By Keith Uhlich
Though a good many of us might like to think otherwise, a critic is not a prognosticator, so on that basis I might be forgiven for not thinking Michael Mann had it in him to make what instinct says will be one for the ages. In retrospect it is clear that the rapturous Miami Vice is the work Mann has been building to: a streamlined, decidedly present tense rethink of the influential TV series on which he acted as executive producer. Though its tenor is unique, Miami Vice has its fair share of antecedents, among them the existential noirs of Jean-Pierre Melville, which are clearly a touchstone and inspiration for cinematographer Dion Beebe's hypnotic high-definition palette, as well as for the overall terseness of dialogue and character (this is Mann's first movie - great as many of them are - that doesn't feel overburdened by implicative macho swagger). Yet the point of comparison I kept returning to - referenced by several commentators on this blog - is Terrence Malick's The New World, and not just for the lead actor both movies happen to share.
The virtues of Malick's film have been defended extensively enough within these pages that they need not be rehashed. Suffice to say that Miami Vice is The New World's gangland cousin, a fully formed tone poem - intertwining spirit and eros - about characters trapped (often of their own volition) within a rapidly evolving eternal present. This is something of a change for Mann, whose characters are often trying to outrun the past, only to find it catching violently up with them. In Miami Vice there is no past and there is no future: "It is going bad right now," says Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) of the botched undercover operation that sets the quite intentionally slim plot in motion, and the rest of the movie offers up several variations on the theme.
Mann's choice to shoot in high-definition only heightens the sense of the immediate. Moreso than film, video is given to of-the-moment intimacies and digressions. Mann expands on Jonathan Demme's example in the nouvelle vague homage The Truth About Charlie, where the characters quite literally dreamed in DV. Vice transposes the medium's inherent dream state onto its characters' realities: Mann's mise en scène feels preternaturally caught 
between REM sleep and waking life, always one step away from the bubble bursting, from the destruction of a tenuously maintained nighttime reverie. Perhaps this tension - this fear of awakening into a helpless stasis - is what gives rise to the errant tear in the eye of white-collar criminal Isabella (Gong Li) during her sex scene with Crockett (at that moment partially play-acting his drug-smuggling alter ego Sonny Burnett). As the duo say flat-out in a subsequent conversation, they know their relationship has no future, though awareness of the likely outcome fails to still the murmurs of their hearts.
What does make these people tick? Mann, more often than not, leaves that for his audience to decide, allowing the characters' glances to speak multilayered volumes. Mann tips his hand during an early shower/sex scene between fellow vice cops Ricardo Tubbs (Jaime Foxx) and Trudy Joplin (Naomie Harris), cutting between the actors' faces and what are quite clearly torso body doubles. It's a knowing jest that, by itself, would play with an off-putting level of cruelty more appropriate to the disdainful aesthetics of Michael Bay or Tony Scott. But for Mann it is merely prelude to Tubbs and Trudy's tender sex scene, which begins with jovial embarrassment via a play-acted premature ejaculation and climaxes with Trudy (whose point-of-view is favored in the scene) gently talking her lover to sleep. Only then does Mann's artifice reveal itself as more than a cheap joke - this is how Trudy and Tubbs view themselves with each other. Intertwined in a lovers' secure embrace, there is nothing but the moment and the intimacy is infectious.
There are very tangible threats to this sense of peace, but Mann never turns hypocrite, exposing one or the other as complete falsities. More often than not, intimacy and intimidation are shown to exist within the same moment, as in the shower scene between Crockett and Isabella, which Mann conceives as a direct homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, though the knife blows, in this case, are psychologically charged kisses that give way to a no less stimulating business discussion as the duo barter percentages before a bathroom mirror. An even more mesmerizing example is the climactic scene where the vice squad rescues Trudy from a gang of drug dealers. The sequence favors fellow detective Gina Calabrese (Elizabeth Rodriguez) as she faces off with a white supremacist who has his thumb poised over a detonator. He invokes the received wisdom that, if shot, his finger will twitch and the bomb will go off. "That's not what happens," says Gina, before launching into one of Vice's few moments of prognostication. She explains that a well-placed bullet to the medulla will render him effectively lifeless and while she speaks, her words ("What will happen is... what will happen is...") bordering on incantation, Mann's jittery camera settles peacefully, lullingly on her lips. We don't even sense the bullet coming; when it does it achieves a kind of multilayered relief, though it would be reductive to label this as merely a crowd-pleasing moment.
