…
Heaven Knows What is based on a memoir, Mad Love in NYC, the street stories recounted by a recovering heroin addict, Arielle Holmes. The Safdie brothers ‘discovered’ her while scouting locations in New York’s Diamond District for a future film. Impressed by her tales of a hard-knock life, they not only adapted her memoir into a screenplay, but cast Holmes as the lead, Harley, in essence playing herself.
That opening scene sees Harley in a confrontation with her abusive, on-again, off-again boyfriend Ilya. We watch them arguing in a public library – even a junkie has to catch up on Facebook – as Harley repeatedly threatens to kill herself unless he takes her back. Ilya tells her to go ahead, leading to the wrist-slashing episode out in the park. Harley’s brief, chaotic stay on the psychiatry ward at the Bellevue Hospital plays out over the opening credits in an impressive extended shot with no audio, just an aggressively atonal, electronic soundtrack. She emerges proudly, sporting some ugly looking stitches.
What then unfolds is a series of episodes with Harley and her motley crew of doped-up associates drifting around the city looking for money, places to crash, and of course opportunities to score. Heaven Knows What is an observational portrait, with no real plot to speak of. It lacks the narrative tension, the adrenaline rush, that has become the Safdie trademark with their subsequent films, Good Time and Uncut Gems.
What will keep you watching though are the compelling performances by the three leads. Caleb Landry Jones, the only professional actor in the film, with the deathly pallor of a wraith gone AWOL from The Lord of the Rings, is convincing as the repellent, narcissistic boyfriend Ilya. And Holmes, in the challenging role of playing herself, manages to communicate both an impulsivity and a bruised sensitivity that is raw with honesty. The standout, however, almost stealing the film is Buddy Duress as Mike the amiable, and surprisingly generous, low-level dealer who tries to help Harley out of the hole she has dug for herself. His naturalistic acting style has an edgy authenticity that is strongly reminiscent of Robert De Niro in Mean Streets. Tragically the actor died in November 2023 following a drug overdose.
Sean Price Williams comes up with some exhilarating cinematography, finding a natural beauty in the long-lens, handheld shots of cinéma vérité. There are a number of arresting scenes that will stick with you, and he manages to smuggle in a homage to Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated match cut from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Remember that bone hurled into the air by prehistoric man switching to a spaceship? Here Ilya grabs Harley’s burner phone and tosses it away. As it arcs through the air, we get a cut to a firework shooting up into the sky.
I thought it was great… intensely gripping - T
With moments on screen that are really difficult to watch, Heaven Knows What does have a gripping intensity. But along with the typical tropes shared by this genre – see The Panic in Needle Park, Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting et al – there are moments of seductive glamour that hark back to Larry Clark’s Kids. In its quest for authenticity Heaven Knows What raises a question: given the real-life backstory, why not make a documentary? It’s a commonplace that every dope addict is forever in search of a return to that first high. As it is, Heaven Knows What is ill served by the old tale of star-crossed lovers with Harley, not only addicted to heroin, but also addicted to love.
…there’s an argument that it’s more concerned with realism than it is with story … and I guess that’s both a blessing and a curse - C
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 68
T - 80
N - tbc
S - 67
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Coming next… Weekend(1967)
The Safdie Brothers, creators of one of my Top-10 favorite movies (Good Time) and one of my Top-10 least favorite movies (Uncut Gems)