Leaving Las Vegas, directed by Mike Figgis and based on the autobiographical novel by John O'Brien, is an emotional story about an alcoholic who rejects life and wants to drink himself to death in Las Vegas, and an unselfish prostitute who loves him the way he is. Ben, played by Nicholas Cage, was a former movie producer in Los Angeles and has obviously crumbled in the glamour world of Hollywood which is shown in the opening scene. Here Ben is already an alcoholic when he disturbs former colleagues that are embarrassed of his appearance at the restaurant. Ben is unstable and a mess when one of the men give him money and tell him not to contact him again. Ben then gets fired and ultimately decides to drink himself to death in Las Vegas, a …show more content…

The story is done very well because it starts off showing us the situation of the two main characters as they are and as the will be throughout the movie, which is finally realized when Ben tells Sera: "You can never, ever, ask me to stop drinking." Figgis begins the story leaving us without prejudice over the two characters because we have no idea about why Ben's wife left him and why he is an alcoholic as well as to why Sera is a pimp-dependant hooker. We are left no possibility to judge their past so we can concentrate on their future. The movie has no real climax, we are narrated through the story by Sera talking to us as if we were her therapist and she was opening up to us about her relationship with Ben, and she tells us that there is basically no happy end. Leaving Las Vegas is a realistic narrative because it portrays a slice of the life of these two characters. In terms of ideology, Leaving Las Vegas is implicit, because the protagonists represent people that live on society's borders and they allow us to make our own judgment on how we reflect on the story. Normally we are shown reasons for the characters to be in such desperate positions, but Figgis does not give us any sentiment for the character, but gives us the opportunity to wish for a better future for the couple, even though we know this will not happen. They are together because they are desperate and need