In 2011, Rihanna released the music video for “We Found Love.” Directed by Melina Matsoukas, its central focus is Rihanna in the role of a drug-addicted “mischief-maker,” crazy in love with the “Clyde” of the duo, played by Dudley O’Shaughnessy. It was made instantly immortal for its indelible images of Rihanna and O’Shaughnessy in a bathtub together, at a skate park together, in a field together (Rihanna running topless through it caused quite the stir in County Down), at a fish and chips restaurant acting fools together and, of course, doing donuts in a car together. All throughout the video, the interspersed images of pills falling, eyes dilating and explosions in the sky are intended to mirror the effects of a drug-addled mind—and how such a mind can also suffer the effects of being addicted to the drug called love (as Kesha once said, “Your love is my drug”).
Rihanna’s relationship intensity being fueled by the cocktail of drugs and abuse speaks to the common intertwinement of both when it comes to a woman staying in such a harmful (on every level) situation. It truly is addictive, this state of masochistic “pleasure-pain.” And that’s why the video’s opening narration from Agyness Deyn is so honest and affecting as she says, “It’s like you’re screaming, and no one can hear. You almost feel ashamed that someone could be that important. That without them, you feel like nothing. No one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless; like nothing can save you. And when it’s over, and it’s gone, you almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back. So that you could have the good.” This much applies to Harley Boggs (Arielle Holmes), a homeless heroin addict flitting from place to place in New York City. Once upon a time, she did so with her beloved, Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), but at the beginning of the Safdie brothers’ Heaven Knows What (based on Holmes’ memoir Mad Love in New York City), she has been forsaken by him as a result of her “catting around.” More than likely in exchange for a much-needed dose of smack. This occurs after the somehow stressful (it’s always stressful with the Safdie brothers) opening scene of the two making out passionately on the ground as though they’re in the privacy of a bedroom instead of in a very public place. But then, there’s no such thing as “dignity” when you’re addicted to heroin…or love.
Moments later, a scene of Harley sobbing outside the library reveals that the dynamic has shifted—and Ilya has cut her off from his supply of love. So it is that the Romeo and Juliet nature (in all its desperate and dramatic flair) of the narrative takes hold, with Harley telling Ilya that she’ll prove her love for him by going to the great length of killing herself as a means to assure his forgiveness. Cold and unmoved by her earnest pleas for him to absolve her, Harley sets about procuring a razor blade by panhandling for the money as the voiceover of her reading a goodbye note to Ilya explains, “Ilya dearest, I need you to know that I love you, baby. And I need you to know how sorry I am. Really. I never wanted to die. I don’t know what will become of you now, and I won’t ever know if you’ll really forgive me. I’ll always love you, even in death, and I’m so sorry that things had to come to this. Love forever, Harley.” It’s that last tortured “love forever” in particular that reminds one of something out of a Lana Del Rey song, with the oft-melodramatic singer promising such things as, “I love you the first time/I love you the last time/‘Cause I’m your jazz singer/And you’re my cult leader/I love you forever, I love you forever.” Yes, it sounds a lot like something born out of Harley’s mind as well. And, appropriately enough, both Ultraviolence and Heaven Knows What were released the same year: 2014.
It was the title track from Del Rey’s sophomore album that also vowed, “I will do anything for you, babe/Blessed is this union/Crying tears of gold like lemonade.” It bears a similar lack of self-respect to what Harley would (and does) say to Ilya, who patently treats her like shit. Worse still, knowing he can do just that and she’ll still come crawling back for more. It is this type of “love” that is so often romanticized in film and, yes, pop songs. Going as far back as the Shangri-Las (straight out of the very decade Del Rey so often culls from for her own lyrical landscapes), the “brooding” “bad boy” dissected in such ditties is often not worth dissecting at all—because he’s just an asshole, full-stop. No further analysis required. But to someone as young and impressionable as Harley, who got into the heroin “scene” because of Ilya to begin with (sounds a lot like Amy Winehouse with Blake Fielder-Civil, don’t it?), there is a litany of “viable” excuses for such behavior. “He’s really sensitive on the inside” or “He’s so brilliant and misunderstood,” etc., etc. Holmes herself met the real Ilya when she was in her teenage years, trying heroin for the first time with him when she was seventeen (“only seventeen/But she walks the streets so mean,” as Lana would describe).
