One of my favorite escapes is just an hour away, to my parents’ air-conditioned living room, which is equipped with a large television and digital cable. In my own Brooklyn apartment, on the infrequent occasions I do watch t.v. (this mostly includes P.O.V., insomniac-related infomrcial viewing, and sporadic Monday night viewings of MEDIUM) I use an antenna to get the first 13 channels on the dial. So being able to choose from an array of different offerings (90% abysmal dregs and 10% extraordinary programming) is a fun novelty for me. Last night, after the compulsory viewing of the latest ENTOURAGE, i found myself watching an HBO Documentary called REHAB , which was seemingly commissioned as part of their AMERICA UNDERCOVER series. The documentary was a very dark look at a group of middle-class, white teenagers with fairly normal, supportive families, being treated for drug addiction in Santa Cruz. It was notably bleak, with matter of fact shots of zombie-eyed teenagers shooting up, going through multiple relapses, and culminating in a hopeless ending. Although this is surely the sort of sensationalist subject matter that Sheila Nevins has cultivated as HBO’s “style,” it is also an important film. It reminded me, in many ways, of another HBO-produced doc (yet to be broadcast), Lauren Greenfield’s THIN , a verite look at a Florida eating disorders clinic and its patients. Anorexia and drug addiction are equally hopeless conditions; one could see almost immediately that the little time in treatment covered by insurance (a maximum of 30 days) is in no way enough to fix years of self-destructive behavior, often stemming from deep psychological issues or traumas. The fact that insurance expects that these deep-seated problems to be healed through four weeks of therapy is akin to a doctor expecting a hunchback to be fixed via massage therapy! Both conditions have dishearteningly low recovery rates (in the case of teenagers leaving rehab, it is expected that a mere 8% will stay clean), and tragically high mortality rates. They also reduce people who once had full, vibrant personalities and interests to a sole obsession — either staying thin or getting high. Any attachment to anything else in the world disappears — the external surroundings melt away. It is a harrowing thing to see on film. It is also interesting (and frustrating) to see the sort of tough love bureaucracy that these rehab facilities use in an attempt to help their patients. One wonders where the effective care ends and the power trip begins. I highly recommend both films, and they’d make for an illuminating double feature. This reminds me — Agnes Varnum wrote a very insightful post about the idea of viewing docs on the same issue (say: Immigration) in a trifecta, so that one experiences many takes on the issue without feeling like after seeing one film, they know everything about that issue. To quote:

I’d agree with anyone who wanted to argue that documentary is subjective, BUT when I’ve seen several films that deal with the same issue or perhaps different sides of a multi-faceted issue, I have discovered a more 3-dimensional view.

If anyone has a good third film to add to this “REHAB” trifecta, do let me know!