Leaving Las Vegas

Rating:
Summary: Hollywood Deserves Better
Review: I feel compelled to answer the naive misinformation of the acerbic review below by Mr. Chow, whose simplistic dismissal of this movie demonstrates that it is not "we" who deserve better filmmaking, but Hollywood who deserves a better audience. His demands to have everything laid out for him by an obvious script that stifles the audience's ability to participate in the making of meaning - coming to our own conclusions about the film's probing psychological implications, for instance -- are why movies as genuinely moving as this one become rarer by the year. They are the reason why Hollywood now consistently delivers whole seasons worth of teeny bopper nonsense that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. If the reasons for Ben's self-destruction must be "understandable" and "discernible" (how boring), why does it not suffice that Ben was fired, lost his wife and went broke within a short period of time? As he himself says in the movie: "did I start drinking because my wife left me, or did my wife leave me because I started drinking?" Nonetheless, alcohol addiction is a condition that is almost always the result of a pre-existing depressive temperament for which there is often no "discernible" explanation. If we lived in a world rife with such easy answers as those demanded by this film's detractors, mental disorders and chemical addictions would be a lot easier to overcome than they are. The presumption is also made that prostitutes only decide to resort to that trade when they "hit rock bottom," when in fact many studies confirm that the vast majority of prostitutes suffer from a tremendous and defeating dependency complex in which their frail self-esteem encourages them to pursue abusive relationships that validate their illogical feeling of uselessness. This has nothing to do with external or financial circumstances and everything to do with psychology, an area in which, once again, people thirsting for a one-dimensional human reality will be disappointed. Additionally, I am confounded by the suggestion that Ben and Sera's erudition is at all "absurd." Ben -- for those of us who were actually paying attention when watching this movie - reads screenplays for a living. If the possibility that people who read 50 screenplays a week can articulate themselves seems like an absurd one to modern audiences, the problem is with the audience, not the movie. If anything is absurd, it is the assertion that this film is about "unconditional love" or "total commitment." Ben's love is neither selfless nor unconditional, for he never reciprocates even in the mildest way and repeatedly threatens to bolt when Sera's affection threatens his dependence on alcohol. As for Sera, she herself admits that she is "just using" Ben. Sera, whose behavior throughout the film manifests classic symptoms of the self-loathing and dependent personality that characterizes the vast majority of prostitutes, is more truthful in this statement than in most other things she says throughout the movie. Lastly, the suggestion that this film would have resonated in an entirely different way had the characters been "ugly," "fat" or "wrinkled" is patently false. Am I the only one who recalls the great film "Iron Weed," in which two filthy, baggy-skinned homeless people with bad teeth cling to one another in a union of unrelenting but feisty devotion? The very virtues Mr. Chow mistakenly ascribes to "Leaving Las Vegas" -- "selflessness," redemptive "devotion," "unconditional love" -- all come across powerfully and memorably in that story of an "ugly" and "wrinkled" couple. The only thing that "provokes prurience" here are the attacks hurled at this film for its refusal to yield easy and quickly digested answers, like the kind of poetry Donald Hall calls "easy listenin'."

Rating:
Summary: We Deserve Better
Review: I've never before followed up an Amazon review with a postscript, but the more provocative comments being made on this site promoting this pretentious piece of twaddle simply demand a reply.

A lot has been said about this film being an exploration of suffering; total commitment; selfless love; redemption earned through unreserved devotion; two moths drawn to the flame, doomed to suffering or death, but finding solace--even nobility--in their unconditional love for each other.

Along with this is the oblique implication that anyone who can't feel empathy for two such tragic figures is either a brute, a cad or a cynic.

It is with this last charge that all self-respecting dissidents should take issue.

If "Leaving Las Vegas" were really about the aforementioned qualities, I wouldn't object to it with nearly the intensity that I feel. But this film is not about such qualities. Or rather, it hijacks such qualities to mask a viewpoint that is ultimately ignoble and hypocritical. In short, it is a con, replete with all the tricks and sleights of hand that Hollywood has used over the years to mislead and manipulate.

