day 54 - Leaving Las Vegas

OK film fans, some days you're the bull and some days you get the horns; today felt like a horns kind of day. On days like this I always think of one of my favorite lines from the classic Office Space where the main character talks about what kind of day he's having. I can't say I'm in quite as bad a place as Peter is, but some days I get where he's coming from. But since that was a comedy and I'm not in a laughing mood, let's go a little darker.

Leaving Las Vegas is a brutally frank, depressing and amazing look at a man's decision to drink himself to death. This intention is made fairly early in the film and it never waivers from its stated goal. Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage in a Best Actor Oscar winning performance) is a washed up movie executive who has lost his wife and child. No explanation is given as to how or why as we watch him empty his house and set fire to his belongings. He goes to Vegas where time will no longer stand in the way of his goal. On the strip he meets a prostitute named Sera (Elizabeth Shue in her finest performance) who, for reasons unclear at the beginning, takes him in and cares for him.

Sera is a very pretty and bright woman, who also has an abusive relationship with her pimp Yuri (Julian Sands). When Yuri gets taken out of the picture Sera searches for something else to cling to in her life. Or maybe she just feels pity for him in the way someone who has been abused her whole life would. Regardless, they accept each other for what they are, honestly and without a hidden agenda of change. In some sense they come to feel love for each other, but given their choices the only kind of relationship that would fit is the one they share. Much of the heartbreak comes from Sera's realization that no amount of caring, love or selflessness will change Ben's heart.

This is less a love story than it is a sad love song about desperate people taking intimacy wherever they can find it. Director and composer Mike Figgis is no stranger to tales of unusual relationships. He wisely shot this film guerrilla style, on the sly without permits and using a handheld Super 16 camera, giving the film a more authentic feel. John O'Brien, the writer of the novel on which the film is based, provided authenticity for his story from his core. Two weeks after selling the book rights he took his own life.

There is a yearning, wistful truth about the loss of hope in Leaving Las Vegas. Ben has given up entirely, his past overwhelming any sense he has of recovery. The name of the hotel Ben first stays in is called The Whole Year Inn, but Ben sees it as The Hole Your In. If you were hopeful and unsure if Ben was going to follow through with his intentions I think that removes all doubt. Sera is seen throughout the film talking about her life and her relationships with a therapist. She has given up control (or had it taken from her) of much of her life, but she has not given up hope. And sometimes that's enough to keep you moving forward.