Heaven Knows What
Director: Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie
Writer: Ronald Bronstein, Joshua Safdie
Based on: Arielle Holmes’ autobiography (unpublished)
Cast: Arielle Holmes, Caleb Landry Jones, Ron Braunstein, Eleonore Hendricks, Yuri Pleskun
Part of: Viennale

Plot:
Harley (Arielle Holmes) and Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) are in love. But it is a destructive, obsessive kind of love under the worst circumstances as they’re both homeless and addicted to drugs. As they move through New York, they move from drama to drama.

Heaven Knows What is an exhausting film and for me it wasn’t really worth the effort you had to put into it, though I’m not completely sure about it. In any case it was not a film I particularly enjoyed.

My biggest problem was that I have a very, very low tolerance threshold for codependent, destructive relationships. Maybe too low. In any case, people who constantly scream at each other and hurt each other are fucking exhausting and I have a very hard time empathizing. I’m sure that it’s no less exhausting for the people (or characters) living through those relationships, but that doesn’t make it any better for me.

But that is not the film’s biggest problem. It remained unclear to me, where the film is actually going or even where it wanted to go. Of course, you could argue that the film just mirrors its protagonists lives, but for that to work you have to be able to empathize with the characters. Since that didn’t happen for me, the structurelessness didn’t work either.

What the film definitely achieves, though, is providing us with an insight into the lives and circumstances of Harley and Ilya, without looking down on them and without turning it into a story of saving them from their lives. That is definitely a rarity and it’s the film most redeeming feature that lets me doubt whether it isn’t worth it after all.

The other strength of the film was that the acting was really good (I wonder how much Arielle Holmes had to act and how weird it must have been to basically play yourself in a movie). Arielle Holmes and Caleb Landry Jones really tore into each other. But that might have just made it harder to sit through.

Summarizing: too harsh.