Withdrawal

[1973 / 26 mins / B&W / 16mm / 4:3 format]

A stringently realistic portrait of a heroin-user confined voluntarily in a Dublin psychiatric hospital. Young and old, male and female inmates are seen isolated and alone. A woman’s voice begins a distressed monologue. As it becomes increasingly desperate, a series of close-ups of her writhing hands gives way to shots of fluid spurting from the addict’s syringe. Eventually deciding to leave the hospital, the addict returns to the city but fails to reconcile with his wife. “You can’t expect to go through life in love all the time,” he says. Regarding the insertion of a scene from the 1935 film version of the War of Independence story, Guests of the Nation, Comerford explains: “It indicates a questioning of the foundation of the Irish state, for better or for worse, what we aspired to become as against what we actually became.”