Protégé

When I finished watching Protégé, I did not feel that I had fully understood it.

The title could refer to someone being groomed to inherit a drug business. But does it mean anything beyond that? In terms of plot and setting, the film did not seem so different from other crime films. What stopped me was a line at the beginning and end, which I understood as: “I took drugs to prove that addiction could be overcome.”

That sounds absurd, yet it opens up another question: why does someone start taking drugs? By the end, the film points toward emptiness. But what does emptiness mean? Having nothing worth committing to? Or no longer being able to feel a sense of self through ordinary relationships and everyday experience?

I did not have an answer, and I did not want to pretend I understood the film simply because it was highly rated. For now, I am leaving the question here.