Michael Mann strips a classic American genre to its bare elements with Public Enemies, another fascinating use of digital technology from the director after 2006's underrated Miami Vice--- one of the first feature length movies to harness digital as a separate medium with its own unique capabilities. Public Enemies represents a more streamlined, though no less dynamic, use of digital-video and its potential to be an extension of 35mm, as opposed to a cheap replacement for it. The technique lends an incredibly intimate and immediate feel to the proceedings--- a feel that is being mistaken for 'realism.' It would be better, perhaps, to think of the technique as an embodiment of the titular public enemies' mode of living--- hard and fast. "We don't have time to think about tomorrow, we're having too much fun today," Johnny Depp's John Dillinger says early on in the film, and the urgency that the digital movie-making tools provide compliment and contrast with what on the surface seems to be a traditional cat and mouse gangster picture.
A spectacular opening sequence illustrates immediately the unique perspective toward the era that Mann will convey. An early establishing shot shows the exterior of a prison that houses John Dillinger, and the prison walls stretch beyond the edge of the frame, and seemingly into eternity. The sense of scope that Mann brings to his compositions is breathtaking in more than a few instances, and when you contrast this with the stripped-down, elemental feel of much of the rest of the picture, there is something particularly striking about the expansive depth of his frames. Public Enemies' unique epic/intimate dichotomy is typified in the prison-break that begins the movie: Mann gives us exteriors that establish the prison, and then he brings us almost disconcertingly close to the action with incredible, fly-on-the-wall handheld work. As the cops and robbers engage in battle, the sounds of gunshots and empty shells hitting the ground resonates powerfully--- this is not a movie that relishes in the violence propagated on screen. Punches sting, knives cut, and bullets penetrate the flesh in a visceral, gripping manner; a lesser movie would have embraced this kind of violence while at the same time moralizing about a sinful lifestyle. Mann's film does not fall into either of these traps.
Credit must be given to Mann and Depp for stripping away the usual glorifying elements that one would usually associate with this genre while, at the same time, avoiding Hays Code style sermonizing. It would have been so easy for Depp, a naturally charismatic actor, to instill John Dillinger with charm. A scene toward the end where Dillinger sees David O. Selznick and W.S. Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable, typifies the way Public Enemies rejects Old Hollywood romanticism for a more objective, cosmic take on gangsterism. The clashing aesthetics between James Wong-Howe's stunning black and white cinematography in Manhattan Melodrama and Dante Spinotti's high-contrast photography in Public Enemies is, in many ways, the essence of the movie. In the gangster pictures from Hollywood's Golden Age, the films would romanticize their subjects--- especially in the Depression, the movies were an escape for the masses, and people enjoyed living the life of a gangster vicariously through the movies. At the same time, however, the movies had to fulfill a "responsibility to the public", and thus the main characters always got their comeuppance after the movie had relished in their immorality. Whether they were arrested, killed by the police, or killed by rival gangs, none of the screen's hoods got off scott-free, and therein lies their great contradiction: relishing in screen violence while at the same time railing against it. During the controversy surrounding the final scene of the last episode of The Sopranos, series creator David Chase illuminated this inherent hypocrisy: "The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted 'justice.' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly."
As Chase's quote above notes, we see ourselves on the screen, and Dillinger sees himself in Clark Gable's charismatic gangster. What's unique about this scene set in Chicago's Biograph theatre (where the real John Dillinger spent his final hours) is that Mann hones in on Dillinger's subjective impression of the film he's watching. Myrna Loy's character in Manhattan Melodrama reminds him of his girlfriend, Billi Frechette (an enrapturing Marillion Cotillard), and Depp conveys Dillinger's longing for his lover powerfully and wordlessly. An extremely telling smile comes over Dillinger's face when Gable's character in the film says "It's best to die how you lived--- all of a sudden", this sequence beautifully articulates the way we identify with art, while at the same time deconstructing the camera's inherent iconographic gaze (much like the scene in My Life to Live when Anna Karina's character watches The Passion of Joan of Arc). The use of digital film making tools embodies Clark Gable's "all of a sudden" philosophy, as Public Enemies is a movie that, like Dillinger himself, always lives in the moment.
