LEBANON

After the buzz Lebanon got at the Venice Film Festival,  the film moved to my need-to-see list. So I jumped on the opportunity when I saw it playing at the New York Film Festival. As impressive as this film is, especially considering that its Samuel Maoz’s first feature length film, there’s an aspect of the film that drags on and unfortunately is on the border of crossing the line to conveying all that’s a cliché about war.

The first shot of the film is of a sunflower field on a bright blue day. The camera stands still for almost a minute as we absorb the light, the colors and the open air before we enter into a claustrophobic world filled with 4 men and their traumatic experiences. The next 80 minutes or so of the film is in a military tank as they move into a Lebanese town to hunt down Palestinian guerillas.  As they move along the village, our only contact with the outside world is through the hole that is used to shoot the target.  It’s a limited vision that often frustrates the viewer for being so confined in a space that’s so close to the endless world outside. This is how the soldiers see the world that is beyond their grasp, this what they need to see. They only need to see the target and nothing else, a metaphor to the way governments are made to see their “enemy”. Because when you see too much, you care too much, and all the anger and hatred with which you destroy the enemy becomes insignificant.

There are a couple of moments that provide a sort of normalcy for the audience as well as the soldiers, but they are few. Our main guy, who is responsible for pulling the trigger, tells a masturbation story that cracks everyone up. Even though the story isn’t that funny, you find yourself so tense that all the emotions that you feel are extreme and irrational.

One of the most devastating scenes is when the tank pulls up to a demolished building and there’s a family in the second floor being held hostage by the Palestinians. There is no conversation just yelling and beating and pushing and shoving.  It’s savage, inhuman and unbearable. Everyone is telling each other to back away and calm down. The father of the family is shot instantly leaving the mother and baby weeping. The soldiers then take the baby away and the mother goes delirious. She looks straight into the tank through which she looks at us, blankly. Her clothes are ripped and she can barely stand still. The Israeli soldier covers her with a blanket, a statement to show that humanity is not lost, I guess.

While these moments are traumatizing, what affected me most was when people who are outside the tank look straight into the target hole. They look without blinking, without flinching. It’s as if time stops at that moment and the entire focus is on us. The audience is made to feel so uncomfortable and judged by these victims that we’re forced to fidget in our seats and look away. This was the most powerful tool in the movie.

After long minutes of distress, the film ends on the same sunflower field, but filmed from a different angle. You’re able to breathe once again. But this doesn’t change the way you leave the theatre.

All in all, it’s an impressive movie, in that Maoz shot most of it inside an actual tank and its based on his own experiences. The cinematography and the intensity delivered through the use of camera angles are great. However, there isn’t much to the film besides stating the obvious fact that wars are damaging, irrational and brutal and young kids are ruined once they’re sent to fight for their country. We don’t get to see anything about the actual Lebanon war or anything relating to it. I do understand that the statement is that it’s not about one war, but all of them, but I felt like we’ve seen so many of these movies that this would’ve been a great opportunity to make something that crosses over.

DER BAADER MEINHOF KOMPLEX

It’s a fact that German films about war are very hard to endure, especially after seeing so many Hollywood films where even war is romanticized (ugh). Der Baader Meinhof Komplex is one of these films, however, the brutality and the unforgivingness of German cinema doesn’t travel through in this film because it eliminates the intellectuality that European films usual strive on.

This is the true story of Germany’s RAF (Red Army Factions) who rebelled against bureaucracy, Vietnam, capitalism etc. by robbing banks, kidnapping people responsible for the easily broken German democracy and murdering those guilty of fascism. What begins as an ideological statement turns into a civil war against any figure of authority.  Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) is a journalist turned rebel who soon realizes that writing about what’s wrong with Germany will not get her anywhere. Being constantly criticized and judged by Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) for being a bourgeois and sitting at the back seat of history, she decides to leave her intellectual outbursts aside. She grabs a gun instead and goes to the Middle East with the rest of the crew to be trained for their plan. They learn to shoot, to combat, to fight, to hide and everything in between.  She leaves everything she loves behind, including a boyfriend and 2 kids as she blindly pursues her mission.