Indeed, the violence in Miami Vice is devoid of any kiss-off superiority, as illustrated by the movie's exquisitely realized final shootout (unlike many of his contemporaries, Mann masterfully delineates the visual and aural space separating bullets from their targets). When Tubbs dispatches the mid-level drug dealer José Yero (John Ortiz), our cheers catch in our throat 
because of the sheer messiness of his demise (the spattered blood is a visual rhyme with Tubbs' earlier invocation of Jackson Pollock) and by the character's quietly numbed exhaustion after pulling the trigger (wit rarely comes easily to those under life and death pressure). And if that isn't enough to temper our gut reactions (like Narcissus' aqueous mirror, I think Vice does more to reveal than to satiate its audiences' predilections for bloodshed), Mann quickly returns to what the scene is actually about: the dissolution of false identities and the resulting emotional fallout between Crockett and Isabella.
That Miami Vice is, above all else, a love story should come as no surprise to the Mann or TV-Vice obsessed. At its best the television series achieved the heady rapture of a museum video installation (MTV by way of Chris Marker). There is perhaps no greater example from the series' run than Crockett (Don Johnson) and Tubbs' (Philip Michael Thomas) nighttime drive in the Pilot episode, a brazenly homoerotic mix of cocking guns, charged glances, and a throbbing Phil Collins backbeat (only Mann could make Phil the Shill's mind-numbing melodies mythic). The movie Vice is more palpably heterosexual, though Mann retains the queer charge in the Crockett/Tubbs relationship, illustrating it - via the bookend images of Crockett walking through doorways (once into the dark of night away from his partner, the other into the white light of a hospital entryway to rejoin him) - as a friendship torn subtly asunder and finally reconstituted (as suggested by the atmospheric lightning flashes and thunder cracks that pepper various scenes throughout) by a concomitant sense of spirit, a deep-rooted virtue that offsets and transcends the characters' necessary displays of vice.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Virtue in Vice
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
29 comments:
Thank you for the clear-eyed reading of this film. As Matt has pointed out, Mann is a very frustrating director, and I agree with him that there is definite greatness there. Whether he acheives that greatness while remaining dedicated to genre, or moves on to an area that will appeal, perhaps, to those who doubt his significance, remains to be seen. I'm hoping his next project is "Arms And The Man", based on a NY Times magazine piece from a few years ago, concerning an international arms dealer.
To suggest, as a certain critic has, that Mann is merely a television sized talent, with no cinematic value is absurd. I immediately lose all respect for that critic.
That settles it--off to the neighborhood megaplex to figure out whether I agree with Odie, Keith or neither!
great review .. I too was worried that even a director as great as Michael Mann would be able to pull this off, but he definitely did.
I certainly can't wait. I've been a fan of Mann since both Heat and Collateral (and learned well after the fact that he also helmed 1992s The Last of the Mohicans), and the likening of it to The New World has only increased my anticipation. 10:00 at the local Carmike tonight, hopefully.
Yo, Matt, when you gonna step up to the plate on this one, baby?
kj: maybe this weekend. I still haven't seen it. In the old days I would have probably seen it twice by now, but what can I say.
Keith, a moment in "Miami Vice" which links Crockett to Neil McCauley in "Heat". When the vice cops are coming down hard on the snitch in the snitch's four million dollar condo, Crockett is photographed standing at the window, which offers an expansive view of the sky and ocean, a boat trailing off into the distance. This could be a prognostication of his "go fast boat" trip with Isabella, or, perhaps, a reverie wherein he's longing for a different life, one free from darkness and peril. His private moment is interrupted by the business at hand, bringing him back to the dangerous "now".
In heat, the crew separates after a night out, and McCauley returns to his nearly empty home, alone. No spouse. No girlfriend. In the dark, he stands by the window which offers an expansive view of the ocean, and gazes outward. We don't find out until later his thoughts of getting away to New Zealand and being done with it all, preoccupy him. Crockett had others in the room with him who share the same code, who share a bond. In his private moment, Mccauley is utterly alone, staring at the emptiness beyond him, a prognostication, perhaps, of the terrible finality ahead.
KJ, that shot of the horizon and sea, from Crockett's perspective, stayed with me, too. To me, it suggested boredom with the cajoling and threatening of criminal assets like Nicholas the money launderer, and distance from his colleagues. Note how Tubbs talks to Alonzo on the highway, while Crockett at first has little time for him when he calls -- and that Alonzo asks for Tubbs to "take care of Leonetta." Crockett is not necessarily longing for criminal liberty, but his thoughts are elsewhere during that conversation.