This sense of immediacy suits the movie's period elements particularly well. The digital actually allows Mann to focus on details that would perhaps seem irrelevant in a typical period drama--- the speedometer on an antique car, the logo on Zenith radios, the text imprinting the barrel of a Tommy gun. So, while the digital lends a decidedly modernist feel to Public Enemies, at the same time it fleshes out the details in a more unique way, and the Depression-era feel more alive in this movie than it usually does in period pieces. Michael Mann has taken an era that feels distant to movie-goers and brought it to life in the most organic way imaginable; the period details never call attention to themselves, and that actually gives them more power than movie's that do call attention to their art direction. The way the movie handles the past is one of the things that makes it among the most singular movies released by a major studio in recent times.
It's such a unique work in an overcrowded genre that when the traditional plot-elements of a cat and mouse gangster picture come into play, they feel especially banal. We would assume that, at this point in motion picture history, it would be something of a given that law-enforcement authorities would pursue our main characters; but Public Enemies, as so many movies of this kind before it, feels the need to weigh down the heart and soul of the story with a contrived police procedural. Scenes that would be considered characteristic of the genre feel particularly out of place when put along side the intoxicating, pulsating imagery in the Dillinger narrative. The FBI jargon, endless bureaucratic corridors, men in suits, and mundane details of the investigation led by Melvin Purvis (a stern but engaging Christian Bale) bring an element of familiarity to this otherwise idiosyncratic picture. These sequences (along with a money laundering subplot) bog down the audience and disrupt the momentum that the movie has going for the sake of semantics. It's these overly-familiar elements that ultimately hold Pubic Enemies back from being one of the best movies of its kind.
So, while Public Enemies may not be a 'great' movie (and really, who cares about such superlatives?), it is a fresh, bold, and exciting one. It may have some dull stretches, but the film's inventive sequences (of which there are many) make it a more than worthwhile effort. Michael Mann has taken an old genre and given it a face-lift, and in a deeper sense than simply the aesthetic--- the film takes a unique, non-judgmental stance on its main characters. He strips away cinema's romantic gaze, while at the same time providing lush, intoxicating imagery. In terms of Hollywood film makers working with digital technology, Michael Mann is without equal--- and Public Enemies, like Miami Vice before it, shows that Mann will be on the forefront in pushing the medium forward.
A spectacular opening sequence illustrates immediately the unique perspective toward the era that Mann will convey. An early establishing shot shows the exterior of a prison that houses John Dillinger, and the prison walls stretch beyond the edge of the frame, and seemingly into eternity. The sense of scope that Mann brings to his compositions is breathtaking in more than a few instances, and when you contrast this with the stripped-down, elemental feel of much of the rest of the picture, there is something particularly striking about the expansive depth of his frames. Public Enemies' unique epic/intimate dichotomy is typified in the prison-break that begins the movie: Mann gives us exteriors that establish the prison, and then he brings us almost disconcertingly close to the action with incredible, fly-on-the-wall handheld work. As the cops and robbers engage in battle, the sounds of gunshots and empty shells hitting the ground resonates powerfully--- this is not a movie that relishes in the violence propagated on screen. Punches sting, knives cut, and bullets penetrate the flesh in a visceral, gripping manner; a lesser movie would have embraced this kind of violence while at the same time moralizing about a sinful lifestyle. Mann's film does not fall into either of these traps.
