There are some filmmakers who take the viewer into their confidence from the very first shot of a film, infusing it with such a particular atmosphere and attitude that one gives him or herself over to the picture completely, surrenders to it. Such artists are pretty rare; for myself, I count Jacques Rivette and Phillippe Garrel among them. And for quite a few cinephiles and critics, Michael Mann is absolutely one of them.
I admit that I’ve become something of a Mann agnostic in recent years. I have very little use for the florid romantic/existentialist tough-guy ethos that his films don’t so much explore as worship. (Hence, I found rather a lot of Heat, something of a Holy of Holies for Mann fans, overblown and silly.) It’s true that Mann has a visual/narrative style like no one else working in movies today, one that toggles between the intimate and the operatic in ways that constantly surprise the viewer. But of late I’ve found that his big stuff works better than his small, and that his adherence to digital shooting (which I imagine is at least in part in the better to serve his intimate modes) has produced decidedly mixed results. So I went into Mann’s new picture, Public Enemies, with a considerable amount of trepidation.
I did not emerge a convert, but I wasn’t entirely unimpressed, either. The more contemplative stretches of the film don’t really work as Mann intended, they do come off as longueurs; but anyone who can’t recognize them as art film flourishes ought to at least be suspected of willful stupidity. Dialogue along the lines of “Where are you going?”/“Anywhere I want” and “What do you want?”/“Everything, right now” and “I don’t wanna be there when it happens” drives me right up the wall, always has, and boy there’s plenty of that sort of thing here. But there are a few pretty spectacular set pieces here, and Manohla Dargis is right on target in her ecstatic New York Times review in which she describes certain of Mann’s more bravura compositions, including a view of Johnny Depp’s Dillinger—a “dark, ominous figure” that almost “blots out [the] sky.” I found that pretty much at every point where I was losing patience with the film, Mann would reach into his bag and pull out another bit of purely exhilarating filmmaking. Kind of frustrating, really, but as I said above, also par for the course in most of my Mann experience.
And that said, the final 20 minutes or so of Public Enemies are staggeringly good, and make up some of the best work that Mann, and Depp, have ever done. These scenes are as wry and moving and profound and upsetting and cinematically audacious as Mann wants them to be. And it is perhaps no accident that they contain barely any dialogue. For my money, they certainly suffice to justify the film’s existence. I look forward to hearing verdicts from Mann fans and sceptics alike.
I am a major Mann fan, and I have to say I walked in with some trepidation myself. While I subscribe to the same notion in regards to his use of HD to capture intimacy and immediacy, I feared it would somehow feel anachronistic in the gangster genre.
Mann proved me wrong. It actually gave the film a “you are there” sheen that oddly worked in a complimentary fashion to the more artistic flourishes you mentioned. Just as Keith Uhlich once called Miami Vice a tone poem, Public Enemies seemed to be striking a balance between the poetic and the documentary in a way I’ve rarely seen before (reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde, and Melville).
The movie is a summation of his filmography in many ways, synthesizing his exploration of machismo and his maturing opinion on the ability/inability to streamline one’s lifestyle by discarding personal attachments (touched upon in Thief and Heat), while inviting some actors from his repertory back into the fold (Stephen Lang, so nice to see you again) and returning to his home turf of Chicago.
This is his first movie that confirms my suspicion that he is focused on a larger tapestry than he has previously been given credit for.
I’m a Mann acolyte who can fully understand your agnosticism. But for me, he’s only had two outright misfires – “Miami Vice” and (shudder) “The Keep” – while everything else* has achieved, for me, varying levels of wonderfulness.
Glenn, the dialogue you claim drives you up the wall kind of has the same effect on me (and there’s loads of it in “Heat”, a film which nevertheless continues to knock me out), but he compensates visually, narratively, and simply by knowing how to put a damn movie together. And I think he’s probably the single best director of action alive today.
I read the Bryan Burrough book last year, and it was a hell of a read. My concern is that Mann will take the angle loved by many in Hollywood, and portray Dillinger as some kind of folk hero. Burrough certainly doesn’t portray him that way, and he has apparently given the film the okay. Plus, that idea would not be in keeping with Mann’s past work, so I’m probably worrying about nothing. And that Dargis quote also gives me hope.
I’ll be seeing “Public Enemies” as soon as I possibly can.
Oh, and the asterisk after “everything else” was supposed to lead to a footnote in which I admitted to never having seen “Ali”. You can unbate your breath now.
Bill,
Dillinger is portrayed as a folk hero… to an extent. The film does a swell job showing that he was many things to many people. And (shades of Heat) you never really side with him any more than you side with Purvis (Christian Bale). The only true bad guy in the film IMHO is J. Edgar Hoover.