After months of training, the rebels go back to Berlin and begin putting their plan to play. They burn down embassies, bomb cars of judges who are corrupt, trespass on those who have wronged the system and kill anyone who is “against” them.  Meinhof continues writing open letters to her readers about their actions and what the future will bring if society doesn’t change. RAF eventually end up in prison, but during their reign have gained a huge fan base.

In prison, Meinhof slowly moves away from her rebel friends and loses her mind. Her writing style becomes even more aggressive and she begins to question everything. She accepts their fate and blames Baader and her his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) for ruining her life. Eventually, they find her dead in her own cell. This becomes the 2^nd death from their group, so the remaining members publicize these deaths as the ill treatment of prisoners. This awakens even more outburst and uprising for the outside followers.

However, after many months of being locked up in a prison where they meet in a living area during the day, the team soon realizes too that there’s no way out.

One early morning, while the guards do their morning check, they find that every member of RAF have killed themselves. Their admirers and faction realize that they’re responsible for continuing what was left undone.

This is a very brief encounter of what goes on, but since most of the film is the actual violence itself, there isn’t much to tell. Although it’s an interesting part of history and one that almost shows us the repetitive mistakes Germany has made over the course of their history, we don’t actually get the thought process behind it. The yelling and the shooting never stop, which is very logical since these are extremely passionate people, however, I think the amount of anger that’s portrayed blurs the line between showing why these people did what they did and how they did it. It can be interpreted in the sense that, they themselves lost that line as well. It became so easy to murder people and be feared that they lost track of why they were doing this.

Then on the other hand, from what we know from history, they were in fact terrorists and nothing can deny that and maybe giving them the opportunity on screen to show their reasoning might’ve made them heroes, which they are definitely not. Some critics judged the film for glorifying terrorism, with which I completely disagree. These people are savages and you can see that very well.

As I’m writing this, I realize that I didn’t dislike the intellectual approach of it as much as I thought. I guess what bothered me was that it wasn’t thought provoking or stimulating which is what I’d like to see in these movies. The director shows you what happened, but you’re not given any window to think. In that way, I thought it was a bit “Hollywood” and that did bother me. I see these movies to be able to talk about them after, if I can’t do that, what can I do?

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

I used to love Tarantino’s movies, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs. I was never drawn to the violence in his movies, even though they seemed cinematically beautiful, I felt it wasn’t what made him unique. It was his dialogue, the way he wrote his characters and how he allowed them to dominate the screen. I would compare a lot of other writer’s to Tarantino’s use of dialogue and always thought of him to be superior in that sense. Then, he went ahead and did Kill Bill and Death Proof. He lost me there. Despite both being cinematically beautiful and well made (Death Proof not so much), they lacked his wit and relentless use of words. Always having strong options about filmmakers I started to dislike his movies and himself. But then, he did Inglorious Basterds. One of the best movies I’ve seen all year. He brought back his greatness with his characters, his story and his cinematic genius. He also introduced the world to Christoph Waltz, the man that would scare the shit out of anyone, even a basterd.

The film opens in a small farmhouse in France where a father and his three daughters lead a calm and, in most cases, uninterrupted life. It’s when Waltz’ character, Col. Hans Landa, comes into their house with his Nazi soldiers, does the whirlwind of events begin. Perhaps one of the most intense twenty minutes of any movie, Waltz charms Monsieur Lapadite (Denise Menochet) into finally telling him how he’s hiding a Jewish family under his farm. The end of this scene is obvious; the soldiers march in and kill the family, but their daughter Shosannna (Melanie Laurent) manages to escape. This is where chapter 1 ends and the film begins. I won’t go through the entire movie, as it is complicated, yet very understandable. Brad Pitt’s character, Aldo Raine comes in Chapter 2 while recruiting his fellow Americans to his mission “Inglorious Basterds” where their only aim is to kill “Nazis”. Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt and as usual nothing special about him shines on screen. By sticking his chin out during the entire movie doesn’t add much to his acting skills, although I’m glad he did Burn After Reading with the Coen Brothers, because it’s very evident that his comedic skills were trained there and have carried on to his Aldo Raine.

