Manic Impressive
7th December 2011, 08:28
Just watched this film and holy fuck it's good. Definitely a modern classic. It's about a history teacher who's deeply depressed and addicted to crack and his borderline inappropriate relationship with a 13 year old female pupil growing up in a tough working class neighbourhood who is being tempted into selling drugs by the local gangster. It's thoroughly anti-capitalist and attempts to educate the audience about dialectics in order to explain why certain things in the film are happening. t1Lo3P-Dp4Y
The other recurring theme in my opinion is an anti-drugs message but not from a moral view point. It shows the brutal self destruction caused by "self medicating" or in other words taking drugs as a way of escaping the pain you feel, which in most cases tends to exasperate the problems you already had to the point where the drug use becomes a form of self harm. In one scene where the teacher visits his parents house it shows that it's not just the "illegal" drugs which serve this purpose but also alcohol as you see his father change into a similarly destructive attitude while his mother forgets about reality and concerns herself with the lives of celebrities. I think what I loved most about this film is that it didn't exaggerate. There are no good guys and bad guys just people who are all effected by their material conditions but cope in different ways.
In this scene the teacher confronts the gangster, the other male role model in the little girls life. It goes against the norm of how this situation would usually go in a normal film, I expected the gangster to hit him or pull a gun or something. But that's not how it would play in reality. Instead the gangster recognizes that the teacher cares about the girl as he does but they disagree about the right path for her. So instead of fighting they talk about it, probably less exciting than a fight scene or the protaganists life being threatened, but far more realistic.
yGZzWyt-YG0
The film then reaches it's turning point when the girl is sent to the teachers house to deliver some crack to him while he's in the middle of a drug fueled party. For me the teacher achieves a moment of clarity seeing himself through the little girls and watching her respect for him evaporate. I think that point made him see his own addiction as the destructive force in his life and how it effects the people he cares about and his pupils who he so desperately wants to help.
Anyway top film I highly recommend it.
The other recurring theme in my opinion is an anti-drugs message but not from a moral view point. It shows the brutal self destruction caused by "self medicating" or in other words taking drugs as a way of escaping the pain you feel, which in most cases tends to exasperate the problems you already had to the point where the drug use becomes a form of self harm. In one scene where the teacher visits his parents house it shows that it's not just the "illegal" drugs which serve this purpose but also alcohol as you see his father change into a similarly destructive attitude while his mother forgets about reality and concerns herself with the lives of celebrities. I think what I loved most about this film is that it didn't exaggerate. There are no good guys and bad guys just people who are all effected by their material conditions but cope in different ways.
In this scene the teacher confronts the gangster, the other male role model in the little girls life. It goes against the norm of how this situation would usually go in a normal film, I expected the gangster to hit him or pull a gun or something. But that's not how it would play in reality. Instead the gangster recognizes that the teacher cares about the girl as he does but they disagree about the right path for her. So instead of fighting they talk about it, probably less exciting than a fight scene or the protaganists life being threatened, but far more realistic.
yGZzWyt-YG0
The film then reaches it's turning point when the girl is sent to the teachers house to deliver some crack to him while he's in the middle of a drug fueled party. For me the teacher achieves a moment of clarity seeing himself through the little girls and watching her respect for him evaporate. I think that point made him see his own addiction as the destructive force in his life and how it effects the people he cares about and his pupils who he so desperately wants to help.
Anyway top film I highly recommend it.