Tony – Well, that bothers me. Dillinger was no hero. He was perceived as a hero to some, it’s true, and he relished that, but he wasn’t. He was a criminal, plain and simple. A bank robber and a murderer. So Mann going that route, even a little, worries me. But if Dillinger is to “Public Enemies” what Neil McCauley was to “Heat”, that’s fine.
Purvis was incompetent, but I’m more or less okay with them changing that. If Purvis has to stand in for all the good agents that can’t be fit into the film, then fine.
But Hoover being more of a villain than Dillinger is kind of a joke, particularly in the 30s.
As one of the few ardent defenders of Miami Vice, I think all I really need to say about it is: it might rank among one of his best if watched (almost entirely) on MUTE. That being said, (“content” or not), it’s just the film that’s a syllabus of the Mann style. Personally, I think it’s fascinating when filmmakers make those films, because it’s rare when they do.
Re. Public Enemies
The thing I find most interesting that Mann did in the film is that there really isn’t a particularly strong emotional connection with any character (which isn’t helped by the overblown dialogue, as Glenn pointed out). Rather, Mann has refined drawing the viewer in with compositions: As D.W. Griffith noted, (cited:
http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/800
)
the elements of the HD image begin to subvert its composition because of the detail. But given that it’s a period piece, and Mann has taken the time to make it as detailed as possible (or at least publicize as much–none of us can know how authentic it really is), what Mann is doing is trying to make the film seem something of a historical document of the period. (as Tony noted in his initial post).
And while I’m a Mann fan myself, it apears the consensus is that this film falls short of great. I can very much see that. Perhaps, as David Thomson wished, Mann will make a film about Women or about Age, one that has the strength to persuade even the uninitiated.
Glenn – Thank God I’m not the only one who found “Heat” to be overblown. Some fine action sequences, but boy you gotta slog through way too much to get there.
I’m still on the fence about “Public Enemies” since seeing it yesterday morning. I agree that the last twenty minutes are pretty staggering (but I’ll take that massive shootout/chase at the hideout over any action sequence so far this year), and pretty much cemented Depp’s performance, which I’d been unsure of up to that point. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel Depp acting, but – especially by the end – really felt the character. Might help that this is the first time in years he hasn’t acted in a “Pirates” movie or a Burton flick.
But the extent to which these (and a few other) aspects of the film stuck with me is matched by how greatly so many others were simply forgotten not even twenty-four hours later. I just don’t feel like I care as much as I was supposed to (maybe because, like you, Bill, I can only take too much of the criminal-as-folk-hero element, which, even if it wasn’t front-and-center, “Bonnie and Clyde” style, was absolutely integral to the film’s image of Dillinger).
Oh, and Christian Bale needs to take a break from playing the stoic, righteous man. He did it well in “The New World” and most of “Batman Begins,” but besides that (“Equilibrium,” “3:10 to Yuma,” “The Dark Knight”) he just looks like he’s on autopilot.
Dillinger was certainly perceived as a hero, which in itself is pretty interesting (regardless of the fact that he was a bank robber and a murderer). I really liked the last twenty or so minutes of The Assassination of Jesse James, because it dealt with this criminal-to-folk-hero mythos really well; as did the last portion of McCarthy’s The Crossing. But I guess there is a difference between showing why someone is treated as a folk hero, and actually doing the heroizing yourself. As Glenn said, Mann likes this bullshit “romantic/existentialist tough-guy ethos” that no one since Hemmingway has really done well. Then why do I want to be at the first showing on opening day?
“The Assassination of Jesse James…” is a brilliant film, and that last twenty minutes was the clincher. Really beautiful stuff (Ron Hansen’s book is damn good, too, by the way).
I’m getting really worried about this film now, although I’ll still see it tomorrow. I mean, I can’t stand “Bonnie and Clyde” for this very reason. Those two were even worse than Dillinger, and they have a classic American film that glamorizes them. If Penn, Newman and Benton didn’t mean for them to be the literal Bonnie and Clyde, which I believe at least one of them has claimed, then change the fucking names. Make it about a couple who didn’t leave a trail of corpses behind them.
Altman did it right in “Thieves Like Us”.
“Miami Vice” with the sound on: 1 star. With the sound off: 5 stars.
I’m a Mann acolyte, too, just like Tony. My reactions to the film mirror a lot of his own.
Bill: There certainly are SOME elements of Dillinger as folk hero, but they hardly trump Mann’s overall vision of the man which is an unlikeable guy who robs banks. Depp portrays Dillinger as a brusque man who always expects to get what he wants, and even though there are slivers of humanity in there, and moments of wry himor, the film hardly paints him in the light of say the gangsters in the first half of Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
I thought the film was wonderful…again though, I admit to being a Mann apologist. My jumbled thoughts on the film, which I jotted down right after I watched the movie, are here: http://kolson-kevinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/public-enemies-take-one.html
Kevin – That’s good news. I don’t mind Dillinger being portrayed with humanity, because he was human. It’s the hero worship and glamorizing I can’t stand.
