FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
What they don't tell you when you when you front the counter to buy your tickets for this film is that the price includes a two hour hit of movie mescaline.
So you never did drugs in the 60s? The 70s? Not even the 80s? Worry not. Now in the 90s this movie is as good as, or better than, the real thing. And you won't get busted.
This is a time warp film, designed to light up the remaining brain cells of baby boomers with memories of all that social anarchy and chaos that characterised the late 60s and early 70s. Gen Xers seeing this movie however will probably continue to be quite mystified about what exactly the olden days were like.
This film is not a story. It is an experience. There is no plot. A few circumstances form a flimsy backbone for a few drug crazed days, mostly in Las Vegas. The film is utterly faithful to the book by Hunter S Thompson. Johnny Depp is utterly faithful to the spirit of the lead character, Raoul Duke. Benicio Del Toro taking the off lead as Duke's equally drug riddled attorney Dr Gonzo is also true to his part. Terry Gilliam as director brings in the best excesses from his days involved with the hallucinogenic Monthy Python team.
But this film is something more than a drug riddled orgy of carnage and destruction. It is also a pithy social documentary, focussed on the late 60s but equally relevant to the late 90s. It is a sick view of a sick society. In both a literal and metaphorical sense Fear and Loathing is an acid commentary on the worst excesses, not only of drug taking, but of social existence.
The two lead characters are quite obviously sick, depraved, drug crazed animals, by any reasonable construction. They are never seen in anything other than a totally wasted condition, and invariably behaving in the most outrageous antisocial manner imaginable. They have a briefcase loaded with every conceivable drug, all of which are swilled down with copious amounts of alcohol. The entire film is shot through their eyes and hallucinations abound as the special Fx team morphs the carnage that is their external reality into the bizarre visions that reflect their drug induced internal reality.
However – and here is where this film is so really outstanding – every other character, every other scene, every other circumstance in the movie is also a circus side-show or a freak attraction. The essential difference is that all these other bizarre cameos all reflect an ordinary reality, uncoloured by the Hunter S Thompson orgy of drugs. As such they are, by and large, taken as unremarkable. It is only when this other kaleidoscope of human freaks and weird events is juxtaposed against the lush technicolour hallucinations of the two lead characters that the blurring between drug induced fantasy and everyday reality becomes so obvious. The distinction becomes impossible to detect.
Without exception every secondary character in this movie is a freak of one kind or another. They are social misfits, they are physically abnormal, they are distorted personalities or, as in the case of the DA Convention Against Hard Drugs where every participant is seen with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, they are living contradictions of any notion of sense and normality. Even Hunter S Thompson plays a cameo role – fortunately for cult followers as yet another social freak masquerading as Mr Ordinary.
The setting for most of the movie is Las Vegas – a classic freak show environment of its own. Utterly segregated by both physical location and its inherent raison d'etre from any ordinary reality, this isolated city in the desert offers the perfect surreal platform from where the two lead characters can wreak most of their own hallucinogenic carnage.
This movie is rich in many ways. It is rich in its filming and its execution. It is rich in its pace and – short of walking out - the viewer has no option but to go along for his own two hours of drug induced madness. It is rich in characterisation and totally over the top. It is rich in special Fx and it is rich in its ironic view of straight society. It is as enthusiastically politically incorrect as one would expect from all of its other excesses.
As every bit as much as this is a film of its time, Fear And Loathing is also a film of this time. Little has changed about the freak show that constitutes much of the fringes of our society, and which we somehow have come to accept quite uncritically. It is only when the acerbic lens of this movie is trained upon the absurdities and paradoxes with which we all more or less peacefully coexist that we realise how fine the line between madness and sanity really is. Importantly, as well, how impossible it is to actually know where that line is drawn. Not to mention on what side of it we each stand.
MICHAEL MARRIS
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews