It's taken a while for this British movie to make it to DVD in the USA, (I think it got a limited theatre release), so I feel slightly fraudulent reviewing it 4 years late. Was it worth waiting for? Hmmm. That's a toughie.
The problem is, I feel I ought to like this movie more than I do. It showcases a gut-wrenchingly good performance by Molly Parker as the heroin addicted mum Mel, an astonishingly good performance from young actor Harry Eden as the central character, her son Paul, very good support from two of my favorites actors, Keira Knightly as a young waitress, Louise, who befriends Paul, and David Wenham as the local big shot dealer Lenny, with smaller but effective roles by Gary Lewis and Geraldine McEwan.
I know this is a good movie; its production values were high, it's well acted, well scripted, more than adequately filmed on location in the East End, and has a very well-meaning and ethical story, about the redemptive power of love. Briefly, ten year old Paul runs a household under the shadow of West Ham United's Upton Park football ground in the multi-ethnic East End of London, while his mother struggles to admit she has a drug problem and then overcome it. Paul finally is instrumental in getting the local dealer "nicked", and in getting his mum to stick with re-hab and the family reunited. Yet I have to admit that I found it vaguely disappointing. A good TV drama, but I can see why it didn't get a wide theatre release.
If I was backed into a corner and forced to make comparisons, I might describe Pure as Vera Drake meets Trainspotting. But unfortunately, it doesn't have the impact of either. Pure lacks the black humour of Trainspotting which made that film such a cult classic, and which also made it so shocking. In Trainspotting, one moment the audience is laughing at this bunch of complete losers, and wondering if it really matters if idiots like this choose to kill themselves with drugs? The next moment we are shocked out of our seats by the death of the neglected baby which haunts the film. Pure also lacks Vera Drake's basic moral dilemma, namely is this inconspicuous, rather nice, kind woman Vera, really doing something wicked, when she performs do-it-yourself abortions on desperate volunteers? Does she really deserve to go to jail for it? After all, the rich get away with it. But in Pure, there are no such contradictions or doubts, and really no great moral dilemma for the audience to wrestle with. As shown here, heroin addiction is awful. It has no redeeming features. People die unpleasantly or mess up their lives. Drug addicts make lousy parents. But I think I knew that already. It showed us the intimate details of the devastation that drugs can wreak on a family, but it didn't really say anything new. There is no doubt that the pimp / dealer Lenny is nasty, that the child Paul is heroic and that his mum wants, at some level, to be a decent parent. The film is really just confirming for the audience what most of us already knew.
Lenny probably says the only mildly contentious lines in the whole movie, when he says (and I'm paraphrasing) "Heroin doesn't make people's lives lousy, it just helps them cope with the lousy lives they already have." That might have been an interesting lead to follow; why did Mel get into this state? OK, she was widowed young, but plenty of women are widowed young and don't become junkies. Lenny gets his come-uppance, (he deserved jail for his Argyle sweaters alone, never mind the drug dealing...), mum gets off heroin and Paul gets his family back. It's all very well presented and yet it doesn't make for great drama, with the possible exception of the scene where Paul attacks Lenny's Audi with a brick and then lays into Lenny. I'm struggling really to pin it down, but Pure didn't quite work for me.
One level on which it failed for me was the incredibly banal soundtrack. I watched Pure with my 16 year old son, (I often use my kids as sounding boards for movies, because I realize as a middle aged woman I'm not a statistically important part of the demographic) and he said the soundtrack reminded him of a movie he saw recently called Grizzly Man, in which a guy goes to study bears in Alaska and gets eaten by one. Certainly to me, the sound track seemed more reminiscent of the National Geographic Channel than the East End of London. A sound track should enhance the movie or else not be there at all. I found Pure's intensely irritating and rather trite, and felt most of the best scenes were the ones without any music.
All the performances were faultless. It was an interesting role for Keira Knightly, Molly Parker and Harry Eden were superb, and Australian David Wenham proved again that he does a great turn as a thug. (He also nailed the accent perfectly, which I find interesting. Because this is where I have to admit that I'm an Essex Girl myself and I grew up not far from where this movie is set. Although I've been away from London for 30 years, and living in California for 9 of those, I still retain a slight Essex accent. And yet here in California I'm frequently asked by the locals what part of Australia I'm from. I guess the accents are closer than I'd realized.) I watched Pure twice in case I picked up some interesting nuances second time that I missed first time, but no. It did nothing more for me second time around. Well meaning movie, but not especially memorable unfortunately. I'd watch it in preference to most of the dross on TV here, but I can't pretend it's a great film. Sorry...!
