gIA

The Film

Truth in any movie allows our eyes to see what is real. “Based on a true story”. We sit back and observe a life lived by another and watch blissful or miserable moments shape the lives of the depicted characters. This is our way of understanding the part of life that carries no colour. The part that we don’t understand, or possibly the part that we may have met with before, either way, an introduction to death, drugs, rape and more.

Smell the raw meat darling.

With any walk of life being complicated enough as it is, watching a dramatized version of another person’s life, watching them fail, is what makes us feel better and what reassures us that our lives are not all that bad. Any documentary or biography is far more entertaining than movies with cheesy happy endings that a five year old could predict. And one of those chilling works of art is a movie called ‘Gia’.

Based on the short lived life of Gia Marie Carangi, America’s first super model, the movie drags us through her filthy mess of a path as she try’s to further her career in modeling whilst battling her addiction to heroin and coming to terms with her sexuality. The film takes us through a life of curiosity and shows us how one child grows to become a breathing corpse who dies a cold soul at the young age of twenty-six from HIV.

Played by Angelina Jolie whom could only play her best, Gia births the movie and enthralls you with a kick ass personality and wild sense of humour.  You can’t help but be amazed at her. You want to be her. She’s full of life, sweet and delicious and you slowly watch her diminish in substance as she becomes stale and poisonous. Her fight with heroin.

The acting is that of another level. It’s real. Each character is played with such commitment and truth that you forget that you are watching a remake of somebody’s life. You cry with them, not for them. It’s beautiful.

As can be expected, most movies must be exaggerated, and as much as this one is too, it’s still so convincing. I only imagine Gia with a face identical to Angelina Jolie, no matter how many times I research the real Gia. That’s how well Angelina played her role. Certain scenes in the movie, when compared to actual interviews with Carangi are practically word for word. It’s powerful.

With most other movies that are based on true events, I don’t urge to find out more. With Gia, it’s what I needed to do. I started researching her, finding pictures of her and staring at them in awe. Why her? This young beautiful crystal of a thing spun out of control, all to get that feeling of numbness again. How pathetically unfair.

This movie I can watch a good few more hundred times. It’s long. It’s dramatic. It’s raw. It’s there. It’s Gia 

Gia Marie Carangi