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Released by: Brentwood/Alliance Atlantis
Released on: 3/22/2005
Director: Stephen Szklarski
Cast: Mike Hatten, Cheyenne Webber, Ron Keppler
Year: 2003
The Movie:
I'm really glad I don't do heroin. Not that I ever could, being needle-phobic and all, but seriously, I've seen it mess people up but good first hand and it's pretty crazy stuff. Anyone who gets hooked on it hard is in for a real treat trying to get clean, because once it gets a hold of you there really isn't any easy way out. It ruins lives and screws you up and if you're not careful, you could end up homeless and kinda screwed, like the subjects of this documentary, Union Square.
For those not nearly as hip as myself, Union Square is a park area in downtown New York City, near to a major artery of the city's subway system. It also happens to be a popular destination for transients, many of whom are smack addicts. New York City native Stephen Szklarski decided to take it upon himself to get to know some of these people, many of whom are in their med-twenties but look to be in their late thirties thanks to a rough lifestyle and continued drug use, and find out about their lives and how they live day to day as hardcore street junkies.
The film focuses on five single young men and one couple (a man and a woman), all of whom sleep in the park or at least spend the majority of their time there. There's no real story to the film, it just presents the raw footage of their lives as it is although it is broken up into chunks as the subjects tell us about their lives before they were homeless, how their families feel about them and the choices that they've made in life, how they get by and how they earn money, and how hard their drug use is.
Most of these people are quite honest about their problems - they have no problem admitting in front of a camera that they've ripped off family members to pawn their belongings for a ten dollar bag of dope. They've no problem discussing that some of them have had their children taken away from them because of their habits. And they've no problem letting the camera into the bathroom when they tie up their wrists and slide those dingy little needles into their broken and bruised veins (and like I said, I'm needle phobic, so getting through some of this footage was pretty tough for me - the camera hides nothing during the shooting up process).
As the film plays out we do see one or two of them try to clean up. One man does check himself into a detox center with the intentions of going into rehabilitation and kicking the habit. Cheyenne, the only woman in the group, comes close to leaving her boyfriend Mike when he basically begins to project his anger onto her and shows no signs of ever changing his lifestyle. One man admits that although he's straight, he has allowed a middle aged man to give him head for twenty bucks a pop when he's been really tight for a shot. We see one young man pawn a bag full of CDs that he stole from some friends so that he can blow it all on two days worth of smack. We see them lie to each other, cheat each other, and work one another to make sure that they can get enough dope to get through the day and it's all quite sad - not in the tragic sense, but in the pathetic sense.
The camera doesn't ask you to feel pity for these people, nor does it cast judgment on them, it simply allows them to tell their stories in their own words. All of them chose the path they took, no one put a gun to their heads and a needle in their veins (a point that the one drug dealer interviewed for the film is happy to make - they chose to do this, he simply supplies them with what they come to him asking for). That doesn't mean they're completely without sympathy as a few of them do show that they genuinely want to clean up and when those resources aren't available they do show signs of not wanting to backslide - addiction being as powerful as it is, that's not an easy thing to deal with.
When it's all over and done with, Union Square is a refreshingly honest take on drug abuse. It shows it as ugly, remorseless, and painful. It's a dirty habit, unsanitary, unhealthy, and horrible for your mental condition. It's not unbeatable but it isn't easy to kick. The people who chose to do it come from varied backgrounds and do it for varied reasons but whether they chose to clean up or not, whether they chose to get help or not, the film at least reminds us that they're still human, even if they're coming tediously close to losing even that.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.33.1 fullframe image was shot on video, often times using a handheld method that does a good job of 'putting you in the scene.' While it isn't going to wow you with sweeping cinematography it is effective in showing you the down and dirty aspect of the addicts that the film follows. There are a few shots where the lighting is a bit dim or the camera goes out of focus for a second or two but for the most part it works just fine and the overall quality of the image isn't half bad at all.
The most of the time the dialogue is pretty clear there are a couple of spots where the background noise is a little overwhelming and as such, the subjects sound a little muffled when they speak. There's also one or two scenes where the dialogue goes noticeably out of synch which is a little distracting. Those two issues aside though and the English language Dolby Digital Stereo mix is sufficient, if unremarkable.
First up is a commentary track with director/co-writer Stephen Szklarski. Not once at a loss for words, Szklarski gives us a wealth of background information on how he came to make the film, how the idea was shaped by his own personal experiences and run ins with the junkies in the park, and how he started to interact with them and get to know some of them before actually going ahead and making the movie. This track is full of interesting stories about some of the strange and sometimes disturbing things that occurred while he was shooting on location. He also details how he more or less came up with this idea on his own and went about shooting, editing and distributing the film almost completely as a one man show using only the basic technology that he had at his disposal at the time.
After that is an update on each of the addicts featured in the documentary which fills us in on how their lives have shaped up in the last two years since the film was made - some have kicked the habit and moved on to bigger and better things, others are still on it and still living in the same park. It's interesting to see how things turned out for some of the people involved in the documentary - none of them had the same experiences afterwards. A couple of the people involved declined to be interviewed as they'd moved onto legitimate work and didn't really want to relive what they'd gone through but some of the participants are refreshingly frank and honest about how tough it was to get clean and how relapses were a common problem. It's also interesting to hear people talk about how effective (or in some cases, ineffective) rehabilitation and detoxification programs can be for specific users.
Rounding out the supplements on the DVD are two different trailers for the Union Square.
The Final Word:
Union Square is a pretty interesting portrait of just how harrowing heroin addiction can get. It doesn't gloss things over, it doesn't put a happy spin on anything, and it paints things in a realistically bleak light. The DVD looks and sounds fine, and the extras are pretty interesting as well. This one is worth watching out for - part human interest story, part shooting gallery how-to instructional video, it's always interesting. You may not feel sorry for the addicts, and the film doesn't really ask you to, but the doesn't take away from the fact that this is a very interesting, if grim, portrait of the homeless drug addict population.