34. Comfortably Numb &...

Lyrics

Hello,
Is there anybody in there
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home
Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again
Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

O.K.
Just a little pin prick
There'll be no more aaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go.

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.


To me, this song combines the best and worst of Pink Floyd. I don't like the first and third couplet, with the semi-mysterious recitation. Everything else about the song is pretty brilliant though. It is also interesting that while many rocks songs of the 60's and 70's make veiled references to drug use, Comfortably Numb isn't interested in hiding anything. This song pretty openly says that drugs are fun and make you feel wonderful. So the movie I chose to link it to is a movie which intends to have the same message.

The Movie: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998)

There is a reason I said that this movie intends to have the same message, and not that it has the same message. While it is indeed very open about using drugs (pretty much nothing else happens in the movie), it completely fails to make it seem like a wonderful experience. As I said in my piece on Riders on the Storm & Pulp Fiction, I have never tried and probably will never try drugs. I am quite terrified by them. But I have no moral objections against them and It is a fact that people can really have wonderful experiences using drugs. It's probably hard to study in Amsterdam and think otherwise. That also means that I don't have anything against movies promoting drug use and showing that it can be really fun. Pulp Fiction of course comes to mind, but also the great comedy Pineapple Express, by David Gordon Green. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas wants very much to make us believe that drug use is great fun, but fails miserably and almost convinces of the opposite. I think pretty much the same of Easy Rider, which I find to be very dull. There are probably many people who can function great on drugs, but Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper aren't one those people. Every second of that movie, when Jack Nicholson isn't on screen, is a lifeless drag. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro certainly don't lack any energy. They act like a bunch of manic idiots. For both of them this is their worst performance and especially Depp's is one of the most ridiculous performances I've ever seen. But at least their performances are bad without being dull. Which cannot be said of the rest of the movie.

The movie mostly consists of scenes in which a miserable Del Toro and Depp take drugs, feel miserable and yell boringly at each other. In between there are some scenes that are interesting and some scenes that are weirdly uncomfortable. It makes sense that a plotless movie about people hallucinating drug addicts should be directed by Terry Gilliam. He is a director who is not very much concerned with plot and mostly want to create wonderful images and scenes. I had seen only two other movies of him before this one: Twelve Monkeys and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Both of them are very good. Unfortunately Gilliam doesn't do very much here with his visual imagination. A couple of times we see a face changing shape, at one point we see the floor bubbling. And once we see a shot from Depp's POV, and we see that he temporarily sees other people in the shape of a (pretty boring looking) reptile. We get lots of weird close-ups of high faces. They are a bit funny, especially because Depp constantly has a joint in his mouth. Gilliam also tries to makes scenes more interesting by filtering color, so everything that happens in a scene is seen through red or green light. That is a nice trick, but in most scenes nothing really happens. There are small cameo's by other famous actors, including Cameron Diaz and Tobey Maguire. But they are on the screen for such a short time that they don't really have a chance to shine. Ellen Barkin is only in the movie to be humiliated by del Toro. Which wouldn't be that bad if she was humiliated in an interesting way. Only Gary Busey has some fun with his role as a rather weird policeman.

Admittedly, as I wrote earlier, there are some interesting scenes. The reason Depp is in Las Vegas, is because he is a journalist who has to report a motor race in the Nevada desert. In order to this, the journalists have to ride jeeps, so they can follow the racers. Because of the sand though no one can see anything and the journalists mostly follow each other around in their war jeeps. The scene becomes a nice parody of a typical scene in a war movie set in the desert. The two best scenes come near the end though. There is a scene in which Gilliam finally lets his imagination go for an extended period. Depp is hallucinating again and we see him having a large lizard tale and roaming through his utterly and absurdly broken down hotel room. But my favorite scene was a scene in which Depp and del Toro attend a conference of narcotics agents. Sitting in the back row they happily smoke their joints. That contrast alone makes the scene pretty funny, but it gets better. One of the agents gets up to speak and talks about the dangers of drugs. He poses as an expert who has charted the phases a drug addict goes through. The attendees are clearly impressed, asking him silly questions in a serious manner, even though he is talking utter nonsense. He ends with a hilarious movie about the dangers of drugs, that is modeled on those propaganda movies in the 50's that warned Americans about the dangers of communism. The scene's point isn't very subtly made, but it is made well and it it is funny. Which unfortunately cannot be said of most of the rest of the movie.