"The Dismal World of Alcoholism"
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What You Need To Know:
In NIL BY MOUTH, alcoholism destroys a working class family in the London ghettos. Ray (Ray Winstone) is an emotional time bomb about to explode. He uses alcohol to numb his pain and to find comfort. Viewers discover that Ray’s anger and pain derives from the lack of love he received from his father. As a result, he never learned how to give or to show love. He spends most of his time drinking with his buddies in strip joints and trashing his apartment. When he comes home drunk, Ray beats his wife in front of his daughter. Abandoned most of the time, his battered wife, Valerie (Kathy Burke), feels alone and unloved. She finally reaches the point where she is not able to tolerate his physical abuse any longer. She tells Ray that she wants to find someone who can love her.
A somber, “feel-bad” movie which does not offer hope, NIL BY MOUTH contains extremely excessive foul language with 502 obscenities in an incomprehensible colloquial English from London ghettos. Since the characters learn nothing from their actions and remain stuck in their continual misery, NIL BY MOUTH has no redeeming social value and leaves viewers feeling depressed and exhausted.
Content:
(PaPaPa, LLL, V, NN, M) Pagan worldview of non-recovering alcoholics and drug addicts; 502 obscenities; man beats wife off screen; no depicted sex; naked women dance in a strip bar; and, alcohol & drugs with no hope for recovery.
More Detail:
Recently seen opposite Harrison Ford in AIR FORCE ONE as the desperate, impossibly arrogant Russian terrorist who hijacks the American President’s jet, Gary Oldham makes his directorial debut helming NIL BY MOUTH, the movie he also wrote. At a recent screening, Oldham said he had a burning desire to tell this story, because NIL BY MOUTH reflects his own life growing up in the London ghettos, and struggling with alcoholism. Although Oldham does capture the hopelessness of alcoholism and drug addiction in NIL BY MOUTH, the movie projects a dismal and dispiriting mood, and offers no hope for recovery.
In NIL BY MOUTH, Ray (Ray Winstone) is an emotional time bomb about to explode. He uses alcohol to numb his pain and to find comfort. Viewers discover that Ray’s anger and pain derives from the lack of love he received from his father. As a result, he never learned how to give or to show love. The one scene in which he is by himself, he exhibits hostility and trashes the living room of his apartment. He spends most of his time drinking with his buddies in strip joints. When he comes home drunk, Ray beats his wife in front of his daughter. Ray has no apparent hobbies.
Abandoned most of the time, his battered wife, Valerie (Kathy Burke), watches movies by herself and eats popcorn. She feels alone and unloved. One of Ray’s beatings causes her to have a miscarriage and lose her baby. She finally reaches the point where she is not able to tolerate his physical abuse any longer. She tells Ray that she wants to find someone who can love her. Meanwhile, Valerie’s brother, Billy, a heroin addict, constantly pursues his next heroin fix. He even persuades his mother to help him get heroin and shoots up while she is in the car. Viewers see Billy preparing the heroin, but they never see the needle going into his arm.
Throughout the two hours of NIL BY MOUTH, there is a continual stream of foul language, with constant background noises, and people talking over each other with thick Cockney accents which make it almost impossible to understand half of the dialogue. However, the obscenities are clear, with 502 spoken obscenities and foul language in nearly every sentence during the course of the film. The chaotic, jumbled sound track and constant background noises help to communicate the chaos and turbulence which occupy the inner worlds of these characters. It is as if they were bouncing around in their own minds, always restless, never at peace.
Since the characters learn nothing from their actions and remain stuck in their continual misery, NIL BY MOUTH has no redeeming value and leaves viewers feeling depressed and exhausted. Containing extremely excessive profanity and almost incomprehensible colloquial English from London ghettos, NIL BY MOUTH will most likely be doomed to a nasty, brutish and short existence in American theaters.
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