Gotta see this one !
You never saw Heat?
I may have to kick you out of the cool kids’ club.
I picked up the blu-ray 2 months ago and still haven’t watched my copy yet. i don’t think i’ve seen the film since it was in the theatres in the mid 90’s.
I can’t remember – so yeah, not cool.
But I can still be in the old mann club !
I’m pretty sure that’s Steve Martin, but I can’t find proper attribution and it seems to be a matter of some dispute.
Good piece besides. I can’t guess how Heat will go over in a Director’s Cup match, but good luck.
…
Hey, it’s a free country, brother.
Told you I’m never going back.
Ah, good piece! I’ve got to say, reading that left me a bit more convinced by the film. clicks “Become a Fan” on Heat’s page
Jack Lehtonen
To kick things off, here is a review (or really more of a praise-fest) I wrote not long ago. Be gentle, I’m an amateur ;)
Writing about Heat is like, well… I’ll quote David Bowie: “…dancing about architecture.” This is a film of emotions and intuitions so powerful they consume the mind, and leave words rather useless. One can write a book about the meticulous formal construction of Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece; his smooth pans, his expressive and jarring sound design, etc. But what’s key to Mann, what’s always made him more than a stylist and detail-obsessed maestro, is the feelings his cinema evoke. A Michael Mann film will always be recognizable from his craft, but also, more importantly, from its intuitions. Mann is an emotional filmmaker of the most powerful kind, and the intensity of said emotions drive his pictures.
The cat-and-mouse plot of Heat is a typical cops vs. robbers tale. Ace detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), with his crew (including Ted Levine, Wes Studi, & Mykelti Williamson) hunt down a skillful unit of thieves lead by Neil McCauley (Robert Deniro, his crew being Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, & Danny Trejo). The plot also concerns itself with the romances of the two leads: Hanna’s wife (Diane Venora) and McCauley’s new-found girlfriend (Amy Brennemen), who does not know he is a thief. The film charts their various escapades and the melodrama that inherently follows.
Prior to Heat Mann’s films followed a more rigid, image-based style, dictated by evocative, concrete visuals that stood, frame-by-frame, each as their own miniature worlds. The images in Thief (1981), The Keep (1983), Manhunter (1986), and Last of the Mohicans (1992) are crystalline and pure, and dictate the film and its mood more than the other way around. But Heat marks a changing point in Mann’s filmmography, a shift towards something more intuitive. The film’s are now driven by feelings and sensations, and the images are spawned from these elemental sources of emotion. Rather than being controlled by the images, Mann now erases the distinctions between the visuals he creates and the feelings that gave rise to them. His earlier films were angry existential tales filled with impressive, often jaw-dropping displays of style, but he’s been working on an entirely different plane since Heat.
In Heat, and his films since, we, as the audience, are seeing the world much like an archetypal Mann-character does, rather than observing them from behind glass. This immersion, via Mann’s intuition, into the headspace of a Mann-character creates allows for a much more empathetic connection to the characters. Rather than watching the fury of James Caan in Thief, we are feeling the lost disconnect of Deniro in Heat.
In a short, key sequence, we are given an understanding of the McCauley character greater than that provided by any of his trademark Mann dialogue. The thief returns to his empty, seaside apartment, places his gun on a glass table, and stares into the Pacific. This is the Mann-shot, the protagonist (and despite his profession, Neil is one of them), starring into an expanse, often the ocean. The deep, nighttime blue of the sequence reflects both the somber existence of the character and perfectly captures the film’s mood (for all of its operatics, this is a melancholy drift of a film). Mann’s flawless, ambient soundtrack highlights the eerie stillness of this man’s isolation: the clink of his pistol on the surface of the table, the brief jingle of his keys, and, most importantly, the calm, yet powerful rush of the waves. It’s the most quiet moment in the film, yet the most evocative and effective (watch for a capsule version of it in Miami Vice (2006)). “I am alone. I am not lonely.” says McCauley to Amy Brenneman in the film, but this sequence bares his soul. It is important to note that Mann character’s are masters of self-delusion: McCauley truly believes what he is saying, but it is hardly the truth. Mann’s men have been lying to themselves since Manhunter (Thief, as energetic and masterful as it is, is perhaps his most immature film, as Caan’s character is truly and honestly a then-Mann ideal, without the self-delusion).
Vincent Hanna’s angst, and isolation, is revealed more through his encounters with death. Consider the sequence in which he surveys a crime scene. A young prostitute has been killed by the psycho Waingro (truly one of cinema’s most disgusting assholes). The girl’s mother arrives at the scene, and begins having an emotional collapse. Hanna embraces the woman, his face ghostly, suppressing his own emotions. The mother’s screams and plaintive cries dominate the soundtrack, as Hanna stares forward, his face as still as Deniro’s apartment. It is a haunting moment, and considering that these occurrences dominate the character’s life, it allows great insight into the drifting soul of Hanna. He wades among the dead (or “sifts through the detritus” as his wife says), isolating and distancing him from the life of the living.
The key to Heat, and often the key to many Mann features, is the equality implied between two characters, and the respect that follows. Both are always professionals, and highly solitary. Both often have units of fellow professionals, but never do these units fill the void these characters so desperately need filled. They are always doomed romantics, reaching out to strong women, but always alienate or lose the love they gain. Ultimately, it is their equal, their other side, that provides the greatest connection. Manhunter had Grahame/Dollarhyde, Collateral had Vincent/Max, Public Enemies had Dillinger/Purvis. Heat is the apotheosis of this Mann ideal, the entire film flowing from this connection. The spare, yet lonely headspace of Hanna/McCauley lead to the spare, lonely visuals of L.A.’s luminous nightscape.
Mann highlights the equality of Hanna and McCauley in the film’s most famous sequence through a simple shot/reverse shot structure. The two men, after days of tracking each other, meet on the freeway when Hanna pulls McCauley over (note how Mann underlines their instinctual reach for their guns). They then go for a coffee, sit down, and talk. They talk more frankly than anywhere else in the film, and more honestly. They are honest with each other, and, more importantly, honest with themselves. They discuss dreams, Hanna’s of seeing dead crime scene victims, McCauley’s of drowning, and in turn speak honestly of themselves for the first time in the picture. It takes the presence of the equal in a Mann picture to bring out self-honesty in his protagonists. Notice how, after this sequence, the characters are able to converse more honestly with others (Hanna’s discussion with his wife after his step-daughter’s attempted suicide, McCauley’s heart-felt plea to Brenneman after she discovers the truth of his profession).
The strength of Heat, and always the strength of any Mann picture, is his sublime ability to condense moments and emotions into tiny gestures. Mann is a melodramatic filmmaker, but he is also a master of tiny moments, moments that greatly enrich the theatrical plot points. In Heat, the wounded thief Chris (Val Kilmer), is attempting to return home to his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd). Unbeknown’st to him, cops are inside cooperating with Charlene, waiting to apprehend him upon his arrival. He drives up, steps out on the street, his appearance changed (his long hair cut short), and stares up at the balcony to see his wