“Smashed”

I’d be lying if I said I’d looked forward to James Ponsoldt’s Smashed. More than practically any other kind of movie, addiction dramas tend toward sameness, and early reviews out of Sundance made Smashed sound like the usual “powerful” actor’s showcase — ie. an opportunity for lead Mary Elizabeth Winstead to show how fearless and honest and brave she can be. As it happens, the movie is an excellent showcase for Winstead — and for Ponsoldt, too — but largely because it shuns Oscar-bait heaviness. The script, by Ponsoldt and Susan Burke, has its weighty moments, but it’s frequently funny, too, and it’s worlds away from exhaustingly “hard-hitting” pictures like Leaving Las Vegas, Permanent Midnight, and Requiem for a Dream. Unlike the characters in those films, Winstead’s schoolteacher isn’t some glamourously damaged soul — she’s just an ordinary woman whose drinking has gone from innocent fun to stupid crutch. Watching her, you think not of other films you’ve seen or of other performances, but of people you know.

We first meet Winstead’s character, Kate, waking up in bed beside her husband, Charlie (Aaron Paul, of Breaking Bad). In the bed with them: pee, attributable to Kate’s weak bladder and the previous night’s bender. But Charlie, who also likes a drink, isn’t grossed out — he’s used to it, and quite happy to change the sheets as Kate prepares for work. Later that day, in the middle of a lesson with her first-graders, Kate surprises herself by barfing in a wastebasket. One of the kids asks if she’s pregnant, and she lies and says yes. It’s a good, easy out, but the lie gains traction when the other teachers begin congratulating her on the great news. This is her first not-so-subtle hint she needs to make some changes, but it takes a few more incidents to convince her to join AA.

In its first third, Smashed stands virtually alone among addiction movies (bar maybe the dated Days of Wine and Roses) in that it honestly captures the appeal of intoxication. Even when Kate is at her worst — like when she befriends a crackhead and spends a night imbibing and chatting with her under a highway overpass — she’s having a good time, for the most part. And we in the audience are, too, because Winstead is completely charming in these moments and she doesn’t do the usual thing of telegraphing the pain behind the pleasure. (Remarkably, Ponsoldt never suggests there’s any deep, dark reason for her drinking.) In this way, we’re almost put in the position of enablers, which pays off later when she tries to get sober.

The heart of the movie is Kate’s relationship with Charlie, a freelance music writer whose whole life is built around going to bars and staying up late. (We don’t see much of his world beyond Kate, but Ponsoldt brings it into focus with a throwaway line about Charlie going to see Triplets, “that band from Iceland.”) Charlie drinks to excess, too, but it doesn’t interfere with his work and he’s more capable of controlling his urges than Kate. Though he tries to support her sobriety, he can’t help but feel she’s suddenly a lot less fun to be around, and the thing is: he’s not wrong. She is less fun. For me, this is where Smashed really earns its stripes. It doesn’t pretend that sobriety makes Kate a more appealing person and that Charlie is just too much of a jerk to see it. In order to change, Kate has to be disciplined, and discipline is not, as the saying goes, it’s own reward. It’s lonely and boring, and it has the perfect correlative in the comically drab squareness of her AA meetings. Other movies make getting sober look cataclysmically gruelling and brutal, then ultimately redemptive. Smashed has the wit to make it look like dull hard work, then refuses to imply that happiness awaits at the end. All that’s attained here is a sense of control, nothing more, nothing less.

In a way, the movie is about more than just alcoholism — it’s about change of all sorts, and about how change involves leaving parts of yourself behind, parts that you and the people around you are going to miss. I don’t remotely have an addictive personality, but I could see myself in Kate, and I’m pretty sure anyone else over the age of thirty will, too. Her transition into sobriety mirrors the larger transition we all make into adult responsibilities, where fun finally takes a backseat to accomplishing a few things. Watching Smashed, I kept thinking how so many people of my generation — educated urban professionals especially — are addicted, essentially, to partying and “good timez,” to remaining young and with it at all costs. Well here is a movie that speaks directly to us, one that can get us thinking about our little vices and crutches. Do yourself a favour and see it.

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