What to watch if you’re rethinking drinking
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Movies and TV shows are always setting trends and impacting our behaviours, oftentimes for the good. But they also glamorize bad habits. (The Outsiders may or may not have been the reason we tried our first cigarette — we’ll never tell!) Which is why it’s so refreshing when Hollywood gets it right when it comes to substance dependencies. And while films like Leaving Las Vegas are great at showing us how dangerous alcohol can be in loud and in-your-face ways, here is a list of five slow-burners that will have you rethinking your drinking habits long after the credits finish rolling.
When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)
A moving tale ultimately about learning and listening, Luis Mandoki-directed When a Man Loves a Woman stars Meg Ryan as Alice, a school counselor with a serious and worsening drinking problem. After a night of drinking, which culminates in Alice slapping her eldest daughter and a catastrophic fall that lands her in the hospital, Alice and her husband Michael (Andy Garcia) decide that Alice needs to go to rehab. As Alice regains balance through sobriety, Michael questions the role he played in Alice’s alcohol-use disorder, going on a journey of growth as he learns what it means to be a father and husband. This film offers an intimate look at the tear that alcohol rips in the fabric of a family, how even a cush life has its festering sores, all the while showing us that it’s possible to recover. With stunning cinematography by Lajos Koltai (Malèna), When a Man Loves a Woman is not to be missed.
The Good Wife (2009-2016)
On the face of it, The Good Wife’s protagonist Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) seems an unlikely character to make you reconsider that second glass of wine. Bad-ass lawyer Alicia’s wine-red lips like a gash sip on glasses of red in such a measured and meditative way; she seems to, if anything, be the poster-child for the idea that a glass of wine is a “good” way to relax after a long, hard day of work. But let’s rethink this, shall we? In Season 1, a glass of red is almost a stage setting, but by Season 7, wine becomes more than an accessory, as Alicia begins to reach for it — glasses become whole bottles — more and more alone and in social settings. Is she growing an unhealthy dependency? This is a great show to watch if you’re looking to understand how a reliance on alcohol develops in a silently insidious way, to understand how the trajectory from a glass of wine a night to a bottle a night curves, impacting even the most well-established people’s lives.
A Star is Born (2018)
This is perhaps a bit of a predictable choice, featuring as it does since its first adaptation in 1937 a character with a notorious alcohol-use disorder. But we still think it deserves a spot on this list because of how stark this Bradley Cooper-directed iteration is. You know the tale: a musician plucks a young girl with a killer set of pipes from a life destined to anonymity and insignificance and builds her up to stardom, all as his own career unspools because of his alcohol-dependency and abuse. Casting this story in contemporary times, Cooper and Lady Gaga make the characters of Jack and Ally (respectively) so real you can almost touch them, so real your mascara runs. Effectively and movingly showing us the emotional and simultaneously mundane and clinical physical tolls alcohol takes on a person, A Star is Born (2018) is a poignant watch that will cradle you along your rethinking journey.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
If anyone knew the effects of alcohol-dependency and abuse, it was Tennessee Williams, who simultaneously heartbreakingly and with a razor-sharp wit illustrates the rationalities and self-negotiations of someone with an alcohol-use disorder in his Pulitzer-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and which Paul Newman stunningly portrays in this Richard Brooks-directed adaptation. This is a must-watch classic — a vibrant technicolor portrait of a marriage cracking under the weight of failed expectations and dried up desires, plus the destructive effects of drinking.
Holiday (1938)
This Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn romantic comedy smuggles in a simmering sadness through the character of Ned Seton (Lew Ayres), which is why Holiday lands on this list. Johnny Case (Grant) wants to spend his early years on holiday, but this is met by skepticism by his fiancée’s rich family, except for his fiancée’s sister Linda (Hepburn) and her brother Ned, who has a drinking problem. Ned is a deeply sad and languishing fellow who is constrained from his passion in life by his father’s demands on him, so he turns to alcohol to cope. This movie illustrates that no amount of alcohol can eradicate a deep well of sadness, it can only distract you from it, increasing your woes, never erasing them. Life can’t be lived if you don’t face it, Ned’s glassy, baleful eyes seem to tell us from the bottom of a bottle of champagne. This gem will creep up on you and sweep you along for a wild ride.
