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Dan and Candy are in love with each other as well as heroin. They lead unhealthy lifestyles and Candy begins to lose focus on her art and things begin to spiral out of control. Dan and Candy try to get things straight but the drugs just keep getting in the way of their happiness.
The toughest part about watching a film with such powerful scenes is that you have this uneasy feeling that the final striking vision of the film will not leave you with joy, instead it will leave you realizing how harsh reality can be on people who have tried their best and came up empty handed. Candy and Dan were not bad people; they went about making money the wrong way and found themselves living fast with no way of paying for their lifestyle. You watch these lives unfold on the screen and you realize that a solid film is not just actors strutting their stuff and looking cool, but it is about reaching deep within and making people realize reality is not the perfect world where everything is calm and people live free without concerns.
Candy: Once upon a time, there was a Candy and Dan... Things were very hot that year... All the wax was melting on the trees... He would crawl on balconies, climb everywhere. Do anything for her... My Danny boy. Thousands of birds. The tiniest birds adorned her hair... Everything was golden... One night the bed caught fire... He was handsome, and a very good criminal... We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars... It was the afternoon of extravagant delight... Danny, the Daredevil... Candy the blessing... The day's last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks..."I wanna try it your way this time!" You came into my life really fast, and I liked it. We squelched in the mud of our joy. I was wet thighed with the surrender... Then there was a gap in things... And the whole earth tilted... This is the business. This is what we're after. With you inside me... Comes the night...
Heath and Abbie were able to take these characters, and paint a picture with their lives. They create Candy and Dan as people, sad people looking to find their way, people who need that extra push to better themselves. Candy and Dan were searching for joy and freedom and they found that in drugs. As time went on they needed to find solace from the drugs, which meant being away from each other, even though through the toughest and darkest of hours they still loved each other. Both Heath and Abbie were able to challenge each other in the most dramatic of scenes, they were able to feed of each others passion for acting, and turn Candy from just another flick about drugs to a sad tale that will resonate with the audience long after they watch the film. Heath and Abbie leave you realizing that actors who create rich and diverse characters are also showing us another world, one that we perhaps do not know a lot about. Film in general is meant to do this, and films that go for blunt messages or direct visuals are much more appealing because you can clearly feel how awkward or how tense a situation is.
Dan: We had a lot going for us. We'd found the secret glue that held all things together. In a perfect place, where the noise did not intrude, our world was so very complete.
Candy is a love story, but not the typical boy meets girl falls and love and they run around falling head over heels in love, and then get married and live happily. Candy and Dan were in love, a love that had its ups and downs and realistically ended on a sad note. Candy and Dan were never going to change, never going to push each other towards a healthy lifestyle. They were addicted to living that lifestyle together. They built this world for themselves, and they could not bend the mold, and change their lives. There is so much in this film that makes this film such a sad film to watch. There are scenes that are designed to make us feel for these characters, to make us see how badly they have messed up their own lives and the lives of those around them. Yet perhaps the most telling and heart breaking scenes are the ones where Candy and Dan are laughing and enjoying each other, because you get a glimpse of how they could have made it work under different circumstances. They could have made it work had they made different choices along the way.
Casper: When you can stop, you don't want to. When you want to stop, you can't.
10/10