And I love Mann, too, so I’m still excited. Wary, but excited. I’ll check out your review, too.
I’m still waiting for COLLATERAL to be recognized as possibly the most interesting thing to come out of the Hollywood machine in the past 10 years. It covers the big budget genre bases impeccably, but has so much more on its mind and in its eye… even if just for its stunningly beautiful portrait of a city by night, it’s remarkable stuff.
Where HEAT loses a little steam every time I watch it (due mostly to the by-the-numbers psychoanalyzing that characterizes most of its relationships), COLLATERAL is one I keep going back to again and again.
“The only true bad guy in the film IMHO is J. Edgar Hoover.”
What about Baby Face Nelson? The guy is portrayed as a stone cold psycho and Stephen Graham certainly looks like he’s having a blast playing this guy.
I really enjoyed this film a lot and think that it will deepen upon subsequent viewings. I also like how, towards the end, they portrayed Dillinger as a man out of time… like how that mob guy told about how they make the same amount of money in one day through illegal gambling that Dillinger made knocking over one bank and without the physical risk.
JD, is Nelson a big part of the film? I assume they include the shootout where he was finally killed? In reality, he WAS a stone cold psycho, and the real story of that shootout is pretty amazing. And horrible, too, of course. This probably sounds cold, but Mann could do amazing things with that.
Mann has no sense of humor. None. This is his biggest problem. I can only spend so much time in the company of “tough men” and their sexy, deferrential women. I find his movies suffocating. Watching Miami Vice was like hanging around with a Gigolo who keeps a copy of Moby-Dick in his back pocket as a prop.
big prop
Not if it’s abridged.
Glenn, since Mann’s use of HD photography seems so integral to his work of late, and as the film transfer I saw of MIAMI VICE theatrically seemed inadequate to the task of properly presenting his vision (the DVD was a great improvement), do you know whether PUBLIC ENEMIES being shown digitally anywhere in Manhattan? Lately, print ads make it difficult to tell what given format a film might be being shown in.
What Pip said. Mann’s lack of humor or at least irony borders on unintentional comedy, especially in silly moments like the coyote sneaking past Cruise in COLLATERAL while some bad 90’s man-alone-rock blares out.
To make a MIAMI VICE movie and expect us to take these 80’s machismoisms seriously is silly. The fact that a humorless dork like Jeffrey Wells projects himself into Mann’s tough-guy world is more revealing of people’s need to find depth in his shaky ouvre.
Of course, I’m biased. I’ve never liked any of his films.
Why does irony have to be a feature of EVERYTHING these days?
I’m with Pip and I’ll take it further…Mann has no sense of character or humanity and “Public Enemies” solidified that for me. I feel like people see what the *want* to see in Mann’s work. They *want* to place him on a pedestal when in reality, he’s never brought a character to the screen that you can genuinely care about.
Granted, I too have not seen “Ali” but aside from “Mahnunter” and “Collateral,” Mann leaves me cold. Ebert and to some extent Dargis go on and on about the stoic, macho images Mann creates when I feel in truth, actors and characters are just unfortunate moving parts in Mann’s compositions. The raves of the quiet/heroic/demonic (Dargis sued that and I was like “huh?”) portrayal of Depp’s Dillinger are again, people projecting what they WANT the role to be when the truth is, it’s Depp doing a low-key Elvis impression.
I feel like I’m being harsher that I’d like on “Public Enemies” as I didn’t hate it, I was just so-so on it. But man, Mann.…I don’t get his stuff. I also think Mann is deeply, DEEPLY appropriating semiotics in his work in terms of focusing on what is being said, to who, by who and in what way. I caught onto this in “Miami Vice” when I realized 3/4 of the film is info being relayed via cell phone and again yesterday in “Public Enemies” when much of the film is very direct, curt language telling people what they need, who they are, where to go. I need to sit down and brush up on the theories of semiotics in film, but I think there’s something there.
In the meantime, I felt “Public Enemies” was a just o.k. movie that managed to make the kiss kiss, bang bang of gangster life kinda dull and lifeless. Oh, and Bale was just.….wooden.
I can’t wait to see this, i’m something of a major Mann follower. I rewatched Miami Vice and it’s a wonderful film, sure it has a few silly lines here and there but it’s a visual and aural feast. Hell, I even love ‘The Keep’, but that’s mainly due to John Box’s production design, Alex Thompson’s cinematography and Tangerine Dream’s beautiful score. One of my all-time favourite movie scenes is when Scott Glenn receives the summons to the keep and takes the boat from Piraeus to Romania, the Dream score here is a mesmerising piece of music, especially as the boat drifts into the rising of the sun.
The Last of the Mohicans is another particular favourite. But i’ll stop here!
