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Sex, Drugs & Bicycles: Wait, You Can Do THAT?

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Before watching this documentary, the most that I knew about the Netherlands involved tulips and the ceramic clogs that my mother and grandmother collected. It’s only been more recently that I’ve even begun to intentionally learn more about countries and lifestyles beyond American soil, so it made sense to me to take a look into this film and see what it could show me about a country so very different than my own.

And I left enlightened. 

Sex, Drugs & Bicycles from Jonathan Blank takes us through a comedic and visually engaging journey in and around the most common (and some of the more obscure) highlights of Dutch infrastructure and lifestyles. From their healthcare, family lives, and work-life balance to the political scene, climate responsibility, and even bike riding, Blank makes sure we see all the color and drama that life in the Netherlands has to offer.

For starters, the filmography matches the vibrant content. In a style I can only describe as “paper-animation-puppet show meets no-holds-barred video,” this documentary is a fun mix of satire and insight presented in a way that kept me completely engaged. It was immediately evident that the Dutch know exactly who they are and why they do what they do. This acceptance of acting as “a salad bowl,” as opposed to “a melting pot,” seems to me to be the primary reason that they are regularly ranked in the top 5 of nations in the areas of healthcare (#3), education (#3), freedom of the press (#3), productivity (#4), and number 1 in happiest children and work-life balance.

But how does all of this actually happen? As an American, most of my education in those areas has told me: “universal healthcare doesn’t work, people take advantage of vacation time, success is dependent on how hard you work, and if people don’t earn it, they don’t deserve it, etc.” (I could go on and on). But the numbers tell a different story. And while I acknowledge that life in the U.S. is vastly different than in the Netherlands, I can’t help but wonder what we are missing out on.

The Netherlands takes the health of their citizens seriously. No one is making money off of the health care system and people have equal access to the services they need including transgender support and sexual health care. With required vacation pay AND vacation time, Dutch citizens are still some of the most productive (and prosperous) people in the world even though they are paid for 13 months and only work 11. This means families actually spend time together, with regular lines of communication between parents and children that last well beyond their challenging teenage years – which is a huge component of why those same kids are ranked as the happiest in the world. And by biking everywhere, the country as a whole seems to have a communal pace that ebbs and flows with the times.

Now this does not mean everything is perfect there, or even feasible everywhere. Racial tension is climbing as more Dutch citizens acknowledge a problematic history regarding the Dutch slave trade. While LGBTQIA rights are taken very seriously and publicly supported, the discrimination is still there. And after previously leading the way in climate change, the Netherlands is now playing catch up after years of laxed policy. Some of those interviewed in the documentary are even concerned that perhaps Dutch leadership is taking the country in the wrong direction. 

Do the Dutch do things that I don’t agree with? Absolutely. I’m not comfortable with their acceptance and promotion of sex work, nor how they approach drug education and experimentation. But I maintained an open mind so that I could at least understand their why, even if I still didn’t agree with their how. To ignore the systems and structures of other countries is to actually do a disservice to my own. There is always something to learn. And Sex, Drugs & Bicycles showed me I have much learning still to do.

Sex, Drugs & Bicycles is available on Friday, February 26th, 2021.

Crisis – Trying to Take on Opioids

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The opioid epidemic is the setting for Nicholas Jarecki’s Crisis. The film looks at the issue from different angles by using three storylines (two of which converge) that allow the film to explore the pain caused by this problem as well as ethical and law enforcement issues that complicate the issue in many ways. The film rapidly flips from one story to another.

Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) is an undercover DEA agent who is working to bring together a sting that will break up an international fentanyl smuggling operation. Kelly has a sister who is struggling with addiction. His operation has him serving as a middle man between Detroit drug dealers and a supplier in Montreal. As he tries to negotiate the dangerous landscape of such an operation, he is also brought back to the consequences of addiction as he tries to deal with his sister.

The emotional side of the story focuses on Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly), a woman with a past of opioid problems whose son goes missing. When he is found dead, he seems to have overdosed. But it becomes evident that this was not an accident, but a murder to deal with loose ends of a smuggling operation that her son unwittingly was part of. As she seeks to find out more, it will lead her to Montreal as well.