Credit must be given to Mann and Depp for stripping away the usual glorifying elements that one would usually associate with this genre while, at the same time, avoiding Hays Code style sermonizing. It would have been so easy for Depp, a naturally charismatic actor, to instill John Dillinger with charm. A scene toward the end where Dillinger sees David O. Selznick and W.S. Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable, typifies the way Public Enemies rejects Old Hollywood romanticism for a more objective, cosmic take on gangsterism. The clashing aesthetics between James Wong-Howe's stunning black and white cinematography in Manhattan Melodrama and Dante Spinotti's high-contrast photography in Public Enemies is, in many ways, the essence of the movie. In the gangster pictures from Hollywood's Golden Age, the films would romanticize their subjects--- especially in the Depression, the movies were an escape for the masses, and people enjoyed living the life of a gangster vicariously through the movies. At the same time, however, the movies had to fulfill a "responsibility to the public", and thus the main characters always got their comeuppance after the movie had relished in their immorality. Whether they were arrested, killed by the police, or killed by rival gangs, none of the screen's hoods got off scott-free, and therein lies their great contradiction: relishing in screen violence while at the same time railing against it. During the controversy surrounding the final scene of the last episode of The Sopranos, series creator David Chase illuminated this inherent hypocrisy: "The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted 'justice.' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly."
As Chase's quote above notes, we see ourselves on the screen, and Dillinger sees himself in Clark Gable's charismatic gangster. What's unique about this scene set in Chicago's Biograph theatre (where the real John Dillinger spent his final hours) is that Mann hones in on Dillinger's subjective impression of the film he's watching. Myrna Loy's character in Manhattan Melodrama reminds him of his girlfriend, Billi Frechette (an enrapturing Marillion Cotillard), and Depp conveys Dillinger's longing for his lover powerfully and wordlessly. An extremely telling smile comes over Dillinger's face when Gable's character in the film says "It's best to die how you lived--- all of a sudden", this sequence beautifully articulates the way we identify with art, while at the same time deconstructing the camera's inherent iconographic gaze (much like the scene in My Life to Live when Anna Karina's character watches The Passion of Joan of Arc). The use of digital film making tools embodies Clark Gable's "all of a sudden" philosophy, as Public Enemies is a movie that, like Dillinger himself, always lives in the moment.
This sense of immediacy suits the movie's period elements particularly well. The digital actually allows Mann to focus on details that would perhaps seem irrelevant in a typical period drama--- the speedometer on an antique car, the logo on Zenith radios, the text imprinting the barrel of a Tommy gun. So, while the digital lends a decidedly modernist feel to Public Enemies, at the same time it fleshes out the details in a more unique way, and the Depression-era feel more alive in this movie than it usually does in period pieces. Michael Mann has taken an era that feels distant to movie-goers and brought it to life in the most organic way imaginable; the period details never call attention to themselves, and that actually gives them more power than movie's that do call attention to their art direction. The way the movie handles the past is one of the things that makes it among the most singular movies released by a major studio in recent times.
It's such a unique work in an overcrowded genre that when the traditional plot-elements of a cat and mouse gangster picture come into play, they feel especially banal. We would assume that, at this point in motion picture history, it would be something of a given that law-enforcement authorities would pursue our main characters; but Public Enemies, as so many movies of this kind before it, feels the need to weigh down the heart and soul of the story with a contrived police procedural. Scenes that would be considered characteristic of the genre feel particularly out of place when put along side the intoxicating, pulsating imagery in the Dillinger narrative. The FBI jargon, endless bureaucratic corridors, men in suits, and mundane details of the investigation led by Melvin Purvis (a stern but engaging Christian Bale) bring an element of familiarity to this otherwise idiosyncratic picture. These sequences (along with a money laundering subplot) bog down the audience and disrupt the momentum that the movie has going for the sake of semantics. It's these overly-familiar elements that ultimately hold Pubic Enemies back from being one of the best movies of its kind.
So, while Public Enemies may not be a 'great' movie (and really, who cares about such superlatives?), it is a fresh, bold, and exciting one. It may have some dull stretches, but the film's inventive sequences (of which there are many) make it a more than worthwhile effort. Michael Mann has taken an old genre and given it a face-lift, and in a deeper sense than simply the aesthetic--- the film takes a unique, non-judgmental stance on its main characters. He strips away cinema's romantic gaze, while at the same time providing lush, intoxicating imagery. In terms of Hollywood film makers working with digital technology, Michael Mann is without equal--- and Public Enemies, like Miami Vice before it, shows that Mann will be on the forefront in pushing the medium forward.
