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It's not often that you get
to peek behind the glitz and glamour of a city like Las Vegas and take a
look at a truer, more realistic portrait of the city and the people who
occupy its harsh landscape. People who live almost on the edge of society,
in a fake town full of cracks and problems. Addiction being the most obvious
and naturally, most prevalent of these.
Vegas: Based on a true story
is a film about the break up and downfall of a family situation in which the
mother had worked hard to preserve a kind of life that is not easily
attainable in a city like Vegas. Even managing to create life in the dusty
desert, theirs is a structured highly organised way of living, but also one
that hangs in an extremely delicate balance and as the story unfolds, easily
tipped.
The film is stripped bare in a way, contrary to films that are usually shot
in Las Vegas; there is no gloss, no shine and definitely no glamour. The
characters are portrayed performing mundane tasks in a dead end life. This
is not the Vegas we know. This is what makes the film really interesting,
the lives of the people who live behind the bright lights, who live through
it all and yet so far away.
The story is wonderfully portrayed and the film is gripping throughout, and
the actors manage to portray a very natural and almost gritty performance of
their characters. Witnessing their slow but steady downfall into ruin as
their lives descend into chaos is fascinating and powerful. Especially when
thinking about the powerful allure of a problem like addiction.
There is a wonderful scene that signals the start of the end and where the
cracks in the rock of the family situation begin to show. The mother,
actress Nancy La Scala carefully toiled to create a rigid structure for
their lives and creating a garden is important in this. When she is
eventually persuaded that digging just one hole can do no harm and the first
strike is made in the ground, the director has her shot with her back to us
and only the sound of the shovel hitting the ground. She winces at the sound
and it looks like she has been hit, she appears to feel the pain of the
grass and this marks the death in a way of all her toiling and symbolically
her life. Although there is hope at the end because her flowers remain.
The most powerful thing in the movie is watching the life being slowly
extinguished by the desert. It starts to creep its way back into the once
immaculately clean house. The scene toward the end and the director's
portrayal of the husband in his chair and everything is covered in dust
signifies the deserts reclamation of their house and lives.
04:09:2008
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di
Aliyah HUSSAIN