If you’ve ever strolled down a bustling metropolitan city sidewalk, you’ve probably caught glimpses of homelessness in the corner of your eye. Maybe you’ve noticed sleeping bags nestled in doorways and highway underpasses; heard panhandlers beseeching passersby for change; walked swiftly past long queues outside of overcrowded shelters. Rather than discretely observe these folks while pretending not to, Josh and Benny Safdie want us to stare them in the face. In their new film, Heaven Knows What, they treat the sheltered masses as part of their backdrop for a tale of lives lived moment to moment. And what they’ve accomplished strikes with startling clarity.
The Safdies chiefly focus on one life in particular, that of Harley (Arielle Holmes), a young woman who’s as addicted to heroin as she is to her brutally apathetic boyfriend, Illya (Caleb Landry Jones). In truth, that means the sibling duo is actually fascinated with Holmes: The film is an adaptation of her own experiences, using her as-yet unpublished novel Mad Love in New York City as its blueprint. We’re introduced to Harley and Illya in Heaven Knows What’s opening credits in a sequence that begins with the pair wrapped up in a lovers’ embrace and ends in an act of self-inflicted violence. Illya demands proof of Harley’s love be paid in blood—she acquiesces, and we’re left to collect our jaws from the floor. From its earliest moments, much of what the Safdies and Holmes show us is so raw it could only be genuine.
Traditional narratives have conditioned us to believe that for Harley, things can only go up from here. Heaven Knows What isn’t that kind of story. She survives and convalesces in Bellevue, but even in recovery her existence is fraught, and upon discharge she’s more or less right back where she started. Instead of Illya, though, Harley connects with Mike (Buddy Duress), a fast-talking, low-level drug dealer who solemnly swears in his stutteringly poetic manner that he’ll take care of her. It’s a promise made seemingly in earnest, but Mike eventually reveals himself as only a slight improvement over Illya, who constantly hangs over the film like a spectre and occasionally reappears to alternately serve as both tormentor and tempter to Harley.