It is probably possible to identify a dozen or so shots or scenes where Crockett is shot or staged at some remove from his colleagues: e.g., in the raid on the trailer park, Gina and Tubbs approach together, sometimes in the same frame, but Crockett comes from another direction entirely.
Just 'cause a good thing bears repeating. :-)
"I Can Feel It Comin' Through Your Stare Tonight":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tnyp9tRXRo
I 've been thinking about this one quite a bit lately and am heartened to see some solid thinking on it finally emerging. In all honesty, I find it to be tremendously difficult to talk about or write about or even, in some respects, to think about properly.
The main reason for this is that Mann is demanding more from us than ever before. I agree that Vice does act as the culmination of a certain aesthetic style but it is far more than that. I suspect that to understand what he has accomplished here requires a seismic shift in the kind of attitude we bring to a project like this. It is the highest irony that the only way possible to position this film in a commerce driven society is as a summer action extravaganza with all the unproductive expectations implicitly attached. The fact that Mann provides us with the standard beats associated with the form does not alter the fact that he completely overhauls the meaning and intent involved. Vice occludes easy or direct readings and this refinement of Mann's artistry ensures that any interpretive effort will be necessarily tentative, preliminary and searching.
Having said that, here are some things that struck me. It is evident from the outset that Mann wanted to distance this Vice from its TV forerunner. He does this in many ways, some of which are aesthetically obvious, some of which are not. Much has already been said about the stripped down visual quality, spare and minimalist by comparison to the florid excesses of the series. It is indebted in great measure to Mann's late lamented Robbery Homicide Division, which ran briefly on CBS a few years back. That show now looks and feels like a testing ground for the stunning strides and courageous developments on display in this feature. Certainly that was his first real extended foray into DV as a medium for expression and it was very successful in its own right. Still, I think the great contribution of RHD was as a canvas to test lighting patterns, color effects and contrast rates. If that sounds rather bloodless it is not in practice. Both then and now Mann understands well how to merge his form and content. That series also played as minimalism writ large, meaning that it was around this time that Mann began in earnest to study the effects of iconic imagery and posturing, personalized myth making if you will, as an integrated component of the fabric of his canvas rather than as a cut out, foregrounded reality around which everything else pivots. I have to admit that it took time to adjust to this approach. Even The Insider and Ali are more overt, less sophisticated attempts to work through these new ideas. I believe his craft has been in a constant state of development and reaches a kind of apex with Vice. That's why there's so much less heightened swagger in it that calls attention to itself--everything here has been dulled by endless repetition; the sheen is gone, as is the false consolation that individual myth making with its force of personality can constitute and validate independent identity. It is unfortunate that many early reviews seem to write this movie off as Mann wasting his time and talents on a strictly conventional by the numbers genre piece. This could not be further from the truth.
Though Mann does make specific and obvious changes to force an immediate shift away from the assumptions of style associated with the series he does not do this arbitrarily. The cumulative effect of the changes he makes is a severe alienation from the casual relationships we usually form with character and narrative in films of this type. This is not true just because he starts the film in mid-stream or has a prevalence of night shots and generic locations or dials down the camaraderie between Crockett and Tubbs or fills the air with meaningless tech talk. It is because of all those things. The decisions he makes here function and only function as a unified whole. They can only be understood as a way of contributing to the distancing impact of the entire experience. If he had simply done one or some of these things it could be argued that this was a failed experiment in stylistic change for its own sake--a half assed way to demand that we take this Vice seriously. But we cannot take it seriously, not in the way the characters do because they and their work are so intentionally removed of resonance outside of their own solipsistic circle of influence. Mann eschews the iconic images and obvious posturing that cluttered the show, instead pressing everything down into the surface texture of the screen itself, the canvas as iconic object in toto, no longer framing a subjective experience or myopic self portrait. This is a huge and critically important change for Mann.
