This film is pure art
*****Possible spoilers*****
I'm overwhelmed. I'm shocked. I never expected to be so moved by this film. The first glance of the DVD box gave me the impression that it was just another indie about drugs and their consequences, maybe like Larry Clark's "Another Day In Paradise" or Aronofsky's "Requiem For A Dream". You know, trying to send a message about drugs, but putting lots of "art" into it for good measure.
With credibility and without the overwhelming "art" stench of the above movies, "Broken" is a wrenching story of 2 people in love, one seeking fame and fortune in the city of Dreams, the other sometime back having gotten snared by heroin.
I've read a lot of dismissive reviews calling it just what I thought it would be, only a mediocre indie, an inferior little sister of those "greater" films, like Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting" (actually one both Mari and I hail rather than trash), or even the recent Heath Ledger indie called "Candy".
I'm having a great deal of difficulty believing that there are so few in the world who can discern what cinematic art is. But I guess that's the way things are. I fell for the two main protagonists (I can't help but view Will in this light. The man was pitious.) I felt such a deep "hope" if you "will" that they would conquer their addictions together and find real peace and happiness.
Sisto and Graham play two halves of a whole. They were such a oneness. Their sexual, emotional and romantic chemistry was powerful. They belonged to each other and if not for the enormous problem they had with drugs, they would have made it. Sure, the way they met was on a beach with lots of pick up lines, but as their relationship developed (even as Will introduced Hope to drugs fairly soon after meeting her) there was such a peculiar and yet unshakeable soul-mate thing there.
Broken's not just visual art, with the pale blue/green color's of Hope abandoning her dream by the wayside, or the rich golds and browns of the diner's interior or the deep red blood and black filth of the finale in the diner bathroom.
It's a huge cinematic achievement, a masterpiece. I think both Sisto and Graham outdid themselves here. The shooting of the homeless woman was a real shocker, terrifying, excrutiatingly irreversible. The whole thing knocked the wind out of me, literally. It seemed to knock the wind out of Will too.
Pure art, a complicated and eloquent piece of poetry. "Broken" is a message that needs to be read and re-read, like one of those ingenious yet almost incomprehensible poems by Emily Dickinson:
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."
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