The title of this harrowing documentary alone presents enough important questions to prolong engaged argument. On the one hand, it’s the daily and sometimes hourly need of Vancouver’s heroin-addicted population, and on the other, society’s need to finally address its obligation to the process of repairing the damage to people’s lives.
Director Nettie Wild takes great care to present the facts from as many sides as possible. While her film obviously reflects some personal biases, the images and conversations that she captures with her camera are not debatable.
Having spent two years following the efforts of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) to open up a safe injection site, the filmmaker spends as much time at City Hall as she does in the streets, to present as comprehensive a portrait of the issue as possible.
To this end, we follow the efforts of Dean Wilson, who is both a crusader for safe-injection sites, and also struggles to kick his own 30-year heroin addiction. We witness the efforts of Vancouver mayor Philip Owen as he tries to get his four-point government plan of action passed through council. We view the opposition from the city’s business community as they rally against the sites near Chinatown. And finally, we watch the efforts of Anne Livingston, a non-user, who acts as the heart of the addicted community, and is also Wilson’s partner.
While these descriptions are obviously reductive in nature, they attest to the complexity of each narrative thread and how they serve to illustrate an extremely compelling document from various angles.
An exceptional film in form and content, Fix is perhaps even more important in terms of what it represents. As an engaging (and engaged) take on a serious social issue, Fix provides an undeniable account of life on the street though its stark images.
Additionally, although its run in cinemas across Canada is limited (being an independent production largely financed by Wild’s own production company), many of the subjects in the film are present at most of the screenings for Q&A sessions and are part of a larger national tour for the film which aims to address the fundamental problems facing Canada’s underclass at the provincial and national level (since the film was made, Vancouver opened its first clean injection site and recently Toronto’s own Centre for Addiction revealed its new experimental project to provide heroin for users as part of a larger rehabilitation plan).
While politically-engaged documentaries have been around for a long time, recent successes have proven that they are often one of our only sources of alternative discourse-not only are they informative, but they have the power to move an audience in unexpected ways. Fix not only follows in this tradition, but shows us that we are complicit in the solution by making us aware of our basic human obligations.
