A selective memory
Stories from West Virginia’s underbelly succeed where Hollywood fails when it comes to focusing on the dangers of prescription drugs, writes James Belfield.
Considering how under fire Hollywood has been over past years for failing to deal directly and openly with serious topics such as racism and sexism, it was a strange decision to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Aussie-born actor Heath Ledger with a eulogising doco that skirts one of the main issues surrounding the tragedy.
When the 28-year-old was found in his New York apartment on January 22, 2008, the city’s medical examiner discovered six types of painkillers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs in his system and concluded the Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight and I’m Not There star had died accidentally of “acute intoxication”… “from the abuse of prescription medications”.
And although the makers of IAm Heath Ledger have created a suitably poignant and emotional record of his life, the viewer can’t help but think that – for a country in the grip of a serious opioid epidemic – not once alluding directly to this cocktail of narcotics leaves an important part of the story still untold.
That said, the doco is both haunting and stylish by consistently revisiting Ledger’s seemingly endless stock of self-filmed, hand-held footage and allowing excerpts of his own interviews to punctuate a rolling commentary from his friends, colleagues and family.
Seeing his twirling, out-of-control home movies mixed with tales about his restless energy, constant self-doubt, artistic passion (behind and in front of both still and film cameras), and what musician Ben Harper describes as an acute sense of his “own mortality”, certainly creates the subtext of a restless spirit. It’s the sort of subtext that seems to try to explain his death, without ever explicitly joining the dots.
Among the cast of Tinseltown greats and Ledger’s surfing mates from growing up in Perth, Western Australia, it’s undoubtedly Harper that has the best stories. These range from Ledger directing a video for his song Morning Yearning (“The best vid I’ve had in 23 years of songwriting”) to being sent a grand piano as a present, along with a request for him to write a lullaby for his daughter Matilda: his rendition with the line “Happy ever after is in your eyes” is the high, not-a-dry-eye-point of the film.
Another notable omission is his ex (and Matilda’s mum) Michelle Williams, who, after her #MeToo spotlight might have been trusted to maybe bring a wider focus to I Am Heath Ledger.
But, instead, the closest we get is the rather vapid comment from his agent Steve Alexander that Ledger “struggled with some demons”.
And, even for people who have spent a decade grieving their friend, colleague, brother or son, that absence of the total picture seems to undercut the memory of a young superstar in the making.
At the other end of the spectrum when it comes to dealing directly with the grittier side of memory is the latest instalment of Louis Theroux’s Dark States series: Heroin Town.
This time taking his wolf-in-sheepishclothing interview technique to Huntington, West Virginia, Theroux manages to befriend some of the quarter of the town’s 49,000 population who are addicted to opiates.
And although right from the get-go there are plenty of grizzly scenes of gurneys and needles and shockingly stark set pieces showing overdosed roadside patients being resuscitated with shots of Narcan, it’s probably the human tales of bemused suffering which last longest in viewers’ memories. And the overarching common memory?
The addicts found their way to heroin via some of the same prescription medicines found in Ledger’s body.
By focusing on the recollections of the victim of a drunk-driver hit-and-run who moved from pain relief to addiction; a college student training to be a librarian who ended up giving birth to a baby who has to be weened off methadone; and a teen who raided her family’s stash of doctor-prescribed painkillers only to end up in an abusive relationship with her dealer, turning tricks and lying to her family to get more money for drugs, Theroux exposes the pathway of each tragedy.
As he puts it: “Anyone can get caught up – one bad choice can end a life.” And by revealing the memories of those who made those bad choices – especially when it came to prescription medication – Theroux manages to be both a storyteller and a watchdog for those tempted down a similar path.
I Am Heath Ledger Louis Theroux: Dark States – Heroin Town