I’m a fan, and I’m glad you gave it a fair shake, GK. I don’t know if I’m quite as over the moon as a lot of my cohorts (in absentia) but I do know it’s one of the most interesting, dynamic American movies I’ve seen in a while. And it’s sad. Cotillard’s rah-rah “punchline” is just sad, not heroic or profound. I was happy the crowd I saw the flick with the second time didn’t clap like the first crowd. I think this second crowd understood just how bleak a world this was/is. But I’ll have more to say in that other space we sometimes haunt soon enough…
Bill, I think what Allen is trying to say is that there is no self-awareness in Mann’s work. People who take everything they say at face value are boors. Sometimes you need to listen to yourself and reflect and then, maybe, comment on what it is that you just said, maybe even contradict yourself. Mann does this…never. It’s not a color that he is missing from his palette, it’s the base. And, hey I’m not advocating that every artist has to dabble in self-reflexivity, because there are plenty that don’t and are still viable and relevant, but it’s nice if every once in a while an artist acknowledges their own tropes and themes. That’s how you create depth. But Mann has never been interested in depth, so I guess I’m wanting him to do something he isn’t capable of doing.
And Don R. Lewis articulated something about Depp’s performance that has been sitting in the back of my throat. I know it’s supposed to be common sense that Depp is one of our finest actors, but I don’t have any common sense. I think he’s devolved into a kind of smirky twit. Someone should create a drinking game where you have to pound a shot of hooch everytime Depp smirks in PE. Had Don not pointed out that he is just doing a low-energy Elvis impersonation, I would’ve sworn that he was doing Bruce Willis.
Mann is a technical master, I guess, but all of his movies can be reduced to this: OBSESSED MEN DOING WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO AND THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COPS AND ROBBERS. It’s just all way to macho, and it’s starting to slide into camp, I think.
According to print ads, PE is digital at Clearview Chelsea.
I would like to get the chance to shake Michael Mann’s hand for making such great films as The Last of the Mohicans (1992) , Heat (1995) , and parts of The Insider (1999) and Collateral (2004) .… and after telling how wonderful he has been and how lucky we are to have him in today’s cinema, quickly kick him hard in the nuts for Public Enemies (2009) and try to get away… that is a joke of course.
Public enemies has so much going for it…great actors, a very interesting story, great art direction and customs and supposedly a great director…but the great director woke up one day and decided to shoot all these good acting and period outfits/sets/story with HD camera , on hand with an editing similar to Blair witch project at times, without much effort into lighting .…full of unnecessary close ups and a chewed up story line…and yet drag it for 2 hours and 23 minutes or so.
He…Michael Mann, single handedly has ruined one of the potentially best films that we could’ve seen in last few years.…I am really upset…as you can tell.
Here is the thing…if somebody else made it probably I wouldn’t have cared…but he is an amazing film maker…so no matter what, when you go in the theater, you go with certain expectations.
Why the hell such bad editing? why such ugly reality T.V. quality cinematography? why so much on hand camera movement even when two people are sitting across a table and talking? some of the best moments of this film is simply ruined because of lack of proper lighting…because well HD can shoot everywhere in any lighting.…so let’s abuse it. I do not find any merit regarding the documentary effect of creating such aesthetics. The plot and situations are not clever enough to play that angle.(a balance between documentary and a story being acted)
…and so many weird angles for camera…many many uninspired framings…while the camera is picking from behind a table or through bushes…are we telling how aliens saw the history of gangsters in 1930’s? why these point of viewes? oh yeah…we are everybody so we see every situation from various points of views…it’s just too messy in my opinion.
.…and what the hell going on with the sound engineers? I mean $100-$150 million dollar movie and the sound is as weak as many student films…room full of people and barely any back ground sound…these are such weird amateurish flaws…let’s try to read an artistic merit in that too…yes he was trying to separate us of what was happening in the rest of room…so we could only hear essential noises until the blasting moments of machine guns…that’s a joke.
Everybody looks like playing dress ups since with HD we can see that everything is so new and fresh pretending to be from a different era…including make up and fake mustaches…no lighting for creating the right atmosphere and ambient…
I am very disappointed…at least if the editing was not too fast when it didn’t need to be you could appreciate some of the acting moments…but no…let’s go all the way like “shield” (t.v. series)…plus how can we read body languages while all we see is the pores of the actors faces…yes they were acting with their eyebrows and lashes…and the cheesy lines.
I am going to stop now…
I wouldn’t buy this film.…in my head Michael Mann owes me two films to get his respect back…one for this and one for Miami vice…
Maybe it’s me…maybe it’s not…you be the judge for yourself…but I have made my judgement (short version) above…
Wolf189: “I am going to stop now…”
Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.
I guess I’m a Mann fan, if not an especially frothing one. There are still a few films of his I need to see, Public Enemies included, and a few more that I need to rewatch before I can even articulate what exactly I think about them. What I can say is that I’ve seen Collateral and Miami Vice once apiece, and sequences and images from them have wormed their way into my mind and maybe even subtly shaped the way I absorb movies.