The problem is, I feel I ought to like this movie more than I do. It showcases a gut-wrenchingly good performance by Molly Parker as the heroin addicted mum Mel, an astonishingly good performance from young actor Harry Eden as the central character, her son Paul, very good support from two of my favorites actors, Keira Knightly as a young waitress, Louise, who befriends Paul, and David Wenham as the local big shot dealer Lenny, with smaller but effective roles by Gary Lewis and Geraldine McEwan.
I know this is a good movie; its production values were high, it's well acted, well scripted, more than adequately filmed on location in the East End, and has a very well-meaning and ethical story, about the redemptive power of love. Briefly, ten year old Paul runs a household under the shadow of West Ham United's Upton Park football ground in the multi-ethnic East End of London, while his mother struggles to admit she has a drug problem and then overcome it. Paul finally is instrumental in getting the local dealer "nicked", and in getting his mum to stick with re-hab and the family reunited. Yet I have to admit that I found it vaguely disappointing. A good TV drama, but I can see why it didn't get a wide theatre release.
If I was backed into a corner and forced to make comparisons, I might describe Pure as Vera Drake meets Trainspotting. But unfortunately, it doesn't have the impact of either. Pure lacks the black humour of Trainspotting which made that film such a cult classic, and which also made it so shocking. In Trainspotting, one moment the audience is laughing at this bunch of complete losers, and wondering if it really matters if idiots like this choose to kill themselves with drugs? The next moment we are shocked out of our seats by the death of the neglected baby which haunts the film. Pure also lacks Vera Drake's basic moral dilemma, namely is this inconspicuous, rather nice, kind woman Vera, really doing something wicked, when she performs do-it-yourself abortions on desperate volunteers? Does she really deserve to go to jail for it? After all, the rich get away with it. But in Pure, there are no such contradictions or doubts, and really no great moral dilemma for the audience to wrestle with. As shown here, heroin addiction is awful. It has no redeeming features. People die unpleasantly or mess up their lives. Drug addicts make lousy parents. But I think I knew that already. It showed us the intimate details of the devastation that drugs can wreak on a family, but it didn't really say anything new. There is no doubt that the pimp / dealer Lenny is nasty, that the child Paul is heroic and that his mum wants, at some level, to be a decent parent. The film is really just confirming for the audience what most of us already knew.
Lenny probably says the only mildly contentious lines in the whole movie, when he says (and I'm paraphrasing) "Heroin doesn't make people's lives lousy, it just helps them cope with the lousy lives they already have." That might have been an interesting lead to follow; why did Mel get into this state? OK, she was widowed young, but plenty of women are widowed young and don't become junkies. Lenny gets his come-uppance, (he deserved jail for his Argyle sweaters alone, never mind the drug dealing...), mum gets off heroin and Paul gets his family back. It's all very well presented and yet it doesn't make for great drama, with the possible exception of the scene where Paul attacks Lenny's Audi with a brick and then lays into Lenny. I'm struggling really to pin it down, but Pure didn't quite work for me.
One level on which it failed for me was the incredibly banal soundtrack. I watched Pure with my 16 year old son, (I often use my kids as sounding boards for movies, because I realize as a middle aged woman I'm not a statistically important part of the demographic) and he said the soundtrack reminded him of a movie he saw recently called Grizzly Man, in which a guy goes to study bears in Alaska and gets eaten by one. Certainly to me, the sound track seemed more reminiscent of the National Geographic Channel than the East End of London. A sound track should enhance the movie or else not be there at all. I found Pure's intensely irritating and rather trite, and felt most of the best scenes were the ones without any music.
All the performances were faultless. It was an interesting role for Keira Knightly, Molly Parker and Harry Eden were superb, and Australian David Wenham proved again that he does a great turn as a thug. (He also nailed the accent perfectly, which I find interesting. Because this is where I have to admit that I'm an Essex Girl myself and I grew up not far from where this movie is set. Although I've been away from London for 30 years, and living in California for 9 of those, I still retain a slight Essex accent. And yet here in California I'm frequently asked by the locals what part of Australia I'm from. I guess the accents are closer than I'd realized.) I watched Pure twice in case I picked up some interesting nuances second time that I missed first time, but no. It did nothing more for me second time around. Well meaning movie, but not especially memorable unfortunately. I'd watch it in preference to most of the dross on TV here, but I can't pretend it's a great film. Sorry...!