Heaven Knows What review: junk, heartbreak and the rush of the city

There’s nothing harder in movie-making than blending genres. The Coen brothers have the knack: Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There or A Serious Man seesaw from existential despair to absurdist comedy in a blink. Maybe it’s a sibling thing, because Josh and Bennie Safdie’s breathtaking new film, Heaven Knows What, is a similar souffle of seeming contradiction. It’s a movie in which, in terms of plot, hardly anything happens, yet each scene is thick with tension. It has the raw urgency of cinéma vérité, but is actually quite stylised. There is also, in fairness, nothing new in this peek at a life of drug-addicted street dwellers, yet the whole production ties itself up in a bow that feels fresh. This is an exciting, creative and exhilarating jolt of cinema, and one of the more perfect “small gems” to arrive for some time.

Arielle Holmes makes her film debut as Harley, a young woman with a thick Noo Yawkah patois and firecracker energy. She’d be beautiful if she had a bath or her eyelids weren’t always at half-mast due to dope; instead she’s merely magnetising. We’re dropped directly into her world without much to cling to. Her life as an addict isn’t day to day, it’s moment to moment. On the go, she’s in constant crisis – bumming a swipe for the subway, finding a place to stash her bag, angling an extra fix from her pal/dealer/flophouse roomie not to just tide her over til morning, but so that she can actually feel a rush.

On top of this, she’s got a problem more typical of women in their early 20s: a jerk of a boyfriend who dominates her heart, yet gives her nothing but grief. Ilya is played by Caleb Landry Jones, looking more mangey than ever – and that’s saying something. In the picture’s bravura opening, Harley confronts him with a threat of suicide: “If you loved me, you’d come watch me die.” There follows a remarkable and lengthy one-take that sums up Harley’s experience in Bellevue hospital, the dialogue rendered inaudible by the first of many unexpected uses of foreboding electronic music.

As Harley returns to the streets, her days and nights are a series of Herculean labours – conniving dealers, figuring out good times to “spange” (ask for spare change) and just dealing with her circle of drugged-out compatriots constantly at one another’s throats. Side characters weave in and, to the Safdies’ great credit, not a whiff of backstory is given. Does it matter how, exactly, these individuals came to this lowly fate? Not to them – all that matters is right now, this very moment, and figuring out how to scrape together another 15 bucks as quickly as possible.

There was a moment in the late 1990s when I was convinced that if I saw another movie about grubby New York kids shooting up, I’d need an opiate myself. Heaven Knows What got that message. Beneath the filth, there is an immense amount of style, but not a romanticism. Many of the scenes are shot from far away with long lenses, so our subjects are in sharp focus, but the world around them is a blur. There’s one minor moment of happiness (after some sneaky thievery) to the point that Harley and Ilya just collapse on the Manhattan cement as if it’s their private hotel suite.

The use of New York as a character is a cliche you hear at screening Q&As, but has rarely been so apt. This doesn’t mean seeing landmarks in the background – indeed, there’s an explicit lack of anything too recognisable to out of towners – but a clever use of the city’s enormous population as a ubiquitous, disinterested supporting player. As our band of loud, frequently quarrelling dirtbags weave in and out of various Dunkin’ Donuts, White Castles and the avenues of the Upper East Side, it’s striking just how present the busy New Yorkers are in the frame. What’s so extraordinary, and realistic, is how everyone just strides past the drama. As one who has lived in this town for pretty much his entire life, I can’t tell you how easy it is to blaze past a couple like Harley and Ilya screaming at each other. For all I know, I am an extra in this movie, oblivious to hustling past the most important or heartbreaking scenes.

The keystone, however, is Arielle Holmes’ performance. While her accent is reminiscent of Linda Manz, her energy recalls Gena Rowlands in the best of Cassavetes’ films. I went into Heaven Knows What unaware that the film is based on Holmes’ unpublished book of her own experiences. When I read a bit about the film’s development, I wasn’t surprised. You can’t come out of the gate with a first leading role like this without some deeper knowledge. What’s exciting is that her resilience shines through, and I suspect she’ll take naturally to film acting in roles that deviate from her own experience. As exciting as the film is and it is by far the best of the Safdies’ four features, it’s also a harbinger of a major new screen talent.