“They *want* to place him on a pedestal when in reality, he’s never brought a character to the screen that you can genuinely care about.”
I disagree. I found Jeffrey Wigand to be very sympathetic in THE INSIDER. You really feel for this guy who tries to do the right thing and is left hung out to dry by CBS and as a result he loses his family. And Mann does a really good job of showing the emotional toll the events in the film take on, climaxing rather incredibly in the scene where he locks himself in his hotel room and fantasizes about his children…
How can you not be ironic about a 100 million dollar version of a TV show that had a guy living with an alligator on a boat? Even the MIAMI VICE series had more humor…I just think there’s excessive projection with Mann’s work.
No Allen, I just think that you bring a calculated cynicism to his work based on preconceptions you carried over from his “…TV show that had a guy living with an alligator on a boat…”
The only thing Miami Vice had in common with the eponymous show were character names and the premise, but the respective subtext of the show versus the movie’s was worlds apart.
Had he actually revived the alligator, and some of the sillier aspects of the show, then your argument that a certain irony is lacking would hold more water. But he concentrated on some of the more serious aspects of the premise instead.
I find your equally guilty of projecting your own misgivings onto Mann’s work.
You’re right, Tony, because I found it impossible to take MIAMI VICE as seriously as it took itself. And if you’re not duplicating the TV series your movie is based on, why call it MIAMI VICE at all with the expectant baggage? It’s exactly what Pip stated, surface “cool” and machismo angst bordering on camp. Mann does it well if that’s what you want, but with COLLATERAL and MV, the weight of that brooding angst collapses the thin material. I’m only guilty of not taking it seriously.
As with most of Mann’s films I admire some of his technique but are left cold by anything else. Yes, Depp is a charismatic performer, but with the rest of the cast he is wasted in a part that is barely two-dimensional. You don’t know anything more about Dillinger after watching the film than you did before it started. “Public Enemies” introduces a great many character without giving insight into any of them. (Marion Cottillard comes closest to creating a believable person, but then she plays that reliable 30s stalwart: the hat-check girl with a heart of gold). Mann’s reputation now allows him to fill his movies with great actors even in the smallest of roles, but that doesn’t mean that he gives giving most of them anything interesting to do. (Case in point: Lili Taylor in a role with all of four lines – none of them memorable.)
It seems that in the end what Mann always is applauded for is how brilliant some of his shots are – but isn’t a great movie more than a collection of impressive stills/sequences? Shouldn’t technique relate to content? For me, none of the shots meant anything, because Mann doesn’t have anything new to say about Dillinger, Purvis, the FBI, the 30s, or the Great Depression. (The Depression is delegated to the background – literally, as a few shots feature that most cliched of visual references, the 1930s bum.)
And don’t you just love the way that Mann implies that it’s okay to torture a man, but it’s unethical to torture a woman? You really have to admire his special brand of inverted sexism.
Whatever the art house flourishes – for me, “Public Enemies” fails as either, an artistic examination of the figure of Joe Dillinger and what he meant for his time (and that doesn’t even address the question what he should mean to us n o w) and as a potboiler entertainment. The shootouts are repetitive or silly (the raid on the hideout in the woods consists of people firing thousands of shots of amunition without anyone being able to see anything or to take clear aim of anything – or is the empty machismo on display here supposed the whole point of the sequence?), and as you can’t tell one of the FBI men or the gangsters from the other, you stare at the screen, uninvolved and puzzled: who are all the people dying and why do they get loving close-ups?
Mann never displayed a great sense of humour, but a gangster film that runs for 144 minutes with less than three good jokes is taking itself much too seriously.
You don’t like “Miami Vice”, Bill? I am plotzed! That’s everything great about Mann (and I’m more admirer than detractor) stripped down to its raw elements. The only one I don’t like is “Last of the Mohicans”, with “The Insider” probably being my favorite.
Can’t say I’m a Mann “fan,” or acolyte as you say, but I like some of his movies that I’ve seen, particularly Collateral and Heat.
But I thought Public Enemies was great. I like that cold, distancing approach Mann has towards his characters in the films that I’ve seen, but that’s a style I’m particular to in general. Watching Public Enemies reminded me of watching David Fincher’s Zodiac. Both are period pieces that beautifully recreate their respective time periods, but with a frigid procedural style to the storytelling. I found much of it just being blunt, not macho.
The video took awhile to get used to, since it’s so clearly video in many shots and I didn’t expect that. As for all the intense close-ups, I took to checking out the entire frame and not just the focus on the face – and I really took to the depth of each composition, which many times was very striking.
Just got back from a screening of PE.
I agree with the general mixed-bag consensus – in many ways, PE is an audacious film, and it’s frustrating as often as it is mesmerizing. But I take exception to all this talk of Mann having no sense of humor – yeah, Miami Vice was too somber for its own good, but this film has some very deft comic timing – the scenes with Crudup, the “look to your left, look to your right” scene in the theater – all very well played.
