clean

clean

While the movie hit the point that Nick Nolte confessed to Maggy Chueng that he still believed in forgiveness in Clean (2004 by Olivier Assayas), which I revisited for no particular reason last night, I understood what the moviewas really about, if had taken quite long. I saw it about a couple of months ago for the first time, completely unimpressed except by Chueng's somehow composed and redeeming performance, which actually brought some prize to the work (the best actress from Cannes).

This time, however, the movie struck me so close to home, and it was almost painful to see it to the end, although enjoyable. The change happened probably because of where I am situated in my life now, and I was feeling sensitive about what the movie handled; I could not sympathize more this time with Emily (Chueng), who has lost everything after her serving time in jail for drug habit that consequently took her boyfriend Lee's life away. Now that the custody of her son she had with Lee was taken by Lee's parents (Nolte as the father), Emily's struggle to adjust to her new life in a world with nothing left for her fair share but the price she had her life to pay back, where everybody refuses to forget who she was, but no one wants to accept who she is trying to become of.

It took another look, and some more turn of life, to me to realize the movie was really about the redemption, and more importantly, what would make Emily to determine to face what it would take to bring a change in her life. This case in the film was her son, an only tie she had got left to sustain herself in the world, and Nolte's belif in 'forgiveness' as I described. What ultimately made it plausible instead of succumbing cheesiness, which might be very likely to happen to a lot of productions, was the director's unsentimentalism; it is even naturalistic to depict the practicality to reason the reason why Nolte's willing to support Emily's detox + rehab stint, even when she was half deceptive to attempt to take her to San Francisco w/o notifying so; it was attributed simply to his wife's ailment and his foresight that the couple's would not be cabaple to take care of their grandson so long, as opposed to any emotional issue upon Emily.

The theme somehow appears to be familiar. It is about what it really feels like to be lost and alone, and you are not growing younger, but you are still free to go back to drug infested life style if that is what you pursue. I just survived the battle with the drug problem of my husband that ultimately destroyed the marriage, and no longer believe in the redemption nor resurrection in the environment that involves any need of those; the couple is doomed when they have to look for any of those to begin with. This film though would bring another angle to the issue that I already discussed in the previous entry about Bad Santa, and I found myself hit by the same issue twice in a row without knowing by these two totally different movies. It did not cross my mind when I saw last September, when I was still with my husband and still got my hope to stay in the relationship even though it would never be easy.

Clean was not a kind of work that appeared necessarily interesting to me, as this director never impressed me ever. Yet the beauty I still get to see in these sad landscapes does make me wonder; where does this shining tone come from? It is so unusual. How can you bring audiences to see the light in the dead end darkness? This has got to be quite a level of technique to attain for a director, or it might be simply the trait that comes from his personality. The optimism that somehow guides us in the film is understated but there is no doubt it is there, like a blinking light in the darkness, for this is the ultimate realism we are dealing with as a narrative device as opposed to an idiotic overstatement of loud cheer made in Hollywood. The whole tone is hopeful and literally 'clean' just as the title goes despite its realism that often looks harsh. And another wonder this movie brings us is every landscape we follow as the protagonist travels is shot with amazingly serenity, from Ontario to Paris, and London of the location where Emily's son and his grandfather stay for the time the franma to pass away, even in the desolate ones in Canada where Emily sees Lee's body dead by overdose. It is worth examing why so. The whole thing made me think how much a film reflects its maker's worldview.

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