My name is Ben. Owner of many, lover of none. My age can be described in no other format than that of 15 years of age. I guess there’s a bunch of months and days and minutes and stuff that need to be added onto there too but meh, I’m not MADE of money. Nor am I made of sand. But anyway, less about what I may or may not be made from, what this thing is about is me. Well me writing about me. So here’s me. I have a lot of free time, which I spend mostly trawling the internet aimlessly, grabbing at useless bits of information that float their way towards me like a hungry duck. When I’m not trawling the internet, I’m either looking bored, thinking about Ellen Page, or watching a film. Oh, or TV shows, I watch a lot of them too.
On the topic of TV shows I tend to become obsessed with one, then watch every single episode of that one show almost in one go, which takes months (or in Lost’s case, years) of my life, leaving me feeling depressed and lonely afterwards. A void I’ve started to fill with an increasing obsession over Oscar nominated (she was robbed) Canadian actress and all-round most awesome person alive, Ellen Page. I’ve seen almost all her movies (bar two, which I could watch, but it would cost me the grand total of £27 and weeks of waiting) and the obsession began when I realized I was only ever vaguely happy when watching her on screen. ‘Juno’ and ‘Whip It’ quickly became two of my favorite movies, and then even her harsher more depressing outings such as ‘The Tracey Fragments’ became amazingly brilliant. Soon I found myself with a list of all her work, watching each one and crossing them off the list. I got to the point where I was watching 3 or 4 movies a day.
One weekend I watched the entire 8 episodes of the Canadian show ‘ReGenesis’ which starred Ellen (at 45 minutes each) and all 4 episodes of the show ‘Trailer Park Boys’ (which even now I’m ripped on for, because it sounds like a gay porno). After that weekend, came the weekend where I watched ‘Ghost Cat’, ‘The Stone Angel’ and ‘An American Crime’ all in one day. The last on that list being the beautifully shot adaptation of the tragic tale of Sylvia Likens, a teenage girl who was brutally tortured and murdered in the 1960’s. The film was so powerful and emotionally epic I was bummed out for a while (a feat only achieved once before by John Hillcoat’s ‘The Road’). But it was on that night when I decided something had to be done. Sunday 4th July 2010 and I had school the next day, so to avoid what I had experienced before with ‘The Road’ (a whole week of depression only saved by watching ‘Whip It’ 3 times and a collection of other brilliant movies) I decided I had to cheer myself up by watching a happier film. After minutes of scouring my collection I came to the conclusion that no comedy would be funny in the face of the heart-wrenching ‘An American Crime’ so the only cure was to take my mind away from it with an amazingly fantastic super-awesome movie. I at first picked ‘American Beauty’ off the shelf, my official number 1 film of all time, but 20 minutes in, I realized it wasn’t working at all. The plot just didn’t engage me enough. So I got back to my EP list, realizing that all of her happy movies I had seen very recently and so would have little effect. This lead to one of the strangest but most brilliant decisions of my life, the decision to, 8 months after first sight, re-watch ‘Hard Candy’
. It was on that Sunday night which I discovered the truly immortal excellence of said indie film. Ellen shone as the obviously insane and psychotic Hayley Stark, a 14 year-old who invites herself into the home of suspected pedophile Jeff, and drugs him, before mentally torturing him. The movie also is known to be infamous in the film community for it’s unsettling castration scene in which we see no blood, just the facial reactions of the 2 characters which is easily enough to make you squirm with horror. As the movie ended, and the credits flicked past I was left bedazzled, attempting to remember my reaction to the film the first time I laid eyes on it.
Ever since that fateful day in early July, I have used ‘Hard Candy’ as a reference point for anytime I doubt the ability of the human race or anytime I am completely bummed out and depressed. In any sad circumstance I think back to that movie and the affect it had on me that Sunday night. Ellen Page’s spine-tinglingly awesome performance. Patrick Wilson’s convincingly terrific twist on the modern-day sexual predator. The raw tension, the grey tint and the unpredictably twisted switches from Ellen’s character, from sweet schoolgirl to demonic super-bitch and back again. Everything just pulls together so beautifully. The only danger I faced was over-watching it. People look at me like I’m some sort of mental patient that’s just soiled himself, rolled it around in his hand, then smeared it across his face when I tell them that I used said movie to cheer me up in times of trouble. They can’t see past the plot summary of “teenage girl tortures grown man” and the troubling involvement of castration and look at the big picture. The beauty of it all. Movies to most are just brief periods of enjoyment but to me, they’re not just art, but a way of life. Those people find it difficult to see that happiness can come from brilliantly made movies, not just movies that make you laugh. This remains as one of the most beloved experiences I hold from my life. The experience of how ‘Hard Candy’ became one of my favorite movies of all time. A small but honestly invigorating experience that believe it or not, has changed my life forever.
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