It's critical, I think. We know that Mann respects men who do a job well and that is no different here. He clearly finds something to admire in those for whom their life is their work, who have no outside lives, whose romantic relationships are even just facets of the same world vision, as they are relatable to none but themselves. The difference now is that this admiration feels tempered by more than a little presiding wisdom. The visual technique subdues and minimizes these men and their experience, it arrests their own heightened self conception by placing it on even keel with the waves and the clouds. All are part of the same purely aesthetic existence. These men are devoted but to what? The aesthetic realms of culture and being is all these men have and can invest in. The gestures toward escape or purposeful commitment outside of this self enclosed box is destined for failure from a lack of imagination and capacity for real change. Mann has admitted that he has questioned their unreflective devotion himself and that recognition is key to the leap in his consciousness. We are not meant to completely follow all that happens and all that is said because it is a coded language of interest only to its adherents. We are not meant to get a better understanding of character because what can be seen is all there is, all that ultimately matters or can be comprehended. It's fascinating to see Mann enter into Bruno Dumont anthropological territory here. The fact that Crockett's questioning of his identity and loyalties does not come across as that significant is because it is not. It would be a purely superficial shift and to his immense credit Mann knows that and is smart enough to risk much by downplaying the dramatic importance involved with it. Everything is of a piece here; the attitudes of everyone toward everything. There is little to differentiate the racing boat from the storm clouds or the automatic gun fire from the lightning in the sky. The screen absorbs it all--colors washed across a vast surface.
I expected something different I have to admit. I expected a much more clean and clear character study of men who have lost their sense of who and what they are. This would have been enough for me. It was not enough for Mann. To pursue these themes would have resulted, I realize now, in just an extension of the TV series' subtext. There is no subtext in this movie. The struggle at the boundaries of the frame is all that this is about. It is the triumph and tragedy of the form some have chosen to live in that interests Mann and exalts his vision into new territory, a new way of seeing and understanding. The fact that many insist on finding flaws with Mann's "realism" is indication of how difficult a shift in perception is required here.
It is hard to imagine a greater artistic advance by a major artist and certainly I don't expect to see one this year.
I can see the vast skill that went into making Miami Vice, and I've been in the tank for Michael Mann since I saw Manhunter twenty years ago. I love Jamie Foxx. I think Gangs of New York would have been a classic with Colin Farrell in the lead role. All that said, Crockett's spur of the moment romance with Gong Li's character, majordomo/paramour of the drug lord, is...Too. Damn. Silly. In the space of one thirty second conversation about mojitos, we go from a good movie to a bad TV show. It took me out of the film, and even the superb closing half hour didn't really pull me back in.
Compare to this to how the John Smith/Pochahontas romance, equally implausible on the surface, is developed and handled in The New World. Advantage: Malick.
I'm still waiting for somebody here to actually say something.
Nathaniel, your post is quite long--I only read the last chunk but was pleased to find one sentence that so clearly defines the film: "The struggle at the boundaries of the frame is all that this is about." Wonderfully stated. I didn't need to read any further, (though I'm sure you make many more great points), just as the audience need look no further than the frame itself.
Thanks all for commenting. I'm very taken with your post in particular, Nathaniel, and - per your opening paragraph - am still thinking about all the accomplished points you raise. Despite the tremendous difficulty you personally find in writing about Miami Vice, I think your thoughts come through loud and clear, highly resonant. You've especially piqued my interest in Robbery/Homicide Division as a developmental step for Mann.
Nathaniel, I didn't intend to sound lazy or uninterested. Let me rephrase a bit. I'm too young to have seen the Vice TV show, I don't know much about TV in general, and I had no expectations for Vice other than it being a Mann film. I try to let my personal feelings on a film simmer for a while without reading excessively on it. Even after seeing the film, I still only cared about the film itself, and nothing else, not the back stories, the subtext, as you mention, or the troubled production, or anything. Your statement stood out because it was so spot on, I wanted to mention it.
I just saw it, so here are some thoughts. I’m somewhere in the middle on this one – I don’t think Miami Vice is one for the ages – but it’s movie enough for today.
For those who worship at the alter of script, there’s nothing here to worship. If Michael Mann took television in the original series and made it more like a movie, then here he takes a movie and makes it seem more like TV. The dialogue is the standard boilerplate you hear on a million cop shows and often the logistics of what’s happening on screen are downright dumb.
It’s amazing that after all these years filmmakers can still come up with new ways to portray gunfire. The high velocity effect of bullets slamming through metal in Miami Vice is done chiefly by the excellent sound design.
I thought Gong Li was quite good. Yes, her English is terrible, but I know people who don’t speak it well and they are plenty real alright. She was well cast and convincing, and in no way affected. It was clear that she understood what she was saying even if I didn’t.