And can I get a F‑yeah for Depp? Okay, it could have been a meatier role, certainly. But I think the fact that he’s returned to acting (for now) instead of silly costume abominations (haven’t seen Sweeny Todd, and I hear it’s good, but I’m referring to the Disney affairs that shall not be named) is cause for a little bit of excitement. If anything, it’s shown a remarkable ability to craft a character out of not much talking. And Cotillard, shaky accent be damned – she nailed it.
It’s true that Mann has a tendency to overplay his hand when it comes to the Stoic Man of Action trope, but I disagree that it’s to a fault in PE. Yeah, it’s romanticized – but the flipside, which isn’t acknowledged enough, is an incredible evocation of loneliness. For me, this has always been the dimension that makes even his shakier outings, like MV, worth watching. He seems to be acutely aware of the price that super-driven males play for their obsessiveness, namely, they tend to end up alone. And Mann makes that loneliness palpable – in PE, it’s practically dripping from the walls, and it’s often very beautiful.
Right on the money on the film in general, I think, and the last twenty minutes in particular.
That said, the scene where Dillinger goes into the police station is the biggest I Don’t Think So moment since…oh, Sylvester Stallone performed surgery on himself in Rambo III.
jeez, what’s w/ all the moralizing?
one thing i find adorable is that all of the commenters criticizing mann for supposedly lacking a sense of humor seem rather humorless themselves. “UGH, it’s just machismo and it makes me SICK and damn all of this hero-worship; dillinger was a killer!!1” it all sort of reminds me of people who complain about metal being “dumb macho music.” i have yet to see all of mann’s films, but i’ve loved (heat, PE) and enjoyed (the insider, collateral, manhunter) the ones i have; in other words, i’ve not had a bad experience w/ mann. he’s not one of my favorite filmmakers, but i think he’s one of the finest working today. it took me about 45 mins. to warm up to PE, but at some point it clicked and i was riveted for the second half of it. as others have pointed out, his dialogue is not his strong suit (some of the stuff in heat makes me itch just thinking about it), but here i felt that, within context, the grand declarations worked. it was a totally different world from today and to expect ironic detachment is like expecting the characters to sms text each other. dillinger was acutely aware of the constant specter of death and for him to take things slowly w/ billie would’ve been incongruent w/ the world he made for himself. of course, i’m sure that if there was more ironic detachment, some would complain about how dillinger “wasn’t a hero,” he was a “psycho killer” and how dare mann “make light of such things,” etc.
also, really, how can anyone watch heat and think that a character like vincent hannah is “serious”? yes, he takes his *work* seriously and he’s consumed by it, but he’s totally over-the-top and ridiculous. he’s NOTHING like melvin purvis in that respect. hannah is a rapid-fire, shit-talking, cocksure loudmouth.
i’m not sure mann is “projecting” or only interested in “machismo bullshit” so much as he’s interested in criminality and the obsessive mind it takes to lead a criminal life and the obsessive mind it takes to track down that criminal element. but even if mann *was* obsessed w/ the macho bullshit? so? at least he’s exploring it instead of pointing fingers in a blog. hell, i love cassavetes but you’re delusional if you think the men in his films *aren’t* macho assholes.
@Aaron G.:I’m all for “exploring,” which I think Mann did beautifully in “Manhunter.” I’m less impressed when Mann just let’s his characters posture, as I believed was the case with “Miami Vice.” For my money,a lot of “Public Enemies” splits the difference. I find Depp’s reflective Dillinger at the end more compelling than his swaggering one. As for “ironic detachment,” well, sure; why anyone would expect or even want such a quality from a Mann picture is beyond me.It’s like asking Scorsese to be more like Preston Sturges or something.
This site doesn’t seem to let me post anything (freezes up) beyond a relatively short length, so I usually just lurk, because I’m not able to get into much detail with short posts.
Regardless, I absolutely agree with Glenn in that PE “splits the difference”. I think that it’s perfectly competent, but not all that memorable, save for a few scenes: the final 20, the back-and-forth heads in the theatre, and Dillinger walking through the crime unit like a ghost (a prevalent theme in the film). The digital photography was a murky, blurry mess on the usually reliable screen I saw it (didn’t care for most of the handheld action, and the forest shootout was incoherent at times). I liked most of the main performances well enough, but they were all too underdeveloped as characters to generate a strong emotional response.
I loved Stephen Lang in this film. He might have been the best part, as far as I’m concerned. I also loved the death of Baby Face Nelson (I hope that’s not considered a spoiler), and I thought the digital cameras really brought out a pretty unique crispness in that section.
For those calling Bale wooden, I’d be curious to hear how else he should have played the role. I felt he did a good job playing the part as written, and while he may not have been exactly electrifying, and don’t think he was supposed to be, or should have been.
