A Good Person: Florence Pugh's Pill-Popping Journey is An Ordeal for All
By Jim Slotek
Rating: C-plus
Two hours witnessing the agony of a guilt-ridden pill addict doesn’t exactly have “good times” written all over it. To make it an experience worth enduring requires something more.
Whatever that something is, isn’t in A Good Person, director Zach Braff’s tale of a young, middle-class New Jersey woman (Florence Pugh), who goes, in a filmic instant, from promising young thing on the giddy verge of marriage to, as the protagonist describes herself, “completely f---ed up.”
Florence Pugh examines Morgan Freeman’s real-life-inspired train set in A Good Person.
Pugh, and her co-star Morgan Freeman can carry almost anything, but the material doesn’t nearly match their capabilities. Braff starts the movie with overly “on the nose” irony when he introduces us to Allison (Pugh), at her engagement party to Nathan (Chinaza Uche), entertaining the guests with some mildly-drunk bluesy piano playing and singing.
Seems Allison is well-paid in her job working for a pharmaceutical company (you read that right), but feels guilty about it, and also, in her heart of hearts, would rather be a chanteuse.
Good times pass quickly after that scene. There is a car accident. People die. Allison doesn’t.
A Good Person then skips an entire year, past the point where Allison no longer needs Oxycontin for the pain of her injuries, but clearly needs them for emotional pain. Everyone, including herself, knows she’s an addict. No longer able to cadge a prescription, she is reduced to finding sketchy bars, where the hoods from her high school days hang out and forces her admit point blank that she’s a junkie. “That’s just heroin in a pretty dress,” Mark (Alex Wolff) says derisively to the former prom queen about her “medicine.”
It’s Allison’s life, but for the viewer it’s like waking up from a year asleep, and finding everything changed. Nathan is no longer in the picture. Allison’s often-inebriated mom Diane (Molly Shannon) who is seldom seen without a wine glass in her hand, takes it upon herself to flush pills down the toilet. Subtle.
Teenage girl Ryan (Celeste O'Connor), now an orphan, has become a “wild child,” living with her grandpa (Freeman), a former cop, and as we discover, a former drunk and AA member.
Freeman has a lot of odd jobs in this movie. He narrates the beginning and end with homilies. Even a lot of his dialogue sounds like homilies. He has lost a daughter and gained a granddaughter he can’t handle. His only solace is an elaborate train set that turns out to be based on events in his life.
Clearly, Braff, whose best films – including his best known film Garden State – have the feeling of personal experience, seems like he’'s simply telling a story here. A Good Person follows much the same well-trodden path as any addiction drama. One broken person’s actions leaves other people broken, and fate will invariably bring them together. The ending, in particular, is jarringly counter-intuitive, although it plays out like it’s supposed to be perfect and tidy.
In between, if we indeed sympathise with Allison, we experience a lot of typical addict starts-and-stops with her. If it’s a frustrating experience for this fictional addict, it can be equally frustrating for the audience.
A Good Person. Written and directed by Zach Braff. Starring Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman and Celeste O’Connor. In theatres now.