DOWAR or The Lost Weekend?
Ok folks... here's my question. In your opinion, which film gives a grittier, more realistic view of alcoholism - The Days of Wine and Roses, or The Lost Weekend? Just curious about people's opinions, that's all.
shareI've never been an alcoholic myself (thankfully), but I think they were both realistic in different ways.
The Lost Weekend shows the downfall of one man, while DOWAR shows the downfall of an entire family. For that reason, DOWAR was harder for me to watch. Jack Lemmon's alcoholism directly affects his wife, which subsequently affects her father and their own daughter. It essentially ruins the lives of four people.
The greenhouse scene in particular was extremely powerful. I honestly paused it about five times just because I had a tough time getting through it.
The Lost Weekend also ended on a much more hopeful note. But man, while both movies featured absolutely extraordinary acting and directing, they were both very depressing and eye-opening.
TLW is affecting in many ways but one major problem I have with it the Jane Wyman character. Too good to be true? And of course the ending's optimistic note. DOWAR the more gritty and unflinching portryal of the destruction that alcohlism can wreak on the alcoholic and people in his life. And the ending is marvelous. We see Lee Remick's character still struggling with the bottle, and even though Jack Lemmon's character is a recovering alocohlic, we see the reflection of the neon liquour sign in the window. Will he relapse? This is the creeping torment that every recovering alcolic experiences.
On a humorous note, mmany years ago, when I saw The Lost Weekend for the first time, I asked a friend of mine how a man like Don Birnum can be lonely and frustrated when he virtally has two women who are madly in love with him. My friend's reply, "You can lonely and frustrated but not necessarily horny."
DOWAR is a relationship story. I think that's the strong appeal of the movie. Average people can identify with the actors from the various perspectives of father, mother, daughter, wife, husband, child, coworker, etc. This is alcoholism ravaging a nice family.
It was realistic in the way addicts need to make people around them into users to feel comfortable and justified, even overcoming others' initial objections that they don't want to do it. The conversation with Joe's AA mentor was perceptive. The part where she seduces him with sex and booze was excellent and showed the fragility of his sobriety. I think it's going to take Joe a long time to deal with the fact that he was responsible for destroying the woman he loved, a woman who will probably end up dead soon. Some day he's going to have to explain that to their daughter who will get another viewpoint of the relationship from her grandfather no matter how tight-lipped he preferred to be.
This is a movie about addiction that middle class women can identify with and think, wow, that could happen in MY family, or to me. Kirsten reminds me of a young woman who was a heroin addict I saw on a documentary who said she would give it up when she wanted to but she was enjoying it too much now. Whether she did or not, I don't know.
I've never seen DOWAR, but I have seen Lost Weekend (great film) and Leaving Las Vegas (which I haven't seen mentioned on these boards yet. Maybe too depressing even for lovers of DOWAR?). I love Leaving Las Vegas because it's one of the only (THE only?) movie that gives the other side of the coin: the alcoholic who is past the point of no return and has no desire to get better. The performance is over the top at times (but Cage deserved the Oscar he got), which is even true, apparently, of scenes in DOWAR (from what I'm reading), and is probably necessary to allow an actor to get his or her point across. But it isn't pretty. And (**spoiler**) Love does not save him, even if it does make the end of his life more bearable...
Anyway, this thread isn't for Leaving Las Vegas...but go watch it if you haven't already!
"How do you feel?"
"Like the Kling-Klang King of the Rim-Ram Room!"
Jane Wyman character is the classic enabler .... yes way tooooo good to be true !!!!!
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