Amongst the many great things in this movie, such as the international cast, the 4 different languages, Hitler and the intertwining stories, the most significant part for me was the role of movies in the movie. Without giving anything away, Tarantino manages to make movies a significant character. Lt Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is a movie critic turned soldier who references people like David O Selznick as his British commander is explaining to him the undercover operation that’s about to happen. It’s references and characters like these that truly elevate this movie to another level. I can’t explain anymore of this as I will be bound to give the ending away. But you will see what I mean when I say that movies save the day…again. There are three scenes in which Tarantino brilliantly tenses the audience so much that you feel uncomfortable in your seat. The first one is the opening scene in chapter 1, the second is Col Lamda’s little talk with Shosana at a German restaurant in Paris and the third is at a bar where the basterds go in as undercover spies to plot their mission. Tarantino is so brilliant in choosing his moments. When he shows us the victim, when he moves away from the victim and focuses on the evil and when he locks them into the camera, he forces the audience to be locked in as well. You feel claustrophobic, you feel like you can’t escape and you so desperately want the scene to be over, but you realize you’re enjoying the stress so much that you feel a part of the movie. You feel like you’re the victim because you don’t have a choice. There are no words. These scenes are at least 20-30 minutes long and to be able to convey that feeling of utter desperation through words and a tightly wound camera, I think is art.

After having waited to make this movie for 10 years, Tarantino has gone back to his roots and has created a masterpiece. He has broadened his fan base by casting Brad Pitt as a basterd and making him the single marketing tool in the US. He has introduced people like M Laurent, Christoph Waltz (now cast as the evil character in Green Hornet) and Daniel Bruehl to the American audience and has managed to cross the line of making a worldly film.

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE

After the success of The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City, fashion has become great movie material. The Devil Wears Prada, loosely based on the life at Vogue with the devil that is Anna Wintour, I mean, Miranda Priestly, tells a story about an out-of-the-loop girl who finds herself in the middle of the fashion church and is sucked into the glamour and grandiose of the situation. We find her charming and root for her to succeed. Despite Miranda Priestley’s horrible treatment of her, we find the charm and determination in her Meryl Streep’s depiction of the devil to be attractive, noteworthy and very likable. The Anna in this movie, not so much.

However, bound to be compared, September Issue is a weak and uninspired documentary about how Vogue’s biggest issue, the September issue is made. Our lead characters are Anna Wintour and her fashion editor Grace Coddington. The film examines the impact of these two women on the release of fashion’s most expected magazine issue. Anna Wintour’s passive aggressive ways of removing Grace’s chosen photographs and her dominating effect on designers are well established. The story continues as Sienna Miller, the cover girl of the month, goes to Rome for her photo shoot and Grace continues to work through her new shoot in Paris. Anna chooses the outfits for every picture, if not chooses, certainly approves or in most cases, disapproves. It is the journey of many people like Grace who come up with original ideas and go about putting them in perspective, only to be shot down by Ms. Wintour. There’s a reason she’s been there for 21 years, she knows what she’s doing.

All in all, the film is a very superficial look at the life at Vogue, in which the director tries so hard to focus on Anna and make her out to be a human being. However, I couldn’t help, but get bored and lose interest that I wondered constantly, so how does a Vogue issue get made?

It’s a known fact that Anna is a tough woman who has no patience or room for mistakes. The director, RJ Cutler seems so fascinated by Anna’s commercial “face” that he insists upon filming the moment where Anna reveals her vicious appeal. When she’s in with Oscar de la Renta and Jean Paul Gautier, she owns the room as two of the biggest designers (separate scenes) lose all charm and control and wonder about their studios trying to get their models to show their “still not finished” work. The camera stays on Anna’s face until she looks elsewhere and lets out a sigh that confirms the audience’s knowledge of Anna, “she’s mean!”

