(Duane Hopkins/2008/UK)
Better Things is an unremittingly
stark drama about the lives of teenagers in a rural town in midlands England.
Mingling realism with a cinematic lyricism that aspires to the poetic it
succeeds in an affecting portrayal of young people with little prospect or hope
of opportunity. But it is relentlessly bleak, no one smiles, there is no fun,
anywhere, in anything. Everyone under thirty in the film is trapped within a suffocating,
existential gloom and as result most have turned to heroin.
This horrific portrait of a
generation, rudderless and unattended to by the wider constructs of society is
mirrored in the sub plot of an elderly couple who are also at a nadir.
Suspecting his wife of infidelity at some point much earlier in their marriage
the husband struggles to reconcile his feelings about it. This
reflection between generations is the winning stroke of Better Things as it expands the context
of the problem of addiction to the more general problem of human
communication, resolution of emotions and coping with adversity in daily life.
No matter what age you are hopelessness can set in and how then do we cope?
Simply relinquish the effort of decade’s long marriage, turn to the solace of
an opiate haze, escape somehow? A shot of an overdosed boy is a visual cue invoking
Thomas Chatterton and a romantic, poetical notion of escape from the bleak
reality around them.
But the environment within Better
Things is also romantic; there are continual shots of the surrounding landscape
that inspire awe in the viewer. But the beauty and effusive presence of nature
does not illicit any refuge or spiritual salvation for the characters and only
furthers the tragedy on show. It is at points a gloomily beautiful film but it
is equally an endurance test for the heart.
(3/5)
