| Patrick Clifford |
Image sourced from filmforum.org
The Lost Weekend plays on glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, February 23rd, through Tuesday, February 25th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
This isn’t going to be easy to write. Writing about drinking is hard. And The Lost Weekend isn’t just a movie about drinking. It’s a movie about writing about drinking.
Writing and drinking have always been joined at the hip. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Stephen King—the list goes on. Alcohol not only fueled their lives; it fueled their pages. What’s the connection? Where’s the crossover? Why do writers find alcohol so intoxicating?
The Lost Weekend is based on a book of the same name by Charles R. Jackson and is said to closely reflect his own experiences with alcoholism. In the film, Don Birnam, played with passionate torment by Ray Milland, is both the drinker and the writer. Throughout the movie, he shows us the co-dependency these two roles command, and ultimately, what separates one from the other.
Don drinks to escape reality. He is happy to be home alone with a glass in hand and a spare stash hidden somewhere close by. If he runs dry at home, and it’s absolutely necessary to go out, he’s willing to retell his fabricated reality to Nat the bartender, if only Nat will keep refilling the nectar Don’s stories thrive on. And funny enough, those stories are all about writing. His early genius, getting published at 19 while still in college. Or future glory, fully imagined in Don’s mind—his more successful brother standing in front of a bookstore window proudly displaying Don’s best-selling novel. Writing is always set in the past or the future. The present is focused on only one thing—booze.
For Don, drinking and writing is a game of hide and seek. It’s one game, but with opposing purposes. Hiding is the easy part because he always gets lost in the same spot—the bottle. Writing is seeking and that takes work. You have to take a close look at everything, including yourself, and you’re never really sure what exactly it is that you’re looking for.
The book Don is trying to write in The Lost Weekend is called ‘The Bottom.’ It will tell his story as he sees it. It is the only one he knows—the despair of the drunk and the dream of overcoming it. The book’s title is all he has put to paper. The rest exists only in his head. Writing it would require something Don doesn’t seem to have.
Alcohol is sometimes referred to as liquid courage. Anyone who has felt its effects can find reason to agree. The freeing feeling of letting loose; the loss of inhibitions. But the fears that momentarily fade away when you’re drinking only go away as a result of your drinking. Courage, on the other hand, is a choice. It doesn’t bury fears. It recognizes them and stands up to them. Courage comes out of an honest and sober appraisal of one’s true reality. And like any honest drunk, Don can’t handle the truth.
Truth is painful. And it’s painful to watch Don’s alcoholism portrayed so brutally throughout The Lost Weekend. When he’s not high, he’s depressed, self-pitying, and deceitful. Always looking for his next fix, always willing to use anyone. At the same time, always fearful that everyone is after him. He manipulates family and loved ones, and begs, borrows, and steals his way through every other character that crosses his path. When he’s drinking, he’s even more insufferable. A pathetic loser who blames everyone and everything else for his fate.
The Lost Weekend came out in 1945—a year split between the horrors of war and the relief of the enemy’s surrender. A year where alcohol both numbed our pain and celebrated our triumph. The film was groundbreaking in its honesty. It asked viewers to take a hard look at America’s socially accepted drug of choice, and our relationship with it. It was a courageous movie to make. And as Don shows us, courage is never easy.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon