Golden Brown was a song released by an otherwise obscure band called the Stranglers. It is featured in the ’’snatch’’ soundtrack, and is a beautiful little tune, simple, catchy and has harpischords backing smooth vocals. Its lyrics run to the tune of ’’golden brown, texture like sun, lays me down, with my mind she runs. Throughout the night, no need to fight, no need to frown, with golden brown’’.
Generations of well meaning average middle class people hum this song, without suspecting the relevence of the https://lyrics. Golden brown refers to heroin. I have no idea what relevence it has in the snatch soundtrack, but it would have been very relevant in ’’the basketball diaries’’.
This film will immediately turn you off especially if you moralise, or like films like ’’legally blonde’’. This movie is like ’’boys dont cry’’, and ’’fight club’’. Graphic scenes portray emotions that would perhaps be beyond the average viewer simply because this is a movie about screwed up folks.
That it is a very GOOD movie about screwed up folks might be lost on you. If the subject matter is the object of negative prejudice, no amount of technical excellence will give it cause to be viewed in favourable light. Cause richly deserved. This movie is made so well, that you will immediately react, and not simply look at it neutrally. Reserve your opinions, and judgements until you’re sure what this movie is really about. Take it from me that it does not condone heroin abuse, nor does it glorify drugs.
The basketball diaries is a daring film. It is not suitable to watch with your family. Watch it alone. It features Leo Di Caprio (Jim/Jimbo/Jimmy boy) as a young student who is an exceptional basketball player. He lives with his single mother in New York.
Jim and his pals hang out on the streets. Getting high is more than a weekend hobby. Getting high and playing basketball is what they do the rest of the time.
Jim has a childhood friend who is in hospital and suffers from lukemia. His friend is the only person in the world who looked forward to reading Jim’s philosophical scribbings. (’’I just want to be pure’’)
When his friend succumbs to the disease, Jim’s face loses all visible emotion, and he goes on a terrace, lies naked under a starry sky, and masturbates emotionlessly and noiselessly. If you’re the type, you might as well go ahead and be scandalised right now.
His death serves a worthwhile excuse for Jim to mainline (inject) heroin. He wanted to smoke it, but in his own words ’’the junkies said if I wanted to smoke it, I might as well pop it, and if I wanted to pop it, I might as well mainline’’. His first rush due to the drug, is picturised as a endless run through a field of sunflowers.
The trouble begins when Jim and his pals aren’t sure which of the ’’pharmaceuticals’’ they obtained are uppers, and which are the downers. They are about to play a basketball game, and blindly guess which ones are the uppers.
Unfortunately they guess wrong, and arrive for the game, in almost a morphine stupor. Needless to say, no records are broken that day, and its obvious to their coach that it wasn’t fatigue that caused all those loose balls.
Thrown out of school, and stopped from playing basketball, heroin becomes Jim’s life. The next fix becomes paramount. His mother cannot bear to see him this way, and she throws him out of the house tearfully, saying she cannot watch him ruin himself.
On the road to hell, Jim is found unconscious in the snow and almost frozen to death by a black janitor who takes him home, and lets him wake up. ’’I’m going to save your life twice in one day buddy, hows that for a deal?’’ he says as he flushes the remnants of the drug packet down the toilet and sits back and lets Jim go through ’’cold turkey’’ (absense of the addictive drug) for the next few days. Jim begs him, cajoles him, threatens him, pleads with him for ’’just a taste Reggie.. just a taste’’, but the strong man just smiles and sits at the door, almost on guard lest he tries to run away to get some more.
Denied the fix for the next few days, Jim lives a life of frantic pleading, retching, throwing up, wetting his pants, and offering to please his savior sexually, ANYTHING for the next fix. But the old black man just looks patiently as the days roll by, apart from shoving Jim’s face in the mirror at times, and saying ’’look at you boy.. look at you’’
Eventually the kid finds his way to a state detention center and writes his memoirs at the time, which get published and are known as the ’’basketball diaries’’. It is a true story. And while giving a talk about the ’’life inclined to the shadows’’, he once sees Reggie, the janitor, amongst the audience, smiling.
This is a controversial and graphic movie, so please excuse the graphic elements in this review, but with me, reality wins over censorship.