Seems like only yesterday that I sat on the Manhattan Class Company stage with “Ben Is Back” director Peter Hedges and casting director Bernie Telsey at a theater company meeting, doing various acting-craft warmups. That was 20 years ago. And here I am, writing reviews about Peter’s latest film. Life is strange.
It also feels like not long ago that Peter had his breakout film, 1993’s “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” starring Johnny Depp, which made Leonardo DiCaprio a star.
And Peter’s son Lucas is now a bona fide movie star. Peter’s a star-maker; maybe I should’ve stuck around! Let’s see … have a small role in one of his films … or the power to completely trash his film on Rotten Tomatoes?! Well, I’m not going to do the latter because “Ben Is Back” is excellent.
Opioid Addiction in Quaint-town, USA
That’s it in a nutshell. A boy with severe addictions (Lucas Hedges) plays hooky from rehab to crash his family’s Christmas and drive his codependent mom (Julia Roberts) up a wall.Speaking of addiction, I once, like Edward Norton’s character in “Fight Club,” discovered the underground world of 12-step programs and went around sitting in on meetings I had no business being in, because the stories were outrageous. As a young actor, you’re taught to seek out dramatic stories. It’s what we do—we’re storytellers. Trust me; you crash an East Village AA meeting jam-packed with street hookers, Hells Angels, punk rockers, and hardcore winos, you’re going to hear some very interesting stories.
Then I discovered that I myself had a garden-variety form of codependency due to having a rage-aholic mother, and I did a little stint in Al-Anon for real. Here’s something I learned there: An excellent description of the classic, narcissistic addict personality’s effect on the rest of his or her family is a bunch of people on a raft, out at sea. The addict just strides about, willy-nilly, with no regard for anything but getting his next fix, and the rest of the people scurry around in reactionary fashion, trying to balance the raft so it doesn’t tip over and throw everybody in the shark-filled ocean. Addicts infect everyone around them with the people-pleasing addiction that is codependency.
Story
As mentioned, “Ben Is Back” is set in small-town, any-town, USA. Maybe Massachusetts, but just as easily North Carolina. Maybe a bit too much snow for the latter. The point is, as quaint as our small towns seem, we in the United States are ravaged by opioids; everybody’s got a relative or knows somebody, or knows somebody who knows somebody who’s addicted to prescription opioid painkillers. Or heroin. There’s probably only one degree of separation at this point, linking every American non-addict to an American junkie by now.So Ben is back—home for the holidays, from rehab. Did his sponsor say this was cool? We’re not sure. We’re not sure anything out of Ben’s mouth is truthful. But mom Holly is ecstatic. Sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and stepdad Neal (Courtney B. Vance), not so much. Holly and Neal’s very young biracial kids, Lacey and Liam (Mia Fowler and Jakari Fraser) are happy and clueless.
Ben wants to buy gifts; he and mom drive to the local mall and run into people who start to set up tension. Holly encounters Ben’s erstwhile doctor who misdiagnosed Ben and overprescribed painkillers. While the doctor’s wife leaves them for a minute, Holly takes advantage of his Alzheimer’s to speak her mind, surreptitiously laying a quiet curse on him that’ll slap you in the face with its vehemence.
Later, the family’s attending church on Christmas Eve; it’s all candlelight and pine boughs and Ben’s sister Ivy singing in the choir. However, there are more ghosts here. Such as the mother (Rachel Bay Jones) of Ben’s former girlfriend, who he knowingly addicted, which triggered a drastic outcome for the girl.
When the family gets home, anticipating present unwrapping, they find the Christmas tree’s been knocked over and the family dog is gone. Again, did Ben’s sponsor say it would be cool for Ben to go home for the holidays? Or not?
There’s an ensuing Ben-and-Holly, up-all-night, wild-dog chase, revealing the wrong side of the tracks and seamy underbelly of Smalltown, USA, where Ben is forced to ditch his mom for her safety and jeopardize his sobriety and safety by dealing directly with the more deadly levels of the American drug pipeline. Lies abound—addict lies to mom, and codependent/enabling mom lies to the frantic, texting family.
‘It Works if You Work It’
That’s the 12-step mantra regarding the effectiveness of the recovery program.Maybe, eventually, Big Pharma will be made to stop looting our villages by facilitating addictive personalities. But would that get rid of the addictive personalities? The ones among us who are only really turning to substance abuse because of the onslaught of depression that’s sweeping the world, due to fire, famine, foes, migrant caravans, and sinkholes.
America’s more than a little codependent. Who us? Us awesome Americans? We don’t have problems. Yes we do. The solution is to look within. It matters not, what Big Pharma does, if we learn to work some program—any program—that heals souls and provides meaning in these dark times that the Chinese call “The Time of Last Havoc,” and we in the West call Armageddon.
