“You’re Now Beyond Hope Arizona,” a 2022 drama written and directed by Nick Dugan, is about a traumatized alcoholic forced to commit a crime to pay back his gambling debts. He is totally isolated in the world, unable to reconcile his past, and in a cruel twist of irony, the one person he connects with for help is the person he’s being forced to murder.
The film starts with the main protagonist, Hank (Lucca De Oliveira ), who attempts suicide in a motel bathtub but fails. It quickly becomes apparent that there is a sinister connection to a man in the room next door, Harper (Geordie Kieffer), who seems to have a constant watch over him.
Hank sneaks off and waits outside a location housing an AA meeting. Apprehensive initially, he enters the building and joins the meeting in progress. Here, we get a hint of something traumatic from Hank’s past through a flashback of a child’s cereal bowl.
After an embarrassing episode where Hank tries to sit on a chair and misses, inadvertently smashing a small bottle of liquor on the floor, he waits for the meeting to conclude before confronting Lucy (Elyse Mirto), who was running the meeting in the car park to plead for her help.
Lucy reluctantly agrees by arranging to meet Hank the following day. Hank has a moment of clarity and, upon reaching for a pint of liquor in his truck, pours away the alcohol, which he regrets almost instantly as he battles with his internal struggles that extend far beyond simple addiction.
The next day, Harper presents Hank with a picture of Lucy and explains why she is the target. Hank questions Harper why he is the one to commit the crime and is told that he, too, owes a debt to Harper’s boss, which ‘this’ is the repayment.
Hank leaves the motel where they are staying, checking first that Harper is passed out; he then drives into town to meet Lucy. Upon meeting Lucy, he asks if she can be his sponsor, to which she tells him it’s not allowed in AA and then questions his faith. She explains that the only thing that helped her was to learn to forgive herself. In a moment of self-discovery in which she momentarily lets her guard down to reveal that they are both alkies, she leaves Hank with a note of wisdom and reaffirms that his self-suffering can be eased only by himself.
We then cut to Harper and Hank as they drive through the desert on the way to kill Lucy. Hank tries to defend Lucy by questioning the act they are about to engage in, but Harper calls Hank out that he knows that he attended an AA meeting by following him but forgives him. As they arrive, Harper tells Hank that “you can’t change who you are,” to which Hank replies, “You can change what you do,” as if recognizing the first steps to forgiveness and starting the healing process. Harper affirms that it’s too late for that.
As they enter Lucy’s house, she is nowhere to be found. While in the house, Hank notices a box of ‘Crunch-O’s’ cereal, which immediately triggers the events of his past. Through a flashback, we witness the event that caused Hanks’s life to spiral out of control, and we get an insight into the guilt and shame he carries with him.
We snap back into reality as Hank makes a decision with irreversible consequences, yet in doing so, he is seemingly at peace with his decision.
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The Other Cinema 