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| 2005 NYFF Films Introduction Good Night, and Good Luck Regular Lovers The Death of Mr. Lazarescu Methadonia L'Enfant (The Child) Bubble The Squid and the Whale I Am Capote Something Like Happiness Sympathy for Lady Vengeance Manderlay Tale of Cinema Breakfast on Pluto Through the Forest The President's Last Bang Who's Camus Anyway? Three Times Paradise Now Tristram Shandy Gabrielle The Sun The Passenger Cache (Hidden) | Methadonia Michel Negroponte, USA, 2005, 88 min.  Negroponte used a DV camera to follow half a dozen New York City "recovering" heroin addicts on methadone maintenance. The point of the title is not a new one -- that as a rehabilitation tool for drug addicts, methadone isnıt such a good idea. Its wide use in the US was initiated back in the Sixties as a transitional stage, but itıs really just a heroin substitute, a not-so-great free legal high for many addicts who, instead of getting clean, are lingering in "Methadonia." What we learn is that some of the users have been on the chemical for as long as three decades; that clinics are now doling out up to six times the original allowable dose; and that the easy availability of benzo-pills like Xanax to supplement and enhance the methadone high means many receiving methadone are not in recovery in any way shape or form. Whatıs lacking in Negroponteıs pseudo-dramatic narration is any sophistication about the recovery process. The addicts are seen as members of a group, and their leader/counselor Millie, who has been clean for nine years, provides some hard truths, but since there is next to nothing about the Twelve Steps, or up to date rehab statistics or insights, itıs hard to see this as anything but dumb as an account of the addiction and recovery process. Some of the addicts featured who showed up for the screening may have gotten motivation from seeing their stories filmed, but viewers of this limited and simplistic documentary are being shortchanged on information. (Chris Knipp) |
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