I like Keith’s linking of Mann to Malick. I see a similarity in working methods. They both use available light and set up 360 degree situations that they can jump into and move around in – while looking at everything with quick, furtive glances. It’s not story-boarded and it’s decidedly un-theatrical. It makes some of the story-board guys’ movies look like those magic boxes that are designed only to be looked at head-on. Mann’s ability to film at dawn and dusk feels revelatory – and the night time stuff is awesome, if too grainy at times. I like the overcast weather with the occasional lightening flash, and the ceiling of clouds as far as you can see, like we’re seeing the hellish underside of something else up there. Mann is also a master of those stray details left behind around the edges of a scene– a half eaten pizza, an unmade bed – that make the sometimes sterile environments look lived in. I give the art direction an A+.
What makes these characters tick? That we feel compelled to ask this is our first clue. These ciphers tick along -- inscrutable and mannerist. They are fantasy projections even when they are trapped and unhappy fantasy projections. They are constantly on the move. There’s heavy shit going down in their solipsistic world, and they’re always smack in the middle of it. They have the trappings of leisure and wealth but they’re too driven to ever stop and smell the roses. They have glimmers of desire, but if they ever had postcard collages of dream escapes like the ones that James Caan had in Thief and Jamie Fox had in Collateral, then they’ve either been misplaced or long forgotten. We watch them from our air-conditioned seats for two hours diversion, with some vague idea about how the clockwork of our modern world works, and we imagine that this globalized hodgepodge of international villainy and the government inter-agencies that track it is like some corroded watch-spring that’s driving the world.
I say that there are only glimmers, but then Mann’s lyricism kicks in – and how those glimmers shine! Sonny fastens Gong Li’s seatbelt and then floors the go-fast boat – and Mann’s camera spends a good 45 seconds lovin’ on that boat. And then there’s that car. And after that, Mann takes another minute for some good lovin’ on that sweet, sweet airplane.
I was expecting more violence. After reading Odienator’s great review I was wondering how big an aspirin you’d need for all those bullet-sized headaches. Really, there is at least an hour and a half with no violence whatsoever. It’s that tried and true tactic: do something nasty up front, and then the audience will be on edge the rest of the way, so that you don’t have to do anything until the end.
All in all, I can get off on Michael Mann’s style through much of it, but in many other ways it just wasn’t my cup. Still, it does have a certain scruffy glamour to it, and as I drove home afterwards through the dark deserted streets, I found myself wishing that I hadn’t shaved that day, and that I was driving a convertible while taking and extremely important life or death call on my cell phone.
Gorgeous post, Wags.
My favorite part is: I found myself wishing that I hadn’t shaved that day, and that I was driving a convertible while taking and extremely important life or death call on my cell phone.
I took a pal to see it the other night, and after the movie we realized with delight that our behavior had become quite Mann-ered -- we were leaning on his car in the empty parking lot, checking our cell-phone messages and trying to speak gruffly, without using contractions.
Pathetic? Yes, but it's fun to be a little boy sometimes.
nathaniel,
I liked your analysis better than most I've read, but consider ... don't you think it's possible that any well-shot movie with a poorly written script and paper-thin characters would strike you the same way?
This sentence - "everything here has been dulled by endless repetition; the sheen is gone, as is the false consolation that individual myth making with its force of personality can constitute and validate independent identity" - could be used to defend everything from "Alien vs. Predator" to "Just My Luck." And this - "... we cannot take it seriously, not in the way the characters do because they and their work are so intentionally removed of resonance outside of their own solipsistic circle of influence." - is true of every bad movie ever made, and only some good ones.
Finally, this: "The visual technique subdues and minimizes these men and their experience, it arrests their own heightened self conception by placing it on even keel with the waves and the clouds. All are part of the same purely aesthetic existence." In other words, the only content of MV is in its visual landspaces. Your interpretation of Mann's choice is one way to view the film; another interpretation is that Mann viewed this as a promotional reel for certain advances in filmmaking technology, and as many modern action films are essentially promotional reels for special effects, Mann thought his approach would fit the form.
Also, your argument does not explain why neither Farrell nor Foxx seem to understand a single word of their dialogue.
John S wrote: "Also, your argument does not explain why neither Farrell nor Foxx seem to understand a single word of their dialogue."
Hey, willfully obscure dialogue is the hallmark of a Mann picture. He's auteurism's answer to Marlon Brando.