While we can’t stand Anna, we love Grace. She’s an ex model who is praised by all her colleagues, including Anna, on her exceptional eye and imagination. She, however, after having worked with Anna for 20 years, still gets shocked when her work is not appreciated. She lets it out and is quite honest about everything. While she is loud and open about her thoughts and criticisms, Anna murmurs under her lip and simply removes photographs from the issue with almost no explanation. They’re juxtaposed in the film and that is the main story that Cutler concentrates on. However, the problem with that is, it seems as if he got the idea to apply that midway through shooting. It feels disconnected and spontaneous and not in a good way.

Cutler’s efforts to make Anna seem more humane towards the end of the movie seem forced. When interviewed by the man behind the camera – who Grace instinctively puts in her photo shoot and he is criticized by Anna for being fat- she talks about her siblings being involved in world issues and more important matters and seems hurt about their views on her; “ they think what I do is amusing”. She lingers on that thought, whilst the camera refuses to walk away as it is the one moment, we might feel…something.

I was left disappointed that after watching a documentary about Vogue’s September Issue’s road to publication, I still have no idea about the details that make this issue? But I know once again, Anna is not easy.

THE DOORS

I’ve always been fascinated with the 60s, if I could go back in time, that’s where I’d like to go. Lately, I’ve been even more fascinated with the icons who ruled the 60s and Jim Morrison in particular. Mostly because of how he started wanting to be a filmmaker so I figured I’d give Oliver Stones’ The Doors a chance, since Stone did have an edge back in the day, even though I can never like him.

The Doors is a recount of the story of the legendary rock band and their rise to fame. Even though the film is titled after the band, the story evolves mainly around Jim Morrison and his most unique and out of this world philosophy that brought his life to an end. Some say that the film is far from the truth and have refused to collaborate with Stone during production; i.e. Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist and co-founder of The Doors. However, what he does do is give a brief history about very specific events with which the world has known Jim Morrison, and that’s all.

All in all, Oliver Stone has done a very one-note film that doesn’t go beyond the cliché image of a rock star. Yes drugs are bad and yes they kill people, but what is it about this guy that gave the world another push in a time when people were ready to go and fight for everything that was wrong.  Stone takes the “drug” element and overdoes it, whether it be stylistically or thematically. From the very first minute, we find ourselves in a constantly twirling world where everything seems to be more colorful, more vibrant yet so easily destructible. Morrison constantly takes acid and he drinks excessively as he tries to keep up with the new world that fame has introduced him to.

This is a time when a new generation was born, the counterculture, the psychedelic rockers, the anti war movement…Stone fails to convey the importance of this as well. There’s a scene where Morrison meets Andy Warhol and stares at him for minutes as Andy tells him how beautiful of a face he has and that he’d love to use him in one of his movies. Morrison blankly stares at him and then takes off as Andy’s attention diverges elsewhere. It is rare moments like these that Stone conveys the political and cultural atmosphere of the time.

Once an aggressive and very opinionated filmmaker (Platoon, Wall Street), it is through a few shots of TV coverage that he shows the Vietnam War and people rising against it. Morrison was extremely against the war and made sure he cursed at the people every chance he got “You’re all a bunch of fuckin’ slaves!” he yells. He up heaves against any element of power and disregards anything conventional “Where’s your will to be weird?”.  Stone, surprisingly manages to underline the importance of these moments and lets us even linger on them. How gracious of him.

What Stone also fails to do is communicate in any sort of depth, Morrison’s eccentric way of life. This was an aspect that made him different from everyone else. His intellectuality, his ability to quote Nietzsche and Albert Huxley on the spot was what made him stand out. In the early stages of Morrison’s life, we do see him write poetry and make films, but this is long lost after he becomes famous and Stone makes him to be a weird man whose eccentricities are never justified.

The band constantly talks about how they work on every song together and that on stage they have an impeccable chemistry, a fact we know from their conversation and not from what we see. Stone’s portrayal of those stage performances are basically Morrison going insane from the alcohol and drugs and his band members starring at each other in fear, scared of what might come next. These things happened for sure, but why not expose the viewer to both sides of this world, why not show us that yes Morrison was a messed up man, but he had something that made him a legend, why not try and show that more frequently more persistently. I don’t know, maybe I don’t get it.

