Call it the anti-Gandhi if you like. In a year in which he has played a drunken hitman and an ageing professor embarking on an affair, Sir Ben Kingsley now takes on the role of a disillusioned, drug-taking psychiatrist on a slow path of self-destruction in The Wackness. Peaceful resistance this ain't. Dr Squires (Ben Kinglsey) is a sixty-something of indistinguishable accent living in New York in the early-1990s. Dependent on a wealth of prescriptive and somewhat less prescriptive drugs, he embarks on an unlikely friendship with his step-daughter's naive friend ? and his drug dealer ? Luke Shapiro, which leads to Squires' life unravelling and Shapiro growing up quickly over one summer. It has a keen sense of its time ? tough on crime, Giuliani-era New York over a sticky summer ? and rolls out as languidly as the season in which it is set. It is a true coming-of-age film, though one in which a man in his 60s as well as a teenager undergo their rites of passage. It generally yearns for a time gone by, when men were less accountable for their actions, and ends on a despairing note for the times ahead. Kudos to The Wackness for not trying to shine a glimmer of hope at the end ? people will get their hearts broken, and people will find themselves alone, it says. The frankness of the content is unexpected in a UAE cinema. So frank, in fact, that it will almost certainly never be released here, and to be honest, makes it difficult to sympathise with many of the lead characters, who are almost all manipulative, demanding and irresponsible. Think the films of Wes Anderson, with the offbeat charm stripped away. The film it best recalls is Roger Dodger, another New York-set coming-of-age film from 2002, although executed with considerably less charm. The Wackness ends up being utterly inconsequential, but a refreshing alternative for any film festival.