And I'd argue that these mumbles create a brechtian effect -- that they are there for poetic sonic effect rather than "sense" -- Like everything else in Mann's universe, it's all been subordinated to style. Pure style. Like Bresson said, what else is there?
However, Mann isn't exactly consistent in his obscurity -- his images and utterances aren't always stripped of their "content" -- he can be perfectly clear when he wants to be. And when he is, he's an often banal, junior league Hemingway.
Vice is Sergio Leone Operetta -- the sooner you get over it, you realer-than-thou hypocrites, the sooner you can enjoy the film!!
Thanks for the kind comments. As I said, any reading on this picture at this point is sure to be a tentative one but it felt like a legitimate place to start.
As to your points, john s, you're right, of course. Many of these arguments I am proposing could probably be used to find worth in shallow material by those thus inclined. However, I also said, "The cumulative effect of the changes he makes is a severe alienation from the casual relationships we usually form with character and narrative in films of this type. This is not true just because he starts the film in mid-stream or has a prevalence of night shots and generic locations or dials down the camaraderie between Crockett and Tubbs or fills the air with meaningless tech talk. It is because of all those things." My point being that this movie evidences a concentrated effort, an intent if you will, and that makes all the difference.
For me as a Mann fan I admittedly am biased to start but how is it possible not to be? I traced the development of this particular aesthetic in his recent work to indicate why this is a culminating moment. In some ways I would have probably preferred (i.e. got more of a direct thrill) out of a perpetuation of Mann's former technique--but the vulgar and blatant iconography of the show is simply not part of his game plan with this movie. Frankly, it's a more mature work of art than that. That's why it was so shocking to me; because he does not cater to or attempt to satiate stock anticipations and rote formula expectations but rather challenges their assumed authority and ultimate worth Miami Vice was never going to be a huge financial success. But it will endure and the fact that Mann chose to consciously make such a grand statement in such a potentially career killing monumental fashion suggests that he understood that it was the only way to make the point.
Nathaniel, I don't think that MV is as solipsist or formalist an exercise as your comments above imply (to me, at least). Perhaps I am a bourgeois slave to the capitalist device of narrative, or the patriarchal myth of male purpose, but it seems to me that Mann could have divorced us from any set of characters, and any plot, or no plot, using the same cameras and same evolved lighting techniques, which suggests that the characters and the plot, though not as schematic as, say, Bad Boys VI: The Worsening, deserve some attention at the center of the frame when we're through admiring the fringes. It doesn't lose legitimacy, for me, for telling an old, old story -- the annihilating crush of duty against mad love with the wrong woman, the rescue of someone's right woman, the destruction of at least some of the unrighteous.
Lance Mannion has a thoughtful piece on some of the Mann-related writing here, and it's capped with an analysis of the original show's portrayal of corruption, especially Castillo's experience with and feelings on the subject. Click here.
Great post Keith and I'm glad that Mann's film is finally being taken seriously by a few critics. I'm not surprised that it's being embraced by the bright folks at Slant. I've greatly enjoyed how sparse and proficient Mann's last two efforts have been in distilling his obsessions.
Having said all this, I do find the queer theory a bit strained in this instance, as I'm a bit hesitant to declare bookended scenes of men walking through doors to be conveying any type of homosexual imagery (though I'm not arguing against your interpretation of the glaces these two characters shared in the 80s TV show). I'm never one to dismiss these types of interpretations, but while the images may convey connection between these two men, I'm less certain that they convey any type of longing or desire, simply a sense of duty to a person who shares your perspective of the world. In fact, based on the dynamics created through Farrell and Fox's portrayals of these characters, I would argue that Crockett and Tubbs do not particularly enjoy each others' company, but respect one another immensely.
Hi Jit-
Thanks for writing. You're the second person who's called me on the queer issue with regards to "MV". I do think it's there, but maybe my review gives it more precedence than I intended (i.e.: I think it's just one of many layers to the movie).
Thinking on it, I'm sure I imposed my view of the TV Crockett & Tubbs onto their movie incarnations. (See my link above to the Phil Collins night drive scene as illustration for how I see them.)
That said, I do think there are some strong undercurrents throughout the movie Vice of - at least - a homosocial variety. Not that these guys would ever fuck each other's brains out, but there's a charge in their glances that goes beyond simple friendship.
Examples: Crockett's terse "I'm coming back" when he's returning from Cuba the first time - like a lover (who's done this before) covering up the tracks of his affair.