The more complex storyline focuses on ethical and business aspects of the opioid issue. Dr. Tyrone Brower (Gary Oldman) is an academic who does research for at a university. In doing tests on a prospective non-addictive painkiller about to be approved, he discovers some disturbing information. But he faces several dilemmas, including being offered a huge amount of money to underwrite his lab (if he’s willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement), and threats to his reputation and job. Should he blow the whistle and risk everything he has? What is his responsibility to the university? What is his responsibility to society as a whole?

This storyline also takes us into the Big Pharma business world where companies are looking for profits, but at what cost to society? Is their product a blessing or a curse? Will the profits from the new drug make it possible to develop even better ones?

The storylines focusing on Jake Kelly and Claire Reimann create a crime/thriller kind of film. The tension builds throughout the film to lead to a showdown that will end up with gunfire and death. But this is a storyline that grows out of anger and pain. It looks for revenge and making someone pay. There really isn’t anything new in this part of the film.

I found the Dr. Brower narrative much more interesting. It asks questions that are important to consider, both on about academia and the business world and their responsibilities to society. The question is brought up in various ways concerning doing what is practical, what is profitable, and what is right. I thought this plotline could have easily been expanded to be a complete film in itself by delving a bit deeper into the business and governmental aspects that are only briefly touched on.

Crisis is available in theaters (where open) and coming soon to VOD.

Photos by Philippe Bosse, courtesy of Quiver Distribution.

Castle in the Ground: The Power of Addiction

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In Joey Klein’s Castle in the Ground, 19 year old Henry (Alex Wolff) is caring for his dying mother. His new neighbor Ana (Imogen Poots) is often noisy and disruptive. One night he sees a masked man force his way into her apartment. He encounters her one day at the pharmacy as he’s refilling one of his mother’s prescriptions. Ana is trying to get a methadone prescription, but the pharmacist refuses. Henry is reluctant to get involved with her.

After his mother dies, Henry is overwhelmed by grief and guilt. He becomes attracted to Ana’s façade of not caring about anything. He begins to use some of his mother’s remaining opioids. When Ana and her friends become involved with bigger, violent drug dealers. Henry and Ana try to find a way out of danger.

The film is set in 2012 as the opioid crisis was making a shift. Information I received about the film notes that that is the time that OxyContin was taken off the market, and new street drugs, often based in Fentanyl, began leading to more overdose deaths. That information isn’t a part of the film. It would have added some needed context into the dangerous drugs Ana and others were coming in contact with.

As Henry moves through his depression into an ever darker story, we never quite grasp the pain that leads him to the bad decisions he makes along the way. While everything is credible, it is also very superficial. We don’t really get to understand the drug culture. We don’t really get to understand either Henry or Ana. We just see Henry’s downward spiral that we can sense will only lead to even more pain.

Yet there is a part of the film that tries to go a bit deeper. Near the end, in Henry’s apartment, Ana is in need of a fix. She has had to change clothes and put on one of Henry’s mother’s dresses. To prepare the injection, she uses the spoon that Henry used to give his mother her medicine. To tie off her arm, she uses the phylactery that we saw Henry using in his morning prayers. All this shows us that such addictions can take things that hold a certain sacredness and transform them into instruments of sorrow and destruction. That can be seen as a metaphor of what happens to the lives of those who are caught up in such trials.

Castle in the Ground is available on VOD.

Morning, Noon & Night – Light Weight Look at Addiction

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Morning, Noon  & Night seeks to be a mirror through which we see the way addiction controls lives. It tries to do so with humor, but in the end it merely ridicules addicts as losers without giving us any real insight to addiction.

The film is three interconnected stories (along with some peripheral characters who also bring their addictions to the mix). Cliff (John Manfredi) is a middle executive who starts his day with a few lines of cocaine (to be repeated as needed). His daughter Kelly (Carly Schneider) is a slacker community college student who spends her day with friends doing pot, opioids, and starting in on heroin. Kelly’s history teacher Aaron (Frank Ondorf) is an alcoholic who thinks he hides it, but doesn’t. They each spend their day trying to get to their next encounter with their drug of choice. Although they are perfectly happy to mix and match and use any drug that’s available.

