Rain in my Heart (2006)

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Rain in my Heart (2006)

Post by RetroRomper »

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Rain in my Heart follows four (Toni, Vanna, Mark, and Nigel) alcoholics that the film maker encounters in the Martitime Hospital in Jilliam, UK. The most accurate way to describe the film is that it follows the lines, the strands of behavior in HBO's snapshot of problem drinkers in Risky Business to their ultimate conclusion, or as a doctor describes it as "[...] if they are here [in hospital,] we are too late."

Each person is used by the film maker to exemplify a different path to alcoholism: Toni is a party binge drinker, Vanna is the troubled ex-wife from an abusive relationship, Nigel a ten year sober alcoholic who suffered liver disease, and Mark the younger, depressed and potentially recoverable one of the bunch. The secret to this movie is that everyone is "normal:" they suffer from loss, depression, grief, remorse, resulting in an almost over humanization of the subjects that adds a relation, avoiding alienation due to their disease, that avoids a "us and them" mentality.

To illustrate this, it is revealed that Toni (the party binge drinker) lost her child to MRSA, Nigel was adored by his wife (who said that he "never hit me and always worked,") and Mark and Vanna suffer from depression due to rocky breakups. The point being that while we deal differently with loss, grief, etc. it isn't outside the realm of possibility for anyone to pick up a glass and use it as a coping skill, making the interviews almost haunting.

By the middle of the film, two of the four subjects have died: Nigel from severe liver failure and Toni from complications from her alcoholism. This lets the rest of the movie focus on Vanna and Mark: the movie ends with them expressing and us seeing their deep depression, with the picture being that while this isn't the end of their story, the viewer is left with the impression that they aren't able to pull themselves out of their habits, and how they have fallen into choosing to cope with their circumstances. The tone of the ending is that of the beginning: quiet, humanized, and in the end leaving with the feeling that their complications will continue to run to the inevitable conclusion to their story.

****
Four out of Five Stars
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Post by pinback »

I don't have to say anything. I'm a doctor, too.

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