Review
FIX: STORY OF AN ADDICTED CITY
Directed by Nettie Wild
Opens Friday March 26
Globe Cinema
Caption Vertical: Dean Wilson, president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and Philip Owen, Mayor of Vancouver, in the alleys of Vancouver’s downtown eastside.
Caption Horizontal: Dean Wilson, president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), in a scene from FIX: The Story of an Addicted City, a feature documentary directed by Nettie Wild
Fix presents more than images about addiction, advocacy and life on Vancouver’s east side. There are needles, crack and people in desperate conditions, but director Nettie Wild shows the protests, council meetings and the process of change. Fix is an in-your-face documentary about the struggle to save lives in a community crippled by drugs and a convincing well-crafted film which attempts to enlighten while making you squirm.
Wild spent 18 months chronicling addict life on the street and followed the journey of three unlikely advocates on their quest to open a safe injection site. The film quickly introduces the reality of substance abuse with two activists with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), Dean Wilson and Anne Livingston. Dean is a drug user in recovery – he must stop for methadone while en route to a protest. Anne, the patient and slightly irked one behind the wheel, is a Christian non-drug user who also works for VANDU. The two are an improbable pair, yet there is a deep connection between them. The man who is the target of their protest is (now former) Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen, who soon acknowledges that the drug problem can no longer be ignored.
The film chronicles the ups and downs of political lobbying from all sides: the views of the business community on the east side and their battle to keep drugs off the streets, the police and their efforts against the ever-increasing drug trade, and the addicts and their need for a safe place to get their fix. The solution seems nowhere to be found but in the hearts of activists who want Vancouver to open the first safe injection site in North America. Although the film is slightly biased in its approach, clearly favouring the pro-safe-injection side, Fix does, however, represent alternate views, creating a holistic perspective of the dead-end situation in Vancouver.
Fix pulls no punches about the lengths addicts will go to get high or so-called "addict logic," while at the same time defending their addiction as illness. One particularly difficult scene to watch features a young woman lying in a filthy alley on a piece of cardboard while another woman searches for four minutes to find a vein in her neck to inject heroin. What follows is a monologue about "why I do heroin" that deepens your understanding and asks for compassion.
Even Dean, a key activist, shoots up as he goes through the addiction cycle. As the face of the movement, his ups and downs give a unique insight into the difficult life of a recovering addict.
Fix is not about easy solutions, nor is it about charity. At its core, it’s a film about reaching out to people in need and a call to take action in every city, not just Vancouver. Certainly, the film leaves all of us with more questions than answers, but with that, Fix succeeds in bringing the tired drug issue off the streets and into a discussion centered around hope.
Following 7 p.m. and matinee screenings of Fix, there will be community forums. |
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