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Down to the Bone (2004)
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Reviews Counted:30
Fresh:28
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.6/10
Consensus: A vivid portrayal of the effects of drug abuse that avoids cinematic clichés, Down to the Bone is a winning effort by first-time director Debra Granik and features a breakout performance by Vera Farmiga.
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Last year's Sundance Film Festival honored DOWN TO THE BONE with two high-profile, prestigious and extremely competitive awards: Best Director and A Special Jury Prize for acting. A stellar entry... Last year's Sundance Film Festival honored DOWN TO THE BONE with two high-profile, prestigious and extremely competitive awards: Best Director and A Special Jury Prize for acting. A stellar entry in the Dramatic Competition, writer/director Debra Granik, in her feature film debut, and actress Vera Farmiga became the talk of the Festival and the indie film community. In DOWN TO THE BONE, Irene (Vera Farmiga) is a working class mother living in upstate New York. She struggles to keep her marriage together and raise two sons while keeping her cocaine addiction a secret. After a series of nearly fatal mishaps, and finally hoping to make a change in her life, she decides to check herself into a rehab center. She knows kicking the habit would be tough, but the experience proves even more difficult than she could have anticipated. There, she meets and falls in love with a fellow reformed addict (Hugh Dillon). When one of them falls into a relapse with the addiction, their commitment to staying clean - and to each other - shatters. This beautifully wrought film accurately and authentically explores the wrenching road of recovery without ever resorting to histrionics. DOWN TO THE BONE is based upon Debra Granik's 1997 short film, "Snake Feed," which won the Sundance Film Festival's Short Filmmaking Award in 1998. --© Laemmle/Zeller Films [More]
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Hugh Dillon, Clint Jordan, Caridad De La Luz
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Hugh Dillon, Clint Jordan, Caridad De La Luz
Director: Debra Granik
Director: Debra Granik
Producer: Susan Leber
Reviews for Down to the Bone
... a stark, realistic portrait of a working-class mother in New York's depressed Ulster County as she tries to battle a drug habit.
This downbeat story of blue-collar drug abuse becomes a moving portrait of people battling their inner demons, thanks to an outstanding acting ensemble.
Debra Granik's independent drama "Down to the Bone" builds with a strong, quiet intensity.
Any sympathy developed for the characters quickly erodes as they continue to not only engage in self-destructive behavior but expose children to it.
Down to the Bone achieves what only the best independent films have: making life, at its most unvarnished, a journey.
Granik brings to her drama a clear-eyed realism as she charts one woman's descent into a drug-fueled purgatory.
The movie seems to be about drug addiction and recovery, but it gradually shifts, becoming a look from an unusual angle at what a big job it is to be a parent and the priorities it requires.
For actress Vera Farmiga, Down to the Bone presents her with a breakout role.
The film is so pitch perfect and realistic, it seems you are there with these people, watching their lives unfold before you as it happens.
First-time feature director's disciplined objectivity is coupled with humanism in this collaboration with a gifted cast and cinematographer.
Complex and full of paradoxes, the drug addicts go through rehab and yearn for redemption, but their experiences are not tidy and there's no sweeping resolution or neat conclusion.
Whether you're ready for the ride depends on whether you're looking for traditional filmic fare, or whether you're in the mood to be dragged into the depths of depression.
Conventional movies, even independent ones, tend to get histrionic and judgmental about such drug-related setbacks. But Granik's film, though hardly a clinical case study, keeps a measured distance from the heavy-handed or simplistic.
This film has an ear for the way moms talk to kids, a sensitivity to drug-sweetened intimacies, and an appreciation of the urgent nuance, not just the comedy, of recovery-speak.
It's the opposite of most films about drugs vs. life because it puts life up front.
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