you

Well-known member
After 27 years of vague flashbacks, not remembering the title and constantly getting it confused with 'Safe' (which is similar territory but pretty conventional in terms of style), I watched 'Sweet Nothing' on YT (it's never been released on DVD) the other night. Found it even more brutal and trippy than I remembered it originally.

It seems to have polarised a few people online - some view the more 'fantastic' plot developments as diluting what otherwise would have been a masterpiece of gritty social realism. But if you let it suck you in - treat it as a horror flick, with the characters pitted against a deranged Sadean world, hell-bent on stripping them of dignity, sanity and visibility - it does work. Some of the more surreal moments could be deliberate attempts at capturing drug-/hunger-/exposure-induced hallucinations. Either way, it feels like a flu dream.

Not that I'd recommend this as 'fun', as some of it's as dark as 'Threads'...however, anyone nostalgic for footage of old late '80s London will probably find something to like - there's a sequence shot in a graffitti'd up tunnel, early on, with a bloke thrashing on an electric guitar (which I actually remember being not uncommon outside and around tube stations around '90/'91...) dunno where, Waterloo? Tottenham Court Road?

This - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Nothing_(film)

I agree. I saw it years ago on TV. Probably over ten years ago now. Always remembered it. I even signed a petition for its DVD release a while ago. Great film. Certainly fits in with the bad-trip cannon of Requiem for a Dream, Jacob's Ladder, Basketball Diaries...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I'm confused about which film Martin is discussing....the only pre-2000 Sweet Nothing I can find is the one You linked to, which is definitely cult but certainly not set in London....

The London one sounds very interesting, anyways
 
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you

Well-known member
I'm confused about which film Martin is discussing....the only pre-2000 Sweet Nothing I can find is the one You linked to, which is definitely cult but certainly not set in London....

The London one sounds very interesting, anyways

Yeah... I thought Sweet Nothing was set in a north american city... NY, Chicago.... with a Panic in Needle Park vibe....

But Threads is Sheffield soooo
 

martin

----
Yeah... I thought Sweet Nothing was set in a north american city... NY, Chicago.... with a Panic in Needle Park vibe....

But Threads is Sheffield soooo

Ah, sorry, should've provided a link (yes, that other Sweet Nothing is recommended too, though)

 

luka

Well-known member
I just watched high rise convinced I'd be appalled but it's actually good fun. Not the ballard film I wanted to see but once I got over that I enjoyed it.
 

droid

Well-known member
Just seemed so bland and cheap, like a three part ITV drama featuring one big name actor. Completely failed to grasp the point of the book and turned it into a 70's lord of the flies instead.
 

luka

Well-known member
I agree with all that but still managed to enjoy it. I don't like Wheatley. I don't like his pantomime style. I don't like how his films all look made for TV. He's vacuous and he (like so many others, inexplicably) keep making homages to the video for sabotage by the beastie boys.
It wasn't a Ballard film and I really really would like to see a ballard film. It should be easy. They're cinematic novels. Apparently Nic Roeg wanted to film high rise and it's a great shame he didn't.
 

droid

Well-known member
I was impressed with the unflinching violence in Kill List, a Field in England had a few moments as well, so I was prepared to give him a chance.

Have to disagree about the cinematic potential of Ballard though. His prose if the key to all of his work. His stories explore the internal life of the future and his style is a kind of NLP that attempts to evoke those anxieties in the reader. Thats why crash failed, it could only ever offer the narrative, without the sensation.
 

luka

Well-known member
I suppose I think the typical ballard story
Succesfulish middle class cold fish protagonist in closed system sliding precipitously into chaos/Entropy
Finds slipping the shackles of civilization congenial
Is something that could be translated to screen without to much bother.
The plots tend to be almost like computer games.
Get to the final stage, Battle the final boss.
There's always a love interest
There's always a threatening powerfully built man as a rival....
There's effects you can achieve with prose which you can't simulate in cinema, you can't recreate the experience of a book with added moving pictures but ballard is a lot more filmable than a Burroughs or a Joyce or a Celine or whatever I would of thought
 

luka

Well-known member
The key surely is that the descent into chaos is always welcomed on some level. the protagonist, his physically powerful rival and the 'final boss' all relish the opportunity. Their world becomes much smaller in one sense but much larger in another. The scope for action is greater. They are thrown back on their own resources. They make things with their hands. They kill. Each day is concerned with the struggle for survival.
One of ballards major themes is that modern life is boring and breeds a will to madness. That's something you can explore on the cinema screen.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Didn't like High Rise much at all, ended up getting bored and wandering off. Like Droid, I liked Ben Wheatley based on Kill List and the fact that A Field in England got made at all. The more of his films I see though, the less impressed I am.

Born to be Blue, the reimagination of Chet Baker's life in the late 60s, is very good* - it really benefits from not having to slavishly recreate every episode in his biography. Likewise, I really enjoyed the first hour of the Jimi Hendrix biopic, restricted as it was to a very specific period when he was living in London (it went on a bit towards the end, unfortunately) - appreciated the character assassination of Eric Clapton, too.

* must rewatch Let's Get Lost at some point, but not sure i can deal with the bleakness right now
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Ben Wheatley makes films (especially A Field in England) which seem to be specially designed to push the buttons of a certain kind of fan boy who has the same interests and references as him. That isn't to say that I don't quite enjoy them. Like that film about sound fx in Italian films.
I saw Get Out yesterday, thought it was very good.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You could totally make a Celine movie, they did. Its called Barfly.
Isn't that about Bukowski? Also, it's a different thing to make a film about an author than it is to adapt one of his novels. Though I wouldn't be surprised if someone had had a stab at doing Journey to the End of the Night.
 
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