For the purposes of this film, addiction is equated with substance abuse. Cocaine, marijuana, pills, alcohol, heroin, and the uber-addiction tobacco all find their way into the story. It doesn’t touch on the other kinds of addictions that people struggle with: eating disorders, gambling (to be fair, gambling is mentioned in one scene), sexual addictions, even perhaps religion. Nor does the film provide any insight into what leads people into addiction, other than an ennui based on the boredom of daily life.

Morning, Noon & Night barely scratches the surface of addiction or addicts. Is it a moral problem or a disease? This film seems to see it as a moral problem. The people we see are weak and pitiful. It seems we’re suppose to think that they just need to stop doing whatever drugs they do, straighten up, and take control of their lives. If only addiction were that simple.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment with the film is that it has no sign of hope. Addictions can be addressed and overcome—but never easily. The characters in the film all just float along. Their addictions don’t really make them happy, but they also don’t really seem to hinder them in their daily lives. They just spend their time getting and using whatever drug they seek. No one grows. No one suffers. No one does much of anything except use drugs. Even addicts have lives.

Photos courtesy of Panoramic Pictures

Breakthrough S2: Ep 1 and 2 – Protect Thyself

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Eighteen months ago, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard decided to spearhead a series on National Geographic Channel involving advances in scientific technology.  Entitled Breakthrough, each episode was created by a specific director and tackled a unique aspect of how science could help society in general. The series was recently renewed for a second season (10PM/9 CT on Tuesdays), providing the viewing audience six more glimpses into a world where science meets life head-on.

The first episode aired last week and centered around an issue many people deal with on a daily basis: addiction.  This doesn’t necessarily refer to drugs or tobacco, but can also refer to cell phone usage, selfies, or other items/hobbies that become “something more” to a person.  There are numerous ways addictions can be dealt with, but the episode focused on an experimental technique—psychedelic drugs such as LSD, Ibogaine, or Psilocybin (magic mushrooms).  The treatment is not for all, that’s for sure—but in the three cases shown, director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon) made the treatment process look absolutely spellbinding.  The episode was definitely not what I expected, but was intriguing nevertheless.

Cyber terror was the subject of the second episode—an issue many of us summarily dismiss as something that can’t happen to us.  Target doesn’t think so after seeing their online system compromised a number of years ago with millions of credit card numbers exposed for the world to use.  It doesn’t take a lot to break into a computer – a simple USB drive can wreak all sorts of havoc.  However, there are white hat hackers who legally help companies secure their networks by attempting to break into them.  They have lots of work to do—major companies’ detection rate of cyberattacks is only 6%, and when they do find something, it takes seven months to find it.   In fact, by 2019, cyberattacks will cost the global economy $2 trillion dollars. It needs to be fixed now.

To make things worse, director Steven Hoggard (Inside the Green Berets) reveals that cybercriminals (black hat hackers) are using encryption-based devices to recruit people into terrorist groups such as ISIS. Some have even been able to hack into US Central Command!  Some journalists in the UK havegone undercover to help stop this from occurring, using a similar technique to how criminals were caught on the show To Catch a Predator.  Do they always succeed?  Not quite. But stopping one attack is better than none.  That’s why it’s always important to protect oneself from the attacks of enemies who cannot be seen.  It sounds eerily like what Paul told the church in Ephesus when describing the armor of God.  The various components—helmet, breastplate, sword, and other elements—protect a Christian from the attacks of the devil and his minions (see Ephesians 6:11-20). Protection can be a good thing—we just need to be aware of the problem and prepare accordingly.

Best Fake Friends – Peer Pressure for Adults

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“How do you survive the pressure to fit in?”

In Best Fake Friends, Joy (Lauren Bowles) has just moved into a tony Portland suburb after her husband has landed a dream job. Without friends, she is growing a bit lonely when she is invited to a neighborhood party. At the party she meets Nikki (Victoria Smurfit), Tory (Suleka Mathew), and Rachel (Michelle Arthur), who tell her about the various “tribes” of neighborhood housewives. They declare that they are the “fun” group. And they are fun. However, under Nikki’s lead (she is clearly the Alpha of the group), Joy is being asked to do more and more things outside her comfort zone. Soon she is in a world built on distrust (especially distrusting of husbands), drugs, and destructive behavior.

