Matt Farnsworth

Then "Iowa," which opens at the Fleur Cinema and Cafe today, moves to a darker place, revealing several snapshots that signal you're in for a movie both maddeningly negative and brutally believable.

A body. A bloodied face. Tears. A widow. A casket.

The message is clear.

This isn't the Iowa made famous by "Field of Dreams," a relatively happy place of hopes and memories. It's a place equally familiar - the green fields, the wind-swept small town, the aged and solitary barn - but brutally dark, a state that in 2004 ranked fourth in the nation in meth use and saw 5,900 adults and almost 300 juveniles seek treatment for meth addiction.

In Farnsworth's film, meth has replaced baseball as the unseen force that shapes Iowa. It's where dreams go to die, not where they're relived on a baseball diamond.

"Meth is not a pick-me-up thing, it's not a pick-me-up topic," the 30-year-old writer-director-actor said. "It's a very dirty, very dark subject."

Farnsworth plays Esper Harte, a blue-collar, misunderstood Iowan who, with girlfriend Donna Huffman (Diane Foster), becomes addicted to meth and watches his life spiral out of control.

The filmmaker started writing "Iowa" in 2002, after coming to Centerville for his granddad's funeral.

"Everyone was talking about meth," he said. "I just thought, this is so interesting because as a kid I remember Iowa being so wholesome and safe and apple pie. It really compelled me to make a film."

The movie, which was filmed in Centerville, has its share of weaknesses. Its characters are so cliché-ridden, it's hard not to roll your eyes. There's the crooked cop with the God Complex, the evil, oversexed mother who really just wants to be loved, the kind but weak father, the doomed friend and the sexually promiscuous, drug-addicted hanger-on.

But strong performances make the characters believable. Michael Weiss, from NBC's "The Pretender," plays evil corrections officer Larry Clarkson with fire, guts and much-needed humor.

Farnsworth turns in the best performance. His powerful - at times stunning - acting calls to mind what you'd get if you put Brad Pitt in a Martin Scorsese movie.

It's enough to overwhelm a movie that moves so slowly through so much horror. At times you wish the filmmaker would either roll the credits or just kill off the characters and put them out of their misery.

Farnsworth, for his part, doesn't apologize for any of it - not the rape scene, nor the suicide, nor the man whose crotch is burned away, nor any of the other moments that offer a vision of hell if it were relocated to Iowa.

He says everything in the movie is based on true events that have happened in the state because of meth.

Some viewers, though, may not like the Iowa he portrays.

"There's a lot of good movies about Iowa - "Field of Dreams" is one - and that good stuff is true, but this is true, too, and we can't overlook that."

Those who work with meth addicts agree. Some, including Penny Bassman, director of the Powell Chemical Dependency Center at Iowa Lutheran Hospital, says recent laws to prevent people from buying the ingredients for meth don't address addiction.

That means the horror that stems from addiction is still out there.

"Here at Powell, we haven't seen any decreases at all," Bassman said.

"I don't know that you can overdramatize it," said Vicki Sickels, a 42-year-old recovering meth addict who works for Iowa Health Des Moines doing clinical trials on meth addiction. "I personally went to two funerals of people who hanged themselves after using meth. You can't make it too dark ..."

Sickles, who hasn't seen the film, says sometimes the media focus on the negative without stressing that there is hope.

For Farnsworth, the line starts with making movies emotionally powerful enough to make people see the horror of meth. If nothing else, "Iowa" does that with disturbing success.

Copyright © 2006, The Des Moines Register.