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Candy [2006]


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Beautiful
Review date: 2008-07-24 Rating: 10 out of 10

"When I first met Candy..."
Heath Ledger gives an astounding performance as Dan, a friendly poet and the lover of painter Candy, played by Abbie Cornish, who is attracted to his bohemian lifestyle. The two are drug abusers and find themselves becoming more and more addicted to heroin, and also each other.

The film makes you want to cry, both actors delivering bewilderingly beautiful performances. Dan's inability to refuse Candy anything making him a weak central charater whom we love, Ledger's calm deep voice makes Dan as real as any boy you'd meet on the street.

People who compare the book to the film, should stop and marval at the film as an entity of its own - the directing is brilliant and the humor is also great.

It's worth a watch by everyone and will stay in your mind for a long time.

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Reviews


Exquisite
Review date: 2008-02-16 Rating: 8 out of 10

This is a film that will stay in my mind for a long while. Several times throughout watching it, it suddenly re-hit me that Ledger is no longer with us and it made me ache in a way I hadn't when I first heard he'd died. There's so much to talk about with Candy, but the over-riding aspect of it is the direction.

Some scenes focus on Dan and Candy (Ledger and Abbie Cornish) living in bedsit squalor, strung out, bleak and dark. But other scenes glow with Summer sun-light. From sweeping slow-motion shots of golden corn swaying in the breeze, to the two lovers kissing while the sunlight tickles their faces... it's beautifully languid; it's gorgeous. And all the more bleak for it.

Candy is broken up into 3 parts: Heaven, Earth and Hell. Heaven chronicles their relationship in the beginning, when heroin was a hobby, and when the bulk of their sustenance was sunshine and each other. In any other film, these 2 actors could play the jock and cheer-leader of the high-school so beautiful are they, which makes their inexorable slide into addiction all the more shocking. Earth is where they are bouncing from hit to hit, suffering and in pain, but still able to find themselves again if they tried to look.

When Candy becomes pregnant, they try to go cold turkey, and they are on the very brink of coming out the other side, when she loses the baby. We are shown the still-birth baby when his dad asks to hold him, and the reactions of both Ledger and Cornish will make you curl in on yourself. Tragedy shadows them both from the opening scene, but this event is what makes them really hit rock bottom, at which point we enter the segment entitled Hell. 2 minutes into Hell, I got in my car and went for a drive. I needed to be reminded that the world is beautiful, and that I wasn't alone. Such is this movie's ability to draw you in to the isolated, tiny world of the two protaganists.

Adding to the atmosphere, both beautiful and bleak, is the extraordinary score. With choral music, piano and violin concertos, all of it gentle and moving, Debussy might have scored this film were he still alive. The most poignant violin piece is slightly reminiscent of Adagio for Strings, in some ways. Different melody entirely, but with the same soaring strings that seem to sting your eyes til they inadvertently weep of their own volition.

There are no twists, no turns. No jump out of your skin moments. We are carried along relatively slowly and our intelligence isn't insulted. Candy depicts the cruelties of drug addiction, and it does so exquisitely.

Mediocre
Review date: 2008-02-07 Rating: 6 out of 10

This film is very unusual! It jumps around a lot, and is hard to follow if you are not paying complete attention! Other than that, it's a bit of a bittersweet storyline since the main character actually died in real life from drug abuse I believe!! I would say that the book is far better, the film adaption tries too hard...

Excellent acting raises this above the average drug addiction tale.
Review date: 2008-01-10 Rating: 8 out of 10

Abbie Cornish once again proves that she is an incredibly talented young actor, and Heath Ledger is excellent too.

It's a story that's been told many times before, but their portrayal of a young couple in love spiralling deeper and deeper into drug addiction is exemplary. This is a gruelling film that spares us none of the details of the humiliation and indignities addicts will put themselves through to feed their habit, yet it's told with such compassion and complete lack of judgement, that you desperately want these two young people to pull through and live 'happy ever ever'.

Add to this great direction, clever camera work and a moving supporting performance from Geoffrey rush and you've got a film that's well worth watching.

Good but nowhere near the book of the same name
Review date: 2007-06-26 Rating: 6 out of 10

Despite the involvement of its author, Luke Davies, Candy is a film which doesn't really do justice to its source. It isn't a bad film in its own right (in fact it is good, if you like films about junkies), but it's not one that I would have chosen to watch if I wasn't such a big fan of the original book (I've read it a lot of times, and it's fresh every time).

So, what makes the book so much better? For starters, the book's protangonist is the narrator throughout the novel, and Davies' beautiful prose encourages us to identify with him. In the film, there is hardly any narration, so we see Dan primarily from the outside, where he cuts a much less attractive character. In Davies' novel, we see Dan as he sees himself, as a poet, an adventurer, enlightened and free from societal constraints (though obviously shackled to his habit, a doomed and tragic Romantic anti-hero). In the film we see him just as the world sees him: a sweaty, scruffy, self-deluded junky. Thus the novel brings us much closer to the protagonist, and as a result, the film is far less involving than the novel. Another side effect is that much of the book's pathos and (especially) humour, is totally lost.

Secondly, the book is written as a series of disconnected vignettes, each of which could stand as a piece of short fiction in its own right, whereas the film discards many of these and contracts others into a much more linear narrative. The book's characters are similarly removed, collapsed or changed, for reasons of economy. For instance, Dan's brother is collapsed into Schumann, and Casper makes an early appearance as an older homosexual addict, then continuing to act as a 'port in a storm' throughout the rest of the film. In the book, Casper (a younger man and not portrayed as gay) appears near the end to show Dan how to make heroin, and there is no mainstay character representing any kind of stability or older rolemodel. Since 'Candy' is an adaptation, these changes are forgiveable, and probably necessary. Maybe it's even admirable that so much could be squeezed into a standard-length film, while still maintaining the suitably meandering pace, but so much good stuff is missing its not suprising the film is not such a treasure-trove of memorable scenes as the novel. Examples: Crop Failure, Crabs, Problems with Detatchable Heads, Drought, and the bit where Candy and Dan have four way sex with Kojak and Lucy... ok you got me, I just wanted to see that bit! These are all parts of the novel that are missing from the film.

Overall the film has a relatively constant, sombre, downbeat, doped-up mood, which is absolutely fine, as far as it goes. The novel, in its own words, is a 'profusion of colours', frequently lurching from funny to grim, wonderous to sad, within the space of few pages.

I did not dislike this film. It was faithful to the book in its own way, and was well-made and artful. I just wish it was possible to make films the way books appear in my mind! Verdict: rent the film, then buy the book!

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Abbie Cornish
Heath Ledger
Geoffrey Rush

Creators:
Geoffrey Rush (Primary Contributor)
Heath Ledger (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Drakes Avenue Pictures
Manufacturer: Drakes Avenue Pictures
EAN: 5055159277358
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, PAL,
Release date: 2007-04-23
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 105 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2006
Language: English (Original Language)

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