December 3, 2019
Candy
Michael Cox READ TIME: 2 MIN.
From the moment you see the first frames of "Candy," you know you're going to fall into something deep and something hopeless, and you're going to get lost.
A door opens into a blacked, circular room. A group of people enter the room, and they stand against the wall. Then the room begins to spin, faster and faster. They are on The Rotor, an amusement park ride in Sydney, Australia. As the room spins, the people stick to the wall like magnets to a refrigerator. That's when we see him – Heath Ledger. As he looks into the eyes of his girlfriend we see his naked desperation and his wild joy. What a powerful image and what a powerful actor. His performance just gets better and better as his character's life gets worse and worse.
Ledger plays Dan, a part-time poet and a full-time heroin addict, who falls in love with a girl named Candy (Abbie Cornish) and lets her tumble into his self-destructive lifestyle. Dan's mentor and main dealer, Casper (Geoffrey Rush), warns them of "the path of wild abandon," then smiles and eagerly lets them in.
As the highs between them grow less and less exciting and become more and more of a necessity, they make a series of bad choices – lying, stealing, identity theft, and sex work. When these things cease to work, they try and cobble together a functional life. They get married. They try to have a baby. And they attempt to get clean. But the drudgeries of a "normal" life will never compete with the trills of the abandon.
Writer Luke Davies based the screenplay on his semi-autobiographical first novel, and the script follows the book quite closely. Davies has since gone on to write several prominent scripts and to be nominated for an Academy Award. Still, it is director Neil Armfield's images and the desperate, understated acting in this movie that make it so haunting.
This Blu-ray includes an audio commentary with Armfield and Davies, two featurettes – one with behind the scenes footage and interviews, and the original theatrical trailer.
"Candy"
Blu-ray
$19.97
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