Here we have yet another "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" installment with some discrepancy over what we're to call it. I've seen both "Recovery" and "Victim" given as possible candidates, and while I'm not sure which, if either, is the official of the two, that last one definitely has the capacity to cause greater confusion, given that "Victim" is also the title sometimes ascribed to the PIF alternatively known as "Pier". As a title, I'd say it applies a notch more aptly to "Pier", where the dialogue makes it explicit that we're hanging with the victim of a drink driving accident, as opposed to the drink driver themselves. Here, I almost think it gives away more narrative information than is necessary. But then "Recovery" is itself something of a deceptive title, suggesting as it does a more optimistic outcome than the film has to offer. Which is another advantage as a title - it has a certain bitter irony that feels properly in line with the increasing sardonicism the series was slowly adopting.
"Recovery" might actually be the single most anomalous entry in the D&DWL canon, in that there's nothing within that's explicitly connected to either drinking or driving - outside of the closing title card, which supplies our only indication as to the narrative and moral weight we're intended to place on the scenario. We start out in a hospital corridor, making our way into a large room and gradually zeroing in on our protagonist, a patient undergoing physiotherapy to enable him to walk again.We get no further in our exploration than in the intense physical pain he is clearly feeling in present and, if not for the appearance of that familiar slogan at the end, would have no means of knowing just what kind of circumstances have brought him to the situation at hand. The film debuted at the tail-end of the 1980s, and is characteristic of that earlier wave of PIFs under the D&DWL banner, with their haunting austerity and emphasis on the deceiving mundaneness with which long-standing trauma is inevitably assimilated. It assumes a similar faux documentary approach to "Fireman's Story"; unlike most of those early entries it is not a monologue, although the protagonist does still acknowledge the presence of the camera by looking at it, briefly, in a manner that recalls the unspoken aggravation of the protagonist's final glance in "Pier". Compared to "Pier" and "Fireman's Story", in which the camera served as a confidant to the featured monologuer, here there is a sense of the camera as an intrusive presence, its closing in on the protagonist mirroring the pain as it swells and ultimately overwhelms him. Unusual about "Recovery" is this predominant focus on physical suffering, as opposed to emotional turmoil or bereavement, and use of narrative tactics all the more minimalist than those of its peers.
As part of this minimalism, "Recovery" favours a certain moral ambiguity, in choosing to withhold any information on the nature of the protagonist's involvement in the drink driving accident - it is not revealed if he was the drink driver, a passenger of the drink driver, or an external party unfortunate enough to have been caught up in the crash. The possible title of "Victim" notwithstanding, there is no indication within the film itself as to whether we're to view his suffering as a consequences of somebody else's bad choices or of his own, and for the purposes of its particular message that does not matter. The point here is simply to illustrate how thoroughly and distressingly arduous a process it can be, following a serious accident, to regain an ability as ostensibly basic and as easy to take for granted as walking. The film does not attempt to influence our judgements or sympathies beyond the immediacy of the protagonist's struggle; the emphasis is on the anguish of our human frailties, and how universally harrowing it is to have to grapple against them.
On the surface, "Recovery" might actually strike you as one of the "happier" films in the D&DWL series (relatively speaking). The protagonist has survived and it is not specified that there were any additional casualties. Meanwhile, his injuries are evidently less severe than those of the crash survivor in "Pier", and his undergoing rehabilitation suggests the possibility of regaining a degree of the normalcy he experienced prior to his accident. This much is implied in the title "Recovery", and the dominant dialogue heard throughout the PIF is the repeated encouragement of the nurse, assuring him of how well he is doing. Yet the closing moments insist on disturbing that, subverting our preferences for a reaffirming conclusion, as the protagonist is finally overwhelmed by pain and blurts out what is effectively his only statement - "I can't!" This is how it ends, not with the triumph of overcoming a setback, but with the grim reassertion of physical limitation.
(Note: this upload is a mite truncated, missing out the beginning section in the hospital corridor, but the really hard-hitting parts are all there.)
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