Otherwise…yeah, I liked it. But “Public Enemies”, as the English say, did what it says on the tin. Those who hate the film and those who hail it as an art-film masterpiece baffle me equally.
Re: PE being a blurry, murky mess. I saw it on the one theater I could find in LA showing it with a digital projector (the Landmark), and it looked fantastic. However, there are so few of these theaters in the country, and the quality is so diminished when the picture is transferred to film (at least Miami Vice was) that I don’t understand why Mann, Lucas, et al choose to shoot this way. It just seems kind of selfish. Most people will not see the movie that these directors shot until they become available on DVD. And, bill, I liked Lang a lot, but the guy who plays Judge Phelan on The Wire stole the damn movie in his one seen as Dillinger’s lawyer. What is it about grandstanding lawyers that Mann loves so much–here and The Insider, at least?
You say Mann is humorless; I say you are humorless.
Too easy. Try harder than that.
It ought to be noted that to call something humorless is not necessarily to make a pejorative value judgment. Humorlessness doesn’t automatically invalidate art. which is a good thing for Richard Wagner, Thomas Mann, Francis Bacon, and a whole lot of others. I don’t understand why certain people here seem to want to hang on to some idea that Mann isn’t humorless, as if that matters somehow. But whatever.
Don Lewis wrote: “I feel like people see what they *want* to see in Mann’s work.”
– This definitely seems to be true about PUBLIC ENEMIES.
The thematics of Mann’s films usually seem banal to me and this one in particular has pretty much nothing to say about bank robbing, the Depression, police work, celebrity, you name it. And yet Manohla Dargis (an excellent critic) and others are willing to give it credit for “ideas” that don’t bear the term, or are simply tired rehashes of genre clichés (the likenesses between police work and crime, the outlaw as celebrity).
That said, P.E. has definite pleasures, the nighttime digital photography being a major one. The long nighttime action sequence is a bit incoherent at times (the antic editing is a problem: some shots go by too fast to make their point, and others are repeated several times to no particular purpose) … but when it’s not it’s pretty awesome (as in the part where Nelson is shot down in the clearing).
I think Mann has proven himself a master of the set-piece, of the atmospheric shot, of pacing, and of cross-cutting in the past (the first sequence in ALI combines all of this to terrific effect). But even his best films–e.g. HEAT and THIEF–have some really windy, pretentious passages that are hard to take–e.g. Al Pacino’s line in HEAT to Diane Verona about “sifting through the detritus.” And I agree that he’s never written a character I cared all that much about, although that may not really be a problem for some.
One consistently weird thing about Mann is that in interviews he seems to admit no function for any of his techniques (stylistic or narrative) beyond “realism,” and a striving for ever-greater verisimilitude does seem to explain why he’s the first big Hollywood director to fully embrace HD. But his films don’t come across as “realistic” to me at all: genre conventions seem at the heart of all of his projects … as the quotes from Glenn’s post bear out. So he ends up seeming an unusually persistent example of a Hollywood tendency of long standing: an obsession with realism that manifests itself only in the details, while the plot mechanics, characterizations, etc. stick to tried-and-true fantasy.
This probably makes me sound like I dislike Mann’s films a lot more than I do. He’s certainly one of the best A‑list directors working today.
“Miami Vice”? Years down the pike, and still insufferably dull. On the other hand, “The Keep” is still an imperfect thing of beauty. That closeup of Jurgen Prochnow’s eyes, the struck match, the lit cigar, the mother pulling her child from the path of the grey procession of trucks into the Carpathian Alps. Takes my breath away every time. As far as Dillinger Vs. Hoover. Dillinger was a son of bitch in the public eye for more or less on decade. Hoover’s toxic, base influence not only enabled McCarthyism in all its splendorous lunacy, but also paved the way for the sort of corruption that defined the Nixonian era. Sleaze, snooping on MLK, paranoia in panties through and through. Hoover was the bigger slime in the long run.
I think I agree pretty much with you, Jonah, though in the grand scheme of things I like Mann more than you at least seem to.
One thing, though, about “Public Enemies”: My big fear about the film was that it would glamorize Dillinger, which some people have claimed it does. Now that I’ve seen it, I don’t know what those people saw in the film that I didn’t. Look at the scene where Purvis meets Dillinger in jail, and the way Dillinger talks to him about the agent who was gunned down by Nelson. Dillinger is portrayed as a cold-blooded, sneering scumbag in that scene. Also check out Lili Taylor’s scenes as the sheriff. Taylor gets across an important theme of the film with very little screen time: that the press is being duped by Dillinger’s charisma, and his popularity could lead to a miscarriage of justice.
In the film, Dillinger ain’t a hero.
@Mike – that opening sequence of The Keep is breathtaking, almost hypnotic.
