Naked Lunch (1991)
Directed by: David Cronenberg (The Fly, A History of Violence)
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm
Naked Lunch isn’t about drugs specifically, but it does recreate the “vivid, ant-crawling detail [of] the plunge into the hungry abyss of drugs” (the Washington Post). The film follows an exterminator and his wife, both desperately addicted to his own insecticide.
As the film unravels, it gets progressively more surreal, introducing talking typewriters and giant centipedes. Based on William S. Burrough’s novel by the same name, it’s rooted in a kind of truth: Burroughs was prone to “yawning pits of paranoia and schizophrenia”; he accidentally shot his wife at one point in his life.
Critic Roger Ebert described the movie like this:
There is so much dryness, death, and despair here, in a life spinning itself out with no joy. Burroughs inhabits the madhouse of his mind, and as he is addressed by bugs and phantoms and the specter of his murdered wife, the most horrifying thing of all is that he reacts in the same detached, cold way.
♦♦♦
Traffic (2000)
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich; Sex, Lies, and Videotape)
Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones
The American crime drama that earned director Soderberg an Oscar nomination, Traffic follows the illegal Mexican drug trade in a patchwork of stories ranging from the dealers to the abusers to the law enforcers after them.
As Entertainment Weekly put it, “The film doesn’t just juggle characters—it zigzags among sinister pockets of addiction, violence, and power, revealing, in its very structure, the hidden yet interlocked levels of a vertically integrated drug society.”
Most of the film is shot with a handheld camera, lending it a newsreel quality that aids in its final moral: we are losing the war against drugs.
Traffic, like The Godfather, is a memorable demonstration of the notion that crime, while it may be sin, is fundamentally big business. Watching the film, we’re confronted, both as drama and as cultural revelation, with the dirty capitalistic secret of the drug war: that when drugs are wired into a society’s central nervous system, that society will behave, collectively, in as clawing and amoral a fashion as any addict.
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trying to locate name of a movie: synopsis is caucasion business man driving on freeway and was rear-ended by black recovering alcoholic. Caucasion taunts him becase his business paperwork was flung to the wind. Shows AA Meetiong; black man and in bar with drink in front of him, calls his sponsor-good ending. HELP
A solid list (top ten lists are hard!) and I was also happy to see Rush get some love. It’s a great movie and really kind of unknown. To broaden the list out to movies about other kinds of addiction Shame is simply a great movie, Owning Mahowny is an excellent movie about gambling addiction and Withnail And I is both one of the best comedies ever made and a great movie about an addictive and highly destructive friendship.
Candy with Heath Ledger
No “Drunks”? or “Clean and Sober”? Not even “LOst Weekend”? Hmmmmmm
Barfly, 8 Million Ways to Die, Leaving Las Vegas and the winner in my book- The Lost Weekend…
Honorable Mention- Days of Wine and Roses
New book out about addiction and overdosing ” A Near death Experience: I Died and Came Back From Hell” Short and very inspirational just came out a must read!
From another generation, but I think the modern genre begins with Days of Wine and Roses, which was Blake Edwards breakthrough film as a director. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must. For the literati, hard to ignore Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf, first a stage play and then a motion picture. Harder to watch than Roses but it’s all there in the writing, fully rendered characters self destructing in near poetry.
Also “Spun”, about meth addiction. “Party Monsters” has almost every drug you can imagine people are addicted to then theres “Riding in cars with boys” depicts herion addiction and “Candy” with heath Ledger about cocaine addiction. Also “Smiley Face” is kinda about marijuana addiction but not really very funny though
Say what you want about drugs, they make good movies.
I like every one of these. Leaving Las Vegas deserves a spot, because Nic Cage’s character literally drinks himself to death.
Good column
Clean and Sober is one of my favorites. I thought Michael Keaton did it very well.
Why only substance abuse? There are some fascinating movies about gambling addiction, my favourite being the little-seen (but deserving of a wider audience) Owning Mahowney starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
As well, while I haven’t seen it Shame was supposed to be an amazing movie about sex addiction.
“Liquid Sky” is a very stylized and haunting movie about heroin, music, fashion, ….and aliens!
The violence was shocking and disturbing to me (in my adolescent phase)….still nauseating to me now that I think about it…
I have been trying to find the name of a movie I had seen a couple of years ago. It was a bout atwo guys doing heroin. One was black and the other was white. One guy breaks into a car but ends up with the owner who was a female. Anyway, they hit bottom and went to a dealer and asked for the drugs. They went to some bathroom and the black guy dies from a hot package. The other guy is scared to take his but his girlfriend ends up being arrested and the only way to free… Read more »
I think the movie you are looking for is called Gridlock’d featuring tu pac.
Naw the movie your thinking about is the man with the golden arm.
“Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” has about as much to do with addiction as “The Hangover.” Use, abuse and addiction are three very different things.
“Leaving Las Vegas” & “Days of Wine & Roses” definitely should have been on the list, as mentioned.
Less Than Zero with Robert Downey Jr. should be on this list. Also, BLOW might be one of the best movies of all time, let alone one of the best movies about addiction–it’s a shame that it isn’t on here.
Those actually ARE all good– except for the ur-boring Naked Lunch and Kids. Glad you didn’t include any of the horrible “recovery” movies. I’m in a 12 step program, but I hate piety.
I would have to add a few others to this list. “Crazy Heart” spoke profoundly on alcoholism, as well as on the dynamic of addiction in creative people. (I have a musician friend who joined AA after seeing it.) “Panic in Needle Park” with Al Pacino and Raul Julia offered heartbreaking performances on heroin addicts in NYC in the 70’s. “Jesus’ Son” is one of my all time favorite movies, not because of its heroin addict characters, but because it’s a nearly-perfect movie in every way. Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Holly Hunter and Dennis Leary are all amazing in this… Read more »
On this list my favorite is Traffic. My favorite not on the list is the classic, LEAVING LOS VEGAS with Nick Cage. Don’t love him in general but that movie captured what I think it is to be a drunk more than any other I have seen.
I cannot fathom a list on Addiction movies without Blow. It’s pathetic that you didn’t include this on your list. So many of these movies are just OK.
Blow? C’mon. that movie was pretty mediocre and at least 45 minutes too long. Johnny Depp = worst Boston accent ever.
I think what really makes Blow a superior film to others on this list is that you see just how effed up life gets for someone who’s all cut up in addiction (in this case, drugs).
If you think that’s F-ed up, you haven’t watched Requiem for a Dream yet….