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Early in the film, Joy reflects on the façades of the houses in the neighborhood. Very beautiful and impressive, yet hiding the emptiness of the inside. That is the operative metaphor for the women she is meeting—Nikki especially. They compare the plastic surgery they’ve had done (and try to convince Joy she can’t keep her husband without it). They go off for a wild weekend in Las Vegas (a city that many see as nothing but façade). And the big event of the neighborhood is a masquerade. Joy is trying to maintain her authenticity, but it is difficult with the peer pressure of this group.

Nikki serves the role of villain. She is the most physically beautiful one of the crowd, but also the most insecure. She counters that insecurity by being manipulative and pushing others to take part in various morally questionable activities with her—making each feel special for being close to her. But there is a cost to being Nikki’s friend. Each step of the way makes the others a little more like her—and being more about the façade than about the interior.

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If Best Fake Friends were set in middle school, it would be called a coming-of-age comedy that points out the dangers of falling in with the wrong crowd. But being set among adult women it loses much of the comedic aspect and becomes a story of a desperate attempt at finding validation in the eyes of others. After watching I realized that this could very well have been told as the coming of age story. Then we would look at the characters and understand that part of their problems could be explained away because of immaturity. But with an adult cast and adult situations, that excuse is taken away. What is left is a revelation that behind the façade of beauty and wealth there may lie a pathetic emptiness that some may try to fill by ultimately destructive means. It is only, as Joy learns (and we try to teach children), by being true to oneself that life opens to happiness.

 

The Infiltrator – Follow the Money

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Reagan era drug wars are the setting for The Infiltrator. Based on a true story, Federal agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) has been working undercover catching drug dealers, but thinks a more productive way to do it would be to follow the money to the top. He sets himself up as Bob Musella, a businessman that can launder the vast amounts of money involved in the drug trade and begins working his way into the confidence of higher and higher levels of the Columbian cartel. But these are violent people who would have no qualms about not only killing Mazur, but his family as well if he were discovered.

Early in the film Mazur tells his partner Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) that the informants they deal with walk on the dirty side of the street. When they decide to come to the clean side, they still have mud on their feet. It makes us wonder about what happens when Mazur spends time on that dirty side of the street. Will he be able to not be tainted by the filth?

Mazur in the film is a noble man with a noble goal. He is eligible to retire with full benefits, but opts to do one more big operation. He honors his vows to his wife (Juliet Aubrey), but there are other times when he pushes his relationship with her beyond the breaking point. One of the key differences between Mazur and Abreu is that Mazur sees what he is doing as something for the good of the world. Perhaps Abreu does as well, but admits that the undercover work they do is his “drug of choice”.

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Along with another agent posing as his fiancée (Diane Kruger), he becomes close with one of Pablo Escobar’s top lieutenants, Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt), who treats him like family. Mazur manages to become a prime customer at the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, becoming connected with high ranking officials within the bank. BCCI claimed to be a “full service bank” for its special customers. The bankers talk openly about the ways they can make the money untraceable. These are not the lowlife drug pushers he has dealt with in the past. These are people with prestige, position, and power.

That world of power that Mazur moves into in his work laundering the cartel’s money is one filled with hubris. At one point we see an official at BCCI addressing a meeting, speaking of the divine blessing they receive in the form of great wealth as though it is their due. He goes so far to claim they get rich because they “have the humility to receive it”. What makes this a bit more than your typical cops and robbers movie is the sense of bringing down the proud and powerful. While the evil in this film includes those who act violently and supply drugs that ruin lives, the real villains we meet are those who just want a very lucrative piece of that pie and don’t care what dirt or blood may be on the money they handle. Again we go back to Mazur’s early comment about muddy shoes. For all the Italian suits and fancy jewelry people may wear in the film, that sense of a dirt that will not wash off reminds us that the things we do may leave stains that others may not see, but will never really wash away.

Photos courtesy of Broad Green Pictures