Despite the abyssal spiral Harley falls down because of her dependency on both heroin and Ilya’s love, she echoes the Del Reyian sentiment, “And I love your women and all of your heroin,” as well as, “Creeping around while he gets high, it might not be something you would do” or even, “It hurts to love you/But I still love you.” But where Heaven Knows What is meant to be an unglamorous portrait of life as a drug-addicted lovefool, Del Rey’s purpose in her music often feels like the opposite, with the singer herself even illustriously remarking on how she’s been accused of “glamorizing abuse,” namely in romantic relationships. As for her romanticization of drugs and “the lifestyle,” Del Rey even has a song called “Heroin,” from her 2017 album, Lust for Life. Speaking to her version of Ilya, an ex named Rob Dubuss, Del Rey laments, “I’m flying to the moon again/Dreaming about heroin/How it gave you everything/And took your life away.” The same can be said of Ilya, who overdoses in real life and in the movie iteration of events.
After Harley takes up with another, more “put-together” addict named Mike (Buddy Duress), he ends up getting into an altercation with Ilya in the park. Ilya plays dirty in the fight (by throwing a makeshift morningstar crafted out of several razor blades into Mike’s hand), and, in the wake, Mike nurses his wound in an ATM vestibule with Harley. It’s there that he asks her, “You still love him though right?” “Of course,” Harley says without hesitation. Looking at her like she’s a pathetic madwoman, she continues, “I know he does fucked-up things, all right? It doesn’t matter what he does… I can’t help that I love him.” Some say that’s the very definition of love—being able to look past all the horrid aspects of a person (e.g., Eva Braun with Hitler). And, thanks to how magical it’s all made to seem despite the torture in movies and literature, that’s what many non-fictional characters believe, too.
Mike persists in poking a hole in Harley’s so-called love for Ilya by demanding, “You think you’re gonna be in love with him forever?” She says with certainty, “I know I will be.” Again, this channels the Del Reyian panache of a song like “Blue Jeans,” wherein she declares, “I will love you till the end of time/Probably a million years.” For a brief moment in the third act of Heaven Knows What, we think maybe Harley might get her wish for a love that lasts “till the end of time” as she rejoins with Ilya and the two buy bus tickets bound for Florida (it’s always Florida with New Yorkers). Naturally, Ilya feels obliged to break up the happy reunion for no reason other than a whim (likely based on needing to shoot up without sharing). So it is that he talks the driver into letting him off the bus, leaving Harley behind without a second thought. In many respects, the portion of the film that ensues reminds one of Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, with the similarly street-bound Wren (Susan Berman) finding herself walking along a highway, of sorts (read: the George Washington Bridge), totally lost as to what to do next without the man she had briefly secured in her life. Along the route, a lecherous driver keeps hounding Wren to get in the car, finally clinching the “proposition” with, “Got a better place to spend your time?” Wren looks back at that moment with a look of recognition on her face, as though it’s suddenly dawned on her that, no, she doesn’t.
A comparable look appears on Harley’s face when she finds herself back at a Dunkin’ Donuts sitting amid Mike and his cronies, the former regaling them with some bullshit story. The question Mike had demanded of her previously in the ATM vestibule then comes to mind: “You just wanna be his woman your whole life? Don’t you wanna be your own person?” In the end, that’s what Holmes had to become in order to save herself from the same fate as Ilya’s. As for what became of Harley, it seems she reached that exploding point in her relationship manifested by the conclusion to “We Found Love.” Only to lose it almost as quickly as it arrived. But as it is said, “Easy come…painful as fuck go.”
