‘Smashed’ chronicles an alcoholic’s journey
Looking forward a little too much, perhaps, to the office party punch bowl, the champagne cocktail, the Swedish glogg? ‘Tis the season and, as ever, it’s a wet one. But instead of test driving the new recipe for peach sangria at your boss’s New Year’s bash, you might consider a night out in the company of Kate and Charlie Hannah, the 20-something hipster couple at the heart of James Ponsoldt’s indie drama, “Smashed.”
Party animals with a vengeance, this pair knows every karaoke bar and late-night convenience store in L.A.
Charlie’s willing to concede that maybe sometimes they overdo it, and it could be time to join ranks with what he calls “the wine-with-dinner people.” But Kate (a breathtaking Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a teacher in an elementary school, knows better. When she’s drinking on her way to school and winds up vomiting in front of her students, then waking up after a binge in a parking lot with no notion how she got there, she decides to make a change.
In most movies about alcoholism, this moment of self-realization and resolve would be the climax. But “Smashed” breaks ranks with predecessors like “The Lost Weekend” and “Days of Wine and Roses” in putting the emphasis, and early on, on Kate’s journey of recovery.
It’s a harsh, painful ride. Kate will not only have to reinvent her vision of herself and her life to come, but she’ll need to change every significant relationship she has— her mother, colleagues, boss and, above all, to her best drinking partner, Charlie (Aaron Paul, from “Breaking Bad”).
“Movies about drugs and alcohol might be a dime (bag) a dozen,” quips the Village Voice, “but James Ponsoldt’s ‘Smashed’ is so beautifully shot and well acted as if to transcend the genre.” From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Winstead is remarkable in a series of complex and difficult roles.” From Rolling Stone: “With resonant intelligence and healing humor, [Winstead] reveals Kate right down to her nerve endings.”
And from the New York Times: “Precisely observed, briskly paced... this movie doesn’t beg for sympathy... In lieu of selfpity, ‘Smashed’ substitutes tough love.”