Candy Film Review

Perhaps of all the movies I’ve seen in recent years, only one has had such a bold, believable sense of realism to it that it’s stuck, and not lost it’s standing, in my all time favourite movie list. In the tired and often poorly made genre of drug related drama, Candy throws itself in head first, and surprisingly avoids the traps most films of this type fall into. The characters do not simply beat their addiction with the help of the other, they do not live a glamorous lifestyle as in most drug films of today and they do not, as most drug films tend to trip themselves up on, come out better in the end, in fact in most senses the characters come out worse. And in many ways, this is perhaps what struck me most about this film, it’s not your typical Hollywood flick with the same overused clichés, it is a hard hitting, and frighteningly faithful vision of real life.
From the first scenes of the film, it uses a great amount of juxtaposition between the bleak and cold life of drugs and the bliss of love. Indeed, if I had to summarise the film in one sentence it would be about this contrast and of the films realism. The opening scene of the film is hypnotic and unique, luring the audience into what they would expect from the advertising of the film. Indeed, for the first scene, if you had been expecting a gritty and hard hitting drug romance film, and only caught the opening of the film, you might be turned off with by blissful, but still strikingly eerie, vision given, of a perfect relationship, with no worries. But after this mix messaged opening the film, you are thrust directly into the thick of things, with the beautiful drug addicted artist Candy (played by Cornish) overdosing in the bath, and her boyish, fairly idiotic poet boyfriend Dan (played by Ledger) rushing in and amid breaking down in fear for his lover saves her life. Instantly the previously apparent soppy love story you might have half been expecting is proved to be a fallacy, and you are instead thrown headfirst into this bruised reality.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for the hard, cold realism is the two breathtaking performances given by Ledger and Cornish. There are often eerie moments in the film that you can almost feel as if their performances lapse from acting into an actual real life situation. The dialog written between the two is perhaps some of the most superb and well thought between the two, there are dramatic pauses in the right places, violent whips of anger when you might expect apologies or the mood to change towards something lighter.
For a while, when first watching this, I was expecting what I often see in drug movies in which two lovers become addicted, the pair to have drugs come between them, the pair to overcome their problems and come out stronger. Such clichés have often be used in film making, and for much of the film, there is a sense that at any moment, this abyss that some otherwise great films have fallen in would consume Candy also. But thankfully this is not the case. At any time it feels as if there is a chance of the two getting over this, of which there are many, it is quickly ruined, the rug below the two suddenly pulled and they fall deeper apart, and as in the case of the pregnancy and detox scenes, often pull the characters deeper down and into even more uncompromising gloom. However, though you might expect this to get repetitive and eventually less compelling, strangely this never happens. You honestly can feel from the performances that the characters believe with every inch of their self that the next time they’ll beat it, that next time they’ll manage. This in itself, makes you believe, but again, you eventually realise they are only lying to themselves, and all hope is gone.
One could argue one of the few down points to this film is that in comparison to Cornish’s performance with other characters when Ledger is not around, when Cornish is not there for Ledger his character seems less powerful, and much of his superb performance in the rest of the film is slightly muddied by these scenes. However, in a sense, though Ledger is not as compelling when Cornish is not around, it almost adds a new level to the character of Dan, without his lover Candy around, he is desperately vulnerable, unlike the headstrong character he often seems to be at other times.
The films ultimate triumph though, comes in a few scenes, powerful, horrifying and sickeningly frank. Perhaps the best example comes in the scene where the two lovers attempt to kick their drugs after learning Candy is pregnant. This scene is perhaps one of the simultaneously sickening and heart wrenching scenes I have seen in the hundreds of movies I’ve watched. The gradual deterioration of not only the two characters mental, but physical state over the few days they try to kick their habit, coupled with the awkward silence between the two emphasises the struggled each of them faces not only internally but externally as their bodies fight against their every will to receive the poisons they each crave.
The film is divided into three aptly named sections, Heaven, Earth and Hell. Heaven is the start of the film the mix of euphoric happiness and strong love, mixed with the steady decline in the pair’s relationship as Candy begins to sell her body to pay for her hits and gives up all hope of her promising career as an artist. This swiftly turns to the Earth section, in which the two begin to fall dramatically apart, and in a desperate attempt failingly try to give up drugs in what I have said is my favourite scene in this film. The hell section begins on the aftermath of Candy’s miscarriage, as her and Dan are thrown directly back into drugs by their depression. The way this film moves through these three sections is mesmerising in a way, but in some sense dispels all hope a viewer might have of a happy ending before it is clear why this might occur, which in some senses doesn’t leave the viewer as vulnerable for the shocking ending as it might have been.
In addition to this smallest of things, Candy does have a few downfalls. Perhaps the biggest being much of the later part of the film, for most of the Hell section. Though inarguably vital to the plot, these scenes seems dull compared to the creeping and ever growing foreboding at the start of the film and then the shocking and sudden ending. These scenes are almost definitely some of the more lacking of the film, though there are still little gems in the subtle acting between the two, gentle hints of what is to come. Though this drags the film down from being what is set up to be a groundbreaking piece of cinematography, it ultimately doesn’t take away the most important part of this film, which is its accurate depiction of real life, and not the usual Hollywood mockery of the world.