Respooling

A couple of strategically placed days off gave me a long weekend this week, and looking back, I don’t really have any complaints about how I spent my time. One thing I did, which I don’t make a habit of, was to watch a few movies I’ve already seen. I don’t revisit stuff often – and even less often just for myself. Sometimes I’ll watch a movie again with Kathy to see what she thinks of it, but that experience is different than just going back to the movie itself, just me and it. And, because I got my guitar out of the shop all stringed and ready to go, and because I can’t play worth a damn, going back to some old favorites seemed like a good way to pass the time while I taught my fingers some scales. (As it turns out, yes and no: my fingers caught on, a little bit, but I eventually just put the guitar down and watched.)

The first movie of the bunch was The Incredibles. This is a 2-DVD set, and I’ve yet to go deeper into it than the movie itself, but I will. I’d seen it in the movie theatre, and remember being impressed with it. I also remember being exhausted and dozing off for a stretch. It turns out that stretch was considerable – there are scenes that I didn’t remember at all, and others that were put into much sharper context. It’s interesting – some of the story is presented almost as if Mr. Incredible is cheating on his wife. He isn’t, of course, but at the same time is hiding the renewed thrill he’s getting from his return to crimefighting. It’s an interesting conflict, and well-resolved, I think. I’m also very sympathetic to Dash’s sentiments that “If everyone’s special, no one is.” Overall, it’s a really good movie. (But as friends have pointed out, not appropriate for really young kids, as it gets pretty scary.)

The second film of the bunch (and one of my favorites of all time) was Miller’s Crossing. Looking back on it, it seems of a piece with the Coen brothers’ work in its totality, but at the time, I think they’d only done Blood Simple (which I hadn’t yet seen) and Raising Arizona (which is as wacky as it gets). Consequently, no one really knew what to make of this when it came out…but man, is it good. Like the Continental Op in Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, Gabriel Byrne’s Tom Regan lets a gang war blossom around him – only unlike the Op, Regan has a rooting interest in Leo (Albert Finney), the tough-nosed political boss he’s been advising for years. But Leo’s getting soft, and rival boss Caspar (Jon Polito, Homicide’s Detective Crossetti) is getting stronger by the day. The plot is complicated, as good noir always is, and it’s not made any easier by the dense gangland jargon: “What’s the rumpus?” “Take your flunky and dangle.” This is a beautiful, brutal film, and its rewards are many.

The final movie I revsited was Heist, a David Mamet film starring Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo (who is so much cooler than most movies he’s in), the inimitable Ricky Jay (I will watch anything with Jay), Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet’s wife, who’s a regular in his movies. Her performance in The Spanish Prisoner still has me saying “Crikey” every now and then). Like Miller’s Crossing, a lot of Heist’s charm is in its stylish dialogue. Jay gets most of the best lines: “He’s so cool, when he sleeps, sheep count him.” and a great little rant about how it’s okay to rob the Swiss because he hates their clocks. But in watching Heist again, I noticed that the actual Heist sequence is wordless for a few minutes, as Hackman and Lindo communicate only in gestures. This, I now realize, is a homage to Rififi, a French film that’s the prototypical heist movie (a remake of which, I now discover on IMDB, currently in production as an Al Pacino vehicle). Rififi’s heist sequence runs 32 minutes without a line of dialogue or music. I doubt the remake will be so daring – and with Mamet on script (and directing), I can’t even imagine anyone trying with Heist. Thirty-two minutes without a completed sentence, maybe.

One other thing: There’s a moment in Heist, early on, when Rebecca Pidgeon is wearing short little cut-offs. The camera briefly lingers on her as she walks away, and you are for a moment absolutely certain that David Mamet loves his wife’s butt. Who says there’s nothing sweet about lechery?

Rob