Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives: Mates (aka ER)

"Mates" is another addition to the "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" canon that, like "Arrest" before it, makes clever use of perspective to deliver a hard-hitting message about how a flippant decision can wreak terrible consequences. The grisliness of the featured scenario is again expounded by putting the viewer in the shoes of one of its participants - in this case, the passenger of a crashed vehicle undergoing emergency treatment, while his self-proclaimed "mate" (the drink driver, who has apparently gotten off with a scuff to the head) hovers on the sidelines, repeatedly interjecting in a futile effort to keep the finger of blame from settling squarely on him. Technically, this might qualify as yet another D&DWL monologue, since the driver is the only one who gets any discernible dialogue, although the arrangement still functions as a two-way conversation of sorts - throughout the film, the victim is heard breathing in what is, on the surface, an impassive bid to remain alive. As the ad progresses, the breathing itself seems to suffice as a response, imparting everything the victim needs to rebuke the driver's attempts at reconciliation.

I have a particular soft spot for "Mates", as it was the D&DWL installment that caused me the most discomfort at the time of the campaign's run - albeit through its print counterpart, not the TV ad itself. As a child, I attended weekly trampoline lessons at a local sports centre, and the trampoline was positioned so that every bounce gave me a tantalising glimpse of the upper level of the centre, which for a stretch had a noticeboard display dedicated to the evils of drink driving. Among the featured items was a poster showing a young man leaning over a disfigured body upon a hospital bed, while advancing the question "At least we can still be mates...can't we?" Behind him was the accusatory glare of a nurse, making it clear where our moral judgements were intended to lie. The face of that nurse, on which I fixated for many a trampolining session, still haunts me to this day. Back then, I interpreted that ominous "...can't we?" to mean that the victim's prospects of survival were grim, despite his mate's unsolicited buoyancy, although the outcome suggested by the TV ad is somewhat different. There, we learn that the victim is expected to pull through, but will lose the use of his legs, and this may not be the only irreparable thing about the situation.

I also give "Mates" props for being the most singularly terrifying PIF of the bunch - in terms of pure fear factor, the only one that gets anywhere close would be the film centred on Denise van Outen's lifeless eyes. I've already credited "Mark" with being the most visually arresting of the D&DWL films, but I'd rate a lot of the images we see throughout "Mates", while less overtly showy in their surrealism, as just as disturbingly weird in their own way. It is one heck of a freaky spot to watch, due to the high level of visual and audio distortion used to depict the victim's wavering grip on consciousness. The medical professionals tending to the victim fade in and out focus, their forms becoming vague and frequently inhuman. We understand that they are performing vital life-saving surgery upon our subject, yet their presence is of little comfort, their air being more of demonic torturers than of carers. There are repeated flashes of red throughout. As the film opens, the sounds of disembodied laughter are heard, inexplicably. At 0:13, the nurse to the right side of the screen has her face stretched into an uncanny smile (the accusatory glare she shoots the driver in the print ad doesn't feature, but this is just as sufficient for late night scares), and I don't know what's even going on at 0:14. The result is quite the distilled 30-second nightmare, in which our protagonist has awoken to a hellish reality - where, on top of everything else, their supposed best friend registers as little more than a loathsome intrusion, an imposing, overly-protesting blot upon their fleeting moments of semi-alertness. He becomes the Devil of own our private Hell - we'd seen a similar device used to illustrate the raw horror of the situation in "Christmas Pudding", in which the protagonist's entrapment in shock and grief was underscored by having her family cackle like demons as she received news of her boyfriend's demise, but it's played here with a greater sense of underlying bitterness.

Both "Arrest" and "Mates" are structured heavily around the abasement of the driver, but whereas "Arrest" invited the viewer to experience that abasement first-hand, by playing out its narrative from the driver's perspective and having every other participant get uncomfortably in their face, in this case the driver (who is unusually corporeal for a D&DWL film) is the impinging figure, albeit one with a crippling lack of authority. The effect of putting us in the victim's shoes, besides showing us what a terribly unpleasant experience it is to end up injured and in intensive care, is to have us ruminate on whether we would be inclined to accept his gestures of contrition, with the engineered gut response being that of course we wouldn't. He casts too pathetic and repellent figure, with his snivelling expressions of two-faced remorse, and he seems too unwilling to accept responsibility for what has happened. Of course, in that regard it's hard not to also think of the successive PIF "Mirror", in that both scenarios involve wounded passengers left with some form of lifelong injury brought about by the driver's drinking, and in both cases an element of victim-blaming creeps its way in, with the insinuation that the passenger is as much at fault for accepting the ride in the first place. In "Mates", it's noteworthy that part of the driver's defence is the assertion that "One of us had to drive". The implication there is that both of them had been drinking, so does that put them both at fault for failing to designate a non-drinking driver before embarking on their boys' nights out? That certainly seems to be the case that the driver is forwarding, but compared to "Mirror", which could be perceived as legitimising this stance, "Mates" has very little tolerance for the his attempts at shifting the blame. Here, the onus is bestowed firmly upon the driver, with the unsettling depiction of the surrounding medics arguably holding up its own mirror to the slack duty of care he provided his companion in attempting to drive him home whilst over the limit. Any possible ambiguity on the matter is roundly removed with the punchline of the film, where the driver, at distasteful proximity, asks the camera, "Still mates, aren't we?" The implied answer is "no". Drink drivers are nobody's mates.