In Channel 4's Comfortably Numb, Jake – an alcoholic – is admitted to a treatment centre where he meets Emma, who is being trained away from cocaine.
(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)
MARK LAWSON:
Did it Work?
ALKARIM JIVANI:
Not for me. It's an interesting failure, because it is a very good example of what is happening among documentary film makers at the moment, who are all trying to experiment with the form. Television has reached its middle-age as a medium. People are frustrated with the boundaries. It has a mid-life crisis at the moment. We, as viewers, are very familiar with the form. And know when people play around with it how to decode what is happening. The key trend at the moment is for documentary film makers to make their work more expressive. Brian Hill has used music and song. He has subjects to sing about the situations in order to get that expressiveness over. What Leo Regan has done in this instance is gone in the opposite direction he has gone for realism. I think he makes the characters dumber. He is trying very hard. He is a good film maker. He made a film called 100% White about neo Nazi which is frighteningly real. You don't get under their skins.
MARK LAWSON:
The sacrifices actors make. It is hard to mix these genres. I kept thinking about the Office, if you took people from a real office and stuck them into it, it would fall apart. It is difficult to mix the two?
GERMAINE GREER:
Difficult, if not impossible. The thing is that this, although I think this programme both normalises and glamorises addiction, so it seems normal life. We are all addicted to something, addicted to love, work, breathing. We all have problems. It pretends that it is interesting, that we give a damn. The best thing about this film is it shows you how boring rehabilitation is. It's mind murder. People reason so lamely. I thought the whole thing must have been improvised. It partly was. Also I don't believe the love story at all. Sex comes in these peoples' lives like anything else. If something is around, you screw it. It starts off like that. It never goes any where else. There is no suggestion of intimacy. How can you be intimate with people who are so empty? These people who are utterly empty are given hours in a country house to talk about themselves.
MARK LAWSON:
The problem is you have different attitudes for the characters. If you ask councillors and addicts to play themselves they are not going to satirise those characters.
BONNIE GREER:
There is a technical problem. I have written a play with ex-addicts and worked with them in the rehearsal room. They perform the play. When you have real actors in a situation like this their timings are very different. That is part of the problem. I was uneasy because I couldn't tell who; I knew who the two actors were. They were mimicking those people. You have reaction times that are different. I didn't want to use the word moral. I don't like actors being in a room with real people and watching them and playing them back on screens. No disrespect to the actors, they were very good, and the people as well. There is a boundary that has to be made. I understand documentary makers are trying to do something new.
ALKARIM JIVANI:
Having the actors did imbalance it in this instance. It is not impossible to combine real people with actors. Penny Wilcock made a couple of films, in one film she took an actress, this woman from a council estate and used people around her. It is how you do it.
BONNIE GREER:
They didn't sit around in a room.
ALKARIM JIVANI:
No. The other problem is because you have ex-addicts playing the characters apart from the two protagonists you end up with something that is very flat which went at the same rhythm because they were talking about themselves. They couldn't step outside and give it some momentum.
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