Tubbs', "I'll never doubt you", which comes right after the second extended meeting with Fujima. Their gazes hold just a beat longer than normal, charging the moment.
And I do think that Crockett's final act - leaving the woman he loves so that he can hurry back to his partner - speaks for itself. (Though again, it's not just queer. But I like that one can, if desired, interpret it that way, among all the others.)
"But the real darkness of the movie has gone unnoted by the critics: In his latest "Vice," Michael Mann offers up an economically globalized world populated only by the grimly poor and the breathtakingly ultra-rich, all of whom are bigtime felons.
Here, the poor serve largely as scenery, reminding us that we are now in Port-au-Prince (black faces), Ciudad del Este (brown), or a trailer park in the industrial wastelands of Miami (white and often tattooed). A few of them seem to be employed as lookouts or, a little higher up the career ladder, "shooters," for the drug gangs. Otherwise, they might as well be signposts.
As for a middle or working class: In crime fiction, this is the historical role of the cops or private eyes. In "Miami Vice," though, the good guys have not a shred of material existence to betray their social class. Crockett and Tubbs don't live anywhere, and touch down only in unfurnished apartments provided by their employer, where they use the showers for sex."
From "Miami Vice: The class analysis", by Barbara Erenreich. Go here: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=10761
"But the real darkness of the movie has gone unnoted by the critics: In his latest "Vice," Michael Mann offers up an economically globalized world populated only by the grimly poor and the breathtakingly ultra-rich, all of whom are bigtime felons.
Here, the poor serve largely as scenery, reminding us that we are now in Port-au-Prince (black faces), Ciudad del Este (brown), or a trailer park in the industrial wastelands of Miami (white and often tattooed). A few of them seem to be employed as lookouts or, a little higher up the career ladder, "shooters," for the drug gangs. Otherwise, they might as well be signposts.
As for a middle or working class: In crime fiction, this is the historical role of the cops or private eyes. In "Miami Vice," though, the good guys have not a shred of material existence to betray their social class. Crockett and Tubbs don't live anywhere, and touch down only in unfurnished apartments provided by their employer, where they use the showers for sex."
From "Miami Vice: The class analysis", by Barbara Erenreich. Go here: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=10761
--- The main reason for this is that Mann is demanding more from us than ever before. ---
I have the highest respect for Keith, Matt, and my Slant Magazine colleagues Ed Gonzalez and Nick Schager, but regarding MV I have to wonder what all of you guys have been smoking.
Someone once said Antonioni captures the "illusion of profundity" without being profound. I actually disagree on that one, but would apply that to MIAMI VICE.
I think Mann has done an excellent job in the past of capturing a certain kind of American individualist. A lone wolf who has a job and gets it done right at great cost to his personal life.
But is that what is happening with the central cops here?
I don't see what they are doing beyond chasing the bad guys.
That's fine, but it's not particularly deep.
No Michael Mann film is without merit, intelligence and weight. He's a strong and visionary filmmaker. But comparisons between the lightweight MV and THE NEW WORLD seem erroneous to me.
NEW WORLD is a poetic film told through visual storytelling to hit at one central theme, and you could walk away from it swirling with thoughts and feelings.
It says that two people touching each other's lives can change their world, and that illustrates a more global idea of how countries and cultures can do the exact same thing. The New World in that movie is Pocahantas as much as it is America.
But does MIAMI VICE have a strong and resonant theme?
MIAMI VICE is similar only inasmuch as it has strong and striking visuals. But MV is not about anything particularly deep. It is a fun ride at best, and one that runs way too long.
I have been reading praise for the film but don't really understand
what anyone is drawing from it. And if you're being entertained by it's flash and style, just say that!
Allow me to throw down the gauntlet, my friends: To say it is profound without illustrating its profundity doesn't give me an avenue into the film, and believe me I am trying to understand what all you guys see in it.
The movie is a blown up version of a two part TV episode, minus the
color (it looks drab and metallic), but with a double helping of banal,
connect-the-dots narrative.
I admire that Mann stripped away all exposition, but he neglected to include character moments that would have strengthened the movie. Also, Farrell and Foxx are handsome presences onscreen, and I guess iconic, but they lack the acting chops to be equal to previous Mann heroes:
James Caan, Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, William L.
Petersen (I stand by his great performance in MANHUNTER).
My review of the film, which I stand by, is right here:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?id=2391
Post a Comment