This film is about two Beautiful People play-acting at being a drunk and a prostitute. The man self-destructs not for any understandable or even discernable reason, but because it is demanded by the plot. The woman prostitutes herself not because her life has skidded to rock bottom, but because prostitution is an old dodge that Hollywood can always rely on to provoke prurience.

I defy the film's apologists to deny any of this.

If this film was really as high-minded and spiritual as its defenders claim, then it should assume this challenge: replace Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shue with two ugly actors. Make them fat and wrinkled with bad teeth and dirty unkempt hair. The drunk would possess none of his boyish charm, but would behave loutishly and incoherently while drunk, and continually beat the woman. The prostitute would be incapable of words longer than two syllables, and would be habitually spaced out on crack. Let's see if "unconditional love" and "total commitment" will rise above authentic real-life obstacles that truly test such starry-eyed notions. If the film garners the same reviews after such a dose of reality, then detractors like I will concede its high-mindedness and spirituality.

But this film is not high-minded. It is not spiritual. It RELIES on the physical attractiveness, the charisma and the absurdly erudite conduct of its two stars to hook us. We witness not the tragedy of two spent and broken souls, but the machinations of the Hollywood glam factory reinventing two of its most Beautiful People into make-believe losers. We are supposed to go along with this hypocritical charade and feel sorry for... whom? Who is it we feel sorry for? Is it for the real Bens and Seras of the world? Or is it for the dashing Nicholas Cage and the gorgeous Elizabeth Shue?

This film is more than simply bad. I resent it because it whitewashes despair. It trivializes tragedy. It turns suffering, grief and death from an agonizing spiritual journey into a soft-porn fairy-tale of perfect teeth, perfect looks and perfect tans. I resent it because it demands my empathy for unworthy reasons. And when it fails on its merits, it has the gall to try milking my tears with overt manipulation and some of the tawdriest tricks in the book (Sera's parting gift to Ben is the act of love on his deathbed--giving a whole new meaning to "Angel").

I won't claim that this movie won't appeal to its target audience. All of the breathless reviews on this site prove otherwise. But those who wonder why its detractors dislike it so much should consider that our rejection stems not from lack of perception or feeling, but rather, from an abundance of those very qualities.

Rating:
Summary: Perception is the key...
Review: A previous review proclaimed this movie as "a complete downer". Yes, it is. It is a reverse fairy tale, a purely fictional account of the ravages of depression, addiction, and desperation. Las Vegas is the obvious setting for such a story of accepted destruction, and Mike Figgis keenly uses the glimmer and glitz of Vegas as an underlying contradiction throughout the whole movie.
Nic Cage finds the only way to live his life, by drinking himself to death. He falls in with Sera, played by Elisabeth Shue, who only knows one way to live her life, by being a prostitue. Their timid steps toward the middle ground of dysfuntion and their eventual acceptance of each other is the high point of the movie. The ending is as appropriately depressing as was built up during the rest of the film, but would it make sense any other way? Ben in AA and Sera selling cars instead of herself?
It amazes me how many people can watch a movie about the foibles of the human condition (comparable movies: The Ice Storm, The Sweet Hereafter, American Beauty, The Night Porter) and be depressed! You must leave the experience happy! You must walk out of that theater feeling strong and in control! If your life is in such dire staits as the people on the screen, well, I feel sorry for you. However, I feel that most of you are okay, and by watching Leaving Las Vegas, you should feel ecstatic that you aren't a drunk, a prostitute, or dead! These characters found happiness, if only for a brief while, why can't you. There is hope!
An excellent script portrayed by excellent actors and shot by a director who put his soul into the piece. A downer, yes, I will admit to that, but a little thought and a little perspective shows you a great movie, one that should not be missed.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT PERFORMANCES!!!!
Review: Nic Cage and Elisabeth Shue are EXCELLENT in this movie!!! While it is sort of hard to get into when you first start watching it, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the end. So give it a chance!!!