Jim Morrison was a man who never understood the earthly way of life; as a matter of fact he was often called Dionysus, the Greek God of wine and the inspirer of ecstasy and ritual madness. He had interest in things that were beyond this world, unacceptable and delirious things at times maybe, but still he never functioned as a “regular” man. His lyrics were always “quirky” and even his band members didn’t get it. Stone puts forth his feverish outbursts, the arrest in Miami on stage, the overdose, basically a lot of the commercial aspects of Morrison’s life, which the average person knows about. Drama drama drama…it sells.

While Stone has disappointing majorly, Val Kilmer does a pretty decent job of embracing Morrison and seems to be getting what he’s about more than Stone. He conveys Morrison’s struggles and pain and manages to play off of them when he needs to on stage. I never took Kilmer seriously, mostly because I haven’t seen him in many films, but he has created an almost iconic Morrison and has captured some of the essence which Stone hasn’t.

More and more as I find myself enthralled in that era, I sympathize with these icons who tried so hard to make a difference and rebelled against everything. Hendrix and The Who and Woodstock…. I may have a very idealistic view of that time, living 40 years after, but it awakens something inside me when I read about these people who didn’t think about their next paycheck or their careers or their cars, but wanted to take a stand against a war, against the twisted minded politicians and the narrow minded crowd.

Does the film not work because he made it 1991 and wasn’t inspired by the era, just the drama that went on around that time? Where’s that guy who pissed everyone off when he did Platoon? Where is the “edge” when you need it?

JULIE & JULIA: A CUPCAKE OF A MOVIE

Written and Directed by: Nora Ephron

Based on the book by: Julie Powell (“Julie&Julia) and Julia Child (Mastering the Art French Cooking)

Cast: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina

US Release Date: August 7, 2009

Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/julieandjulia/

I often find it best to write about a film right after having seen it. Not necessarily because the visual is fresh in my mind, but because the fantasy is still there. After having walked 3 blocks home from 19th street, I got worried I would lose this beautiful feeling with which I was left as the credits rolled for Julie & Julia.

Julie& Julia is two true stories about two women whose lives were rescued by cooking. Yes, it is that simple.

Julie is a struggling writer who has unfortunately come to terms with the fact that she’ll never be published and is working at a government agency right after 9/11. However, despite all, she’s happily married to a very caring man, Eric. They’ve just moved to a horrible apartment in Queens and Julie has hit rock bottom. The weekly lunch date with her college friends who have all turned into upper-east-side robots adds to her misery. After picking her brains out over a lovely meal of bruschettas with Eric, Julie decides the only way she will save herself is to write a blog about Julia Child’s cookbook. She promises to her non-existent number of readers that she will finish 524 recipes in 365 days.

Through a series of meltdowns, fights with her husband, bad days at work, burning boeuf bourguignon, she manages to finish her blog and garners the interest of a NY Times writer. Her profile grabs the attention of an endless number of publishing houses and her dreams come true. Through Julia’s cookbook, she learns to be a better person, an unselfish wife and an incredible cook. Yes, this is the ending, but for once, it truly is about the journey.

In the meantime, we cut back and forth to Julia Child as she begins her own adventure. She’s married and madly in love with her husband Paul, who is a diplomat and is transferred from city to city. It’s when they’re sent to Paris that Julia discovers her calling. She finishes Le Cordon Bleu, the renowned cooking school and begins to write a book with two other French ladies. However, it’s not an easy task. It’s impossible to find a publisher for a 700-page book and it’s even harder to do so when Paul keeps getting transferred to Köln, to Oslo, to Boston. Julia too, survives the rough patches with the support of her angelic husband and becomes a legend.

There is something fantasy-like in the Julia Child parts of the story. Cooking is like her magic wand and the food is the magic itself. Julia, of course, is the fairy godmother. What is it about this world that seems so unreal?

