Movie Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"

For years, drug culture has been portrayed in film as toxic, or an indulgence of the flawed character. You've seen it in all sorts of films: Trainspotting, Wolf of Wall Street, Requiem for a Dream, etc. And in every one of those films, we see just how horrid such a life-style is and the kinds of people it can produce; but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is very different.

A surreal, avant-garde comedy about two men, a journalist and a lawyer, searching for the American Dream while drugged-up on any substance that pops to mind and more, Fear and Loathing presents to the viewer a crazy, psychedelic road-trip like none other that arguably glamourises substance abuse.

It opens with our two hippy protagonists, Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, speeding down an open highway to a stiff narration: "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold". Bats swarm around the car as Duke swings his trusty fly swatter around to keep them at bay. Freaky imagery like this becomes the film's nature. We are met with carpet patterns that climb up the walls, bars full of horny reptiles fornicating in blood, a Satanic Dr. Gonzo; the list could go on. Some would think this to be a horrifying sight that argues against drug use, but that is what makes the film so intriguing: this is all part of the fun.

We follow along with this madness wearing a constant smile on our faces, endeared by the two whack-jobs that mercilessly shit all over Las Vegas and its residents. It's a sadistic kind of comedy: one where we laugh at just how careless and sometimes even cruel these people are and can't help but think that maybe that life wouldn't be so bad. Why, it's fun and exciting.

But the film's use of crooked camera shots and trippy, unsettling visuals creates a subtle feeling of wrongness that contradicts the gratuitous portrayal of the drug lifestyle. Amidst the humourous, slap-stick moments, we are haunted by small doses of fear and loathing: when Dr. Gonzo tries to electricute himself in the bathtub, or when faced with the ominous bloody walls of the hotel room after Duke awakes from his intense trip, interspersed with grisly flashbacks of the two going insane in their drug-induced rage.

This is the film's brilliance: it is an honest, in-your-face painting of the true drug culture; the good and the bad. It is no revelation that drugs are better left alone. They can give you an incredible high, and a sense of freedom you would never have found in the real world, but everything has a trade-off. With the high, comes a destructive low. You realise that the life you live is not a pretty one, and that the drugs you shovel into your system on a regular basis only serve as a temporary escape from reality.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is far more subtle on its criticism of drug culture than any other, to the point where some critics argue that it gratifies and supports it. However, at its core, Fear and Loathing informs its viewers that a life of drugs is not one you should live. You may have fun, and you may experience a side of life you could never find in reality, but in the end it is NOT reality. We do drugs to toss a veil over the scary things we don't want to face, like responsibility and maturity, but these are import aspects to success.

That was the fatal flaw of Tim Leary's trip, wasn't it? That he took down with him the grand illusion he helped create: a generation of permanent cripples and failed seekers who never understood the old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the assumption that some force is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thank you for reading!