@Bill,
As I pointed out earlier before you saw the film, PUBLIC ENEMIES is pretty even-handed in regards to Dillinger. Yes, you are right about the examples you mentioned. But their is some glorifying, i.e. the early scene where a woman that aids him pleads for him to take her with him; the way his jump over a countertop at the bank is captured in slo-mo, a glamorous action-icon sort of shot in my opinion; the grandstanding scenes where he is mobbed by public and lawmen alike in front of popping flashbulbs after his arrest (a scene that admittedly can be seen as both laudatory and critical).
True it doesn’t portray him as a hero, but it hardly ignores that he was that to many folks. Hoover and Baby Face Nelson are both treated far more negatively.
@Tony – Regarding the scene where the woman asks Dillinger if she can come along, that’s just a more or less honest portrayal of how Dillinger was perceived at the time by certain people. That doesn’t mean the film sees him like that. His jump over the counter didn’t at all strike me the same way it did you, and you already know my take on the scenes where he’s being mobbed by the press. Believe me, I’d be the first to criticize the film if I thought that’s the route Mann was taking, but I just didn’t see it.
By the way, on the Entertainment Weekly site, there’s a video of Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum teaming up to pound on “Public Enemies”, and both of them are apalled that the film glamorizes Dillinger. I, for one, would LOVE to hear their thoughts on “Bonnie and Clyde”, because I have a feeling they’re maybe being slightly inconsistent here. But I don’t know that for sure, so…
Though I personally loved the film, I’ve had a very hard time articulating why. Ah, the mysteries! In any case, here is the best thing I’ve read about ANYWHERE from ANYONE:
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7265&p=245019#p245019
god, people who like mann really like him. he can string together a good shot or two but the man(n) has nothing to say. fuck that adolescent investigation of masculinity. for whomever may have commented earlier, nicholas ray and budd boetticher had a hundred times more depth in their probing of the male in american society than mann could ever come up with. essentially he is a teenager armed with a camera, using it to cum in his masturbatory fantasies all over film the way kerouac came all over paper. reductionist spewings of an adolescent mind.
Disregarding the Kerouac crack, what’s most interesting about Mann is the lengths people go to justify or explain his limited stylistics.
“reductionist spewings of an adolescent mind.”
Said the guy who brought cum/masturbation jokes into the conversation.
“what’s most interesting about Mann is the lengths people go to justify or explain his limited stylistics.”
I would offer that that sentence perfectly describes Kerouac.
What does Kerouac have to do with anything here?
“What does Kerouac have to do with anything here?”
Jack Kerouac, like Michael Mann, is an artist that some people like, but other people do not like. Furthermore, some people like both Mann and Kerouac, while others do not like either.
It’s like links in a chain, you see.
I honestly found myself wondering why Mann bothered with this, since he had nothing new to say. The gunfights are great and I actually had no problems with the film’s pacing. I just felt like I’d seen this movie before, and while Depp’s performance was great (and it’s nice to see Leelee Sobieski getting back in the game), and Bale was excellent as well, overall it just added up to a solid, not great, experience.
As far as technical concerns: it kills me to say this, but Dante Spinotti just completely dropped the ball. Dion Beebe did a spectacular job exploiting the distinct capabilities of the FilmStream for “Collateral”. “Public Enemies” looks like a Hong Kong movie from 1995, color-wise, and Spinotti seems out to emphasize that he’s shooting on video. I fully expect the anti-video assholes to use this movie as a prime example of how movies should only be shot on film, and I hate to say it but they’ll have plenty of ammo.
“what’s most interesting about Mann is the lengths people go to justify or explain his limited stylistics.”
You mean writing well though-out essays about his aesthetic approach? True, it can be difficult, but it’s certainly a worthy use of ones time as I’m sure any reasonable person can agree that part of appreciating art is respecting differing opinions and seeking to understand them. Though I’m sure it’s much more fun to act like a complete asshole. Wanna try writing about the movie instead of making snide and self-gratifying comments?
My. Such LANGUAGE!
“Though I’m sure it’s much more fun to act like a complete asshole. Wanna try writing about the movie instead of making snide and self-gratifying comments?”
Spoken like a true Mann fan. Tough guy.
After seeing this, I emerged from the theater invigorated and shaken. Probably the best movie I’ll see this year. Mann can be called redundant in his themes, but only in the best way such as Jean Pierre Melville films. No one films guys walking in and out of a room quite like Mann. He infuses cool in every frame, and the fedoras and black overcoats in “Public Enemies” elevates that. Stunning cinematography.… and the best looking film since, well, Miami Vice. If one doesn’t see this movie projected through a digital projector, I think you’re losing something. So yea, put me down as a “yes” vote! And can I mention that final scene? Pitch perfect.
The scenes beginning at the lodge, for about 20 mins, seemed to have NO sound or visual editing at all. When they started everyone in my theater started talking and discussing it. It was horrible! If you haven’t seen it, its too much to explain here.