August 15, 2002 | 11:48 AM

The other night I watched Leaving Las Vegas which used to be one of my favorite movies. I was nineteen when it came out, and at that time I was enchanted by it�entranced. At 19 Leaving Las Vegas mirrored my ideals and that which I aspired to.

Self Destruction followed by Resurrection and Salvation through pure self sacrificing love.

I hadn�t seen the movie in a couple of years when something made me want to pop it in the VCR�for old times sake, I guess.

It�s still a wonderful film. Well written, beautifully acted and shot.

In fact, I can�t think of any other film in the past ten years that contained such subtly drawn and complex characterizations. The scene in which Nicholas Cage, having just been fired, blurts out to his boss guiltily and pathetically, �I�m so sorry� is gut wrenchingly true. And the dichotomy of Elizabeth Shue�s reluctant stoicism and desperate vulnerability provides the emotional center of a tragic but still inspirational story.

In Leaving Las Vegas neither actor judges nor makes moral pronouncements about the characters they portray. The characters are simply people who are reaching out clumsily for something in this world of substance. In the hands of different actors these characters would have come across as stereotypes (Anti-hero Drunk and Hooker with the Heart of Gold). But Elizabeth Shue and Nicholas Cage imbue their roles with empathy and humor and a sadness so pure that the whole movie aches with fierce desolation and longing.

But.

Really, Leaving Las Vegas just made me very very angry.

What ran through my mind over and over again as I sat through Nicholas Cage�s descent into end stage alcoholism was this� What a fucking waste. How do people get so lost? How do people wind up in these hopeless and helpless situations?

And what ran through my mind as I watched Elizabeth Shue�s attempts to save him was�He�s a lost cause and you saving him won�t save you. Why are you throwing your energy into something so senseless when you are such an intelligent sensitive woman?

The fact that there was really and truly love between these two people made it even more difficult for me to sit through. That they probably could have been happy had they transcended their psychic damage�had they been able to rise above their anguish and hunger � I don�t know. It upset me a great deal.

What bothered me so much about Leaving Las Vegas now that I have a few more years under my belt is that although the movie (begrudgingly) acknowledges that yes, alcoholism is damaging and isn�t it sad and so forth, the overall attitude of the director towards the material is reverence and veneration. The film unabashedly romanticizes the very qualities and themes I was enamored of at age 19:

Self Destruction followed by Resurrection and Salvation through pure self sacrificing love.

But what we�re really talking about here isn�t nearly so high minded. What we�re really talking about is obsession.

In Leaving Las Vegas Nicholas Cage is obsessed with alcohol and with destroying himself. And Elizabeth Shue is obsessed with saving him.

It�s the big lie. A great cultural myth that obsession�with a substance, with a person, with an idea�is the same thing as love. That obsession defines self and elevates self to the level of sainthood. That annihilation of the ego through such obsession (usually described as �devotion� or �dedication�) allows us to ascend to some higher reality� think Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, and Paliacci. And think also modern celebrity worship and the epidemic of eating disorders.

In any case, when you have an obsession, be it a person or a chemical or an ideology, what you are truly obsessed with is your own ego. The person or chemical or ideology is simply a stand in. Obsession has nothing at all to do with love and everything to do with narcissism. And narcissism is merely the defense mechanism of a fractured personality�one who has no innate sense of itself and thus to insure its continued existence, projects itself onto something else. Narcissus after all was not obsessed with himself but rather his own reflection. See what I�m getting at?

Self Destruction followed by Resurrection and Salvation through pure self sacrificing love.

Listen�there is NOTHING romantic about self destruction. There isn�t. There is NOTHING romantic about addiction. It�s a horrible stinking lie. It�s an illusion and a deception from the get go. It is blindness and decay and loss. It is Dracula seducing the willing victim. It is a swindling of selfhood.

And resurrection and salvation can be found through sacrifice, but not sacrifice of our hearts and souls�but rather the sacrifice of our fears. Our delusions. Our old and outmoded ideas about mankind and the world. It is through this sacrifice that we find transcendence.

Alcoholism. Romantic fixation. These activities create holograms of transcendece. They both leave us drunk and unaware and lost and obliterated.

Anyway...

I don�t know. Watching it bothered me a great deal. I�ll probably watch it again this weekend. These are the kinds of things I�ve been thinking about lately.

That and what to make for dinner tomorrow when Jenn comes over.