The kitchens, the supplies, the plates, the clothes, the cars all seem to be apart of this land that Julia has created for us. Reality kicks in once or twice when we’re subtly told that she’s unable to have a baby, but those scenes are immediately followed with more food. I find it almost impossible that someone like this once existed. No wonder Julie dedicated a year of her life to this woman. Certainly, this is all made possible by Meryl Streep’s incredible portrayal of Julia Child.

I will take the high road and not compare Amy Adams’ performance to Streep’s, because first its unfair and second, it’s Merly Streep, it should be illegal to compare others to her.

When you’re left examining the two lives side by side, you’re left thinking about the periods they represent. On the one hand you have the postwar Paris that is filmed like a flight of the imagination. Opportunities seem endless, colors seem vibrant and even the French look alive! On the other hand, you have miserable Queens post 9/11 and even a more miserable apartment above a pizza parlor that seems like a cracked toy house waiting to break down. In 1951 you have Julia’s dream-like kitchen with pots and pans hanging from the walls as knives and spoons work away, and in 2002 you have Julie’s excuse of a kitchen, which can barely fit the 3 lobsters she so devastatingly cooks.

One very recurring image that stands out is the image of butter melting. Can you imagine in 2009 people using this much butter? Even though I’m not a fan of butter, it reminded me of all the great things we’re replacing today in order to be healthier, quicker, cheaper… It reminded me how fast we’re losing the quality things in life and replacing them with meaningless materialistic “things” that disappear so fast. When Julia cooks you can almost feel the food coming alive, you see the way she eats and the way she sips her wine. It’s an adventure for her and she devours every minute of it. There’s nothing rushed or mediocre about it. Her laughter is never distant, her joy never absent. It’s through her love for cooking and her dedication to the best that we fall in love with her.

Julie, to her credit, is able to follow Julia’s path very well and not just in making every recipe, but in doing it as an education of character. When I was watching Julie and Eric’s dinners, it made me question the validity of their setting. Barely affording that apartment, Julie makes Artichauts au Naturel avec Beurre au Citron and Cassaoulet. Why is it so hard to believe that people in NY forget the value of a home cooked meal with a loved one and that a scrumptious dinner can be a regular thing rather than a special night? It’s not even a question of money, but of quality of life. It made me want to run to Julia’s kitchen and watch her as she so calmly prepared her food during the entire day sometimes. I might not be making sense, but yet again I find myself longing for a simpler time when things were delicious, always.

All in all, Julie & Julia refrains from using extremely dramatic moments, overly written reveals and exaggerated self-discoveries. This is a story about two women living in very different times who cling on to cooking as a way to bring the best out in them and in doing so they manage to remind me about how much I miss home…

PUBLIC ENEMIES

Directed by: Michael Mann

Written by: Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann, Ann Biderman

Based on book by: Bryan Burrough

Cast: Johnny Depp (“John Dillinger”), Christian Bale (“Melvin Purvis”), Billy Crudup (“J Edgar Hoover”), Marion Cotillard (“Billie Frecehette”)

US Release: July 1, 2009

Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/publicenemies/

It will be rare that I don’t start off with how incredible Johnny Depp is in a film, but this time, it was Michael Mann who grabbed my attention and utter admiration. But yes, Johnny Depp, was incredible.

Mann’s past films; The Insider, Collateral, Miami Vice, never seemed to me to be about the director, but rather about the stories concerning men struggling to “do good” in the corrupt world. However, after having seen Public Enemies, I have been enlightened. As Manohla Dargis (NY Times film critic) so beautifully puts it, “Mr. Mann makes big-budget art films”. I now see what she means. (http://films.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/films/01enemies.html?scp=2&sq=public%20enemies&st=cse)

Public Enemies tells the story of John Dillinger, one of the greatest criminals of the 1930’s depression era, known for his “Robin Hood”esque way of robbing banks. In a time when America was suffering through its biggest economic setback, very much like today, a set of criminals had the time of their lives and Dillinger was one of them. The strong and unwavering man he was, Dillinger managed to run away from every prison and became the number one Wanted on the FBI’s list.

