Bad Lieutenant (1992, Abel Ferrara)

Quest Status: 758 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #907

Most movies involving copious drug use tend to try to recreate the experience for the viewer, with trick shots emulating the rush of cocaine or the surging pleasure of heroin. This is meant to put you inside the main character's head and vicariously experience their state of ecstasy without actually having to do drugs yourself. However, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, a brilliant film about a drug-addled police lieutenant in a downward spiral of vice and spiritual guilt, shows us what it feels like to watch someone do drugs. Rather than a vicarious head trip, it's a voyeuristic nightmare.

When Harvey Keitel shoots up in some unknown woman's room, smokes crack in a tenement hallway after handing off a package of cocaine to his dealer, or snorts cocaine after dropping his sons off at school, the camera usually stands static, intently focused on Keitel's staggering self-destruction. And it's not just drugs. He sexually harasses women at a routine traffic stop even as he's supposed to be investigating the rape of a nun. He drinks from the bottle and wildly fires his gun while driving in broad daylight. He dances naked with prostitutes while moaning in primal despair, only to stumble out in the street to happen upon an officer arresting two convenience store thieves and make off with the money himself.

Other directors making normal films would focus on Keitel's gambling problem, which proves to be even more dangerous than the many drugs coursing through his system at all times. However, this is little more than background noise in the context of the big picture. The cop's desperate attempt to come out on top over the course of a heated Mets vs. Dodgers series propels him through the film, but much more prominent is the spiritual torment that he experiences after the nun who has been raped insists on forgiving her assailants. Never has there been a more vital film about Catholic guilt and the question of whether its possible to go past the point of forgiveness. Ferrara goes straight for the gut and hits you with the truth, with dizzying clarity of purpose. There's so much depravity on display that most casual viewers would probably look at this movie and see nothing but smut, but make no mistake: this is a profound work of art. If anything, it deserves to be much higher on the list than it currently is.

 

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