“If anyone had a clue how wrong it felt to be sober, they wouldn’t dream of asking you to stay that way.” So says Steve Buscemi (who can bring Oscar-worthiness to even the smallest of parts in the most nominal of films) in the role of Cornell, the director of the rehab center that Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock) is sentenced to for twenty-eight days (ergo the title of the film–pretty clever, no?) in lieu of jail time. Her crime? Driving the “Just Married” limousine intended for her sister, Lily (Elizabeth Perkins), into someone’s Long Island home after offering to go out and replace the wedding cake she just drunkenly toppled onto, much to the delight of her fellow alcoholic boyfriend, Jasper (Dominic West). Through this entire opening sequence, thirteen-year-old me, who saw it when it came out in 2000 because going to movies ad nauseum in suburbia was simply what you did, could only think: Gwen looks like just the type of person I’m going to be when I grow up. That tortured, haunted shtick spoke to me in ways I can’t describe, mainly because I’ve made people believe it’s a shtick for so long that they have no concept of just how serious I am about my agonization over living. But at thirteen, it was all still so glamorous-seeming to grow up into a hot mess without a clue how to transcend into adulthood. Like, “Yeah I’m a beautiful wreck and it’s alluring to everyone (read: men).” Because, at the time, the internet hadn’t manifested into the form of social media that turned everyone into a narcissist no longer interested in “fixing” others, so much as displaying their own more “well-curated” life. Now, if you show yourself in all your grotesquely wasted glory, you’re not going to attract help, just amateur iPhone video footage of your buffoonery. Nothing attractive about that, is there?
And though Susannah Grant’s (perhaps best known for writing the screenplay for Erin Brockovich, released the same year as 28 Days) deft script might come across as overly preachy at times–Christian, even–watching it from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old makes it seem like overcoming alcoholism is just a friend’s suicide–or “accidental overdose”–and a breakup away from easily morphing into a sophisticate. Incidentally, it seemed the early 00s were when it became chic for a junior high age girl to lose all innocence (remember, if you will, those color coded for sex jelly bracelets), and not just because 2003 was the year Thirteen was released. That Bullock’s character is also a writer–well, a journalist, but still–only adds to the seeming seductiveness of the drink. As Gwen defensively puts it to Cornell, “Yeah, I know I drink a lot. I know I do because I’m a writer, and that’s what I do. We drink.” Yes, exactly. To be a good writer means to be a reckless piece of shit with no self-control–jotting down random ideas in a bar before you reach the blackout state and then ultimately losing the piece of paper or napkin that your genius was written down on anyway. Not that you were ever going to find the time amid your busy drinking schedule to actually write a book.
Then there is thirteen-year-old you’s perception of Andrea (Azura Skye, who you might remember from the little loved WB show Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane): so thin and heroin chic. Literally, because she’s a heroin addict–and a soap opera addict, to boot. It would be so cool to go to rehab at seventeen and string gum wrappers together to stave off addiction, you imagine. You also imagine that things will be tied neatly into a bow with Gwen’s alternative love interest, Eddie Boone (Viggo Mortenson), seemingly more sex addict than alcoholic. What could be wrong with that?, you wonder, assuming that all any adult girl could ever dream of is a steady sexual appetite on the part of her boyfriend, not realizing that that appetite extends to many other women as well.
Retrospectively gruesome scenes detailing the physical effects of alcohol also appeared more comedic than scary when you first saw the movie. Who could have known that the passing of a cirrhosis-scarred liver in a jar as a counselor rattled off the statistic, “Cirrhosis is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States. And forty-five percent of the time, it is alcohol-induced,” would take on so much weight later on in life? Slides of a bloodied and battered liver additionally serve to accent the point that this really isn’t all that funny once the liver becomes yours (isn’t everything just always in keeping with the Morrissey declaration, “I’ve seen this happen in other people’s lives and now it’s happening in mine”?).
Additionally, there is the equally as alcoholic boyfriend who doesn’t quite seem to fit in your life anymore now that you don’t share the one common interest that held you together through it all. Or maybe, in your case, you can’t really enjoy the relationship half as much when you’re sober. Start to see all the unsightly cracks in the veneer of what you’ve told yourself is love.
Oh and what about the relatable complaint from Andrea about her mother, constantly disappointed in her self-indulgent, fuck-up ways. “She just hates me. I make her embarrassed,” Andrea says of her mom (who doesn’t show up to Family Day) after Gwen walks in on her with a huge gash on her thigh from her self-mutilation fest. “Yeah! My mom hates me too!,” you think. “She thinks I’m a total good for nothing piece of shit. And I am. I don’t have any sex bracelets. I’m undesirable as all get out probably because I haven’t been liberated by alcohol.”
Subtle, tongue in cheek announcements over the PA throughout Gwen’s stint in rehab also add to the “fun” macabreness of it all, like “Tonight’s Lecture: What’s Wrong With Celebrating Sobriety by Getting Drunk?” At a certain point in the rehabilitative phase, one of the many counselors of the facility bandies the old adage, “The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results.” The thing is, what if your persistent behavior with regard to drinking has nothing to do with expecting different results? What if you’re perfectly content to enter and exit consciousness at your whim? Is that so insane? Apparently so.
This assumption that Gwen will get over her miscreant ways is part of why 28 Days succeeded at the box office (as for The Lost Weekend, I can’t explain how that did well other than it was 1945 and audiences had a higher threshold for unpleasantness). That it’s all part of the psychological folly that is expected to come before realizing that the best way to destroy her demons is by picking up a horse’s foot (you have to see the movie to understand). “The life of the party…before she got a life.” So goes the tagline. But what if, by your estimation, you didn’t have a life until you became a drunk? By the time you become old enough to see 28 Days with a fresh pair of wizened eyes, however, you’ll not be able to turn back the clock on the unenchanting loser you’ve become when, in fact, you yearned to execute the laden with “tomfoolery” life of Gwen somewhere in the back of your mind for years. Ah, and the other thing you’ll realize is that you don’t even have the trauma of having an alcoholic mother who dies while you’re at a fragile age to excuse away your comportment for needing the drink as a lifelong coping mechanism for trauma. Then again, doesn’t lifelong rejection warrant the medicine, too?