Robbing bank after bank in a sleek black coat and a machine gun, Dillinger is the boss and everyone knows it. Everything moves along smoothly, despite the FBI hunting him down. The more he is on TV, the more the nation loves him. Nevertheless, his carefree way of life is interrupted when he meets the half French half Native-American coat-check girl, Billie Frechette. Enthralled by her poise and beauty, Dillinger sees a sense of freedom and individuality, yet a search for a bigger life in her. He manages to convince her to be his and only his and travel with him through whatever life throws at them.

Love means weakness, love means exposing yourself. From this point on, the cat and mouse tale between Dillinger and the cops becomes a high-tension chase story as you root endlessly for the criminal to have it all.

Michael Mann does such a delicate job with this film, that if you were to watch it on mute, through the camera actions alone, you would get the emotions he’s trying to deliver. It is in fact an art film, because despite the $100million budget, it’s not about the explosions and the chase scenes, it’s about Dillinger and showing the audience who this man was on a much deeper level.

The film opens with Dillinger’s first escape from prison. While everyone is shown head on, when Dillinger finally enters the picture, we only see half his face because of the shadow and the placement of his hat. Who is this man? That’s the story we’ll be seeing and Mann delivers that message from the first second. What makes this first scene even more thrilling is the use of the hand-held camera. You almost want to reach out and stop the scene because you can’t concentrate on anyone. On the one hand, it feels as if we’re running away as well and on the other, you can feel the arm length distance Mann decides to put between Dillinger and us.

Mann uses a bird’s-eye-view shot of the first prison and establishes the vastness of his story and the distance with which we begin to view Dillinger. However, this changes over time, especially when he meets Billie. As they’re dancing their first dance, the camera is tight on both these characters and we have been allowed to finally enter their inner world.

Ever since I found myself admiring the films of the 60s and 70s, I’ve always longed for that type of filmmaking to return. Towards the end of the second act, right after their final robbery, the gang is hiding out at a country house. Some are secluded in their rooms others are entertaining themselves. It is when Melvin Purvis surrounds the forest around the house, that things begin to escalate. As two people leave and get in a car, Purvis can no longer control his ambition and urging desire to kill Dillinger and screams out the attack. The next 5-10 minutes is a shoot out scene between the gang and cops. This immediately reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). When Butch and Sundance reach the end of the road and acknowledge that there’s no turning back, they attack the police and a very similar scene occurs. In both, it is the criminals you want to see come out alive.

What elevates Dillinger’s status to a classy criminal is his love for movies, a fact I couldn’t ignore mentioning. Towards the end, we see him watching the film Manhattan Melodrama with Clark Gable, and this is not the only time. He looks up to the gangsters portrayed in these films and aspires to have their class, charm and stability. Mann and his crew’s depiction of Dillinger is somewhat inspired by these films not only as a biographical fact, but rather as an important aspect in making a film that is reminiscent of those times. It’s through Depp’s astounding portrayal of a Clark Gableesque Dillinger that we understand the public’s awe with Dillinger back in his time.

A criminal’s rebellion towards corrupted power (the irony!), Mann’s visual superiority, the rendering of a time so far away yet so visually advanced… Michael Mann manages to tell a story through his ever-inspired vision and I think takes Public Enemies out of this time and perhaps places it up there with the classics.

EXCUSE…INTRODUCTION

How many struggling writers are living in NY? How many of them are struggling screenwriters? I don’t know the number, but unfortunately I am one of them. Well, being one of them would require that I actually finish a script, which has not happened yet. All the real stuff kicks in and you find yourself looking at a blank screen every few weeks, promising yourself that this time you got that great idea and you have the bits and pieces to make it into the next breakout. It makes you angry and sad that you’re losing the great vision you had of yourself. You once believed that you were actually a good writer with an endless imagination.

Well, I think I’ve let the office life get the best of me and for that, I feel I’ll be better at judging other writers and directors and their movies until my great idea comes to me and I’ll have the courage to sit down and write it out. I have to write something right?

This is the long explanation of the reason for this blog, the short one is that I LOVE MOVIES and will do always and would be happy to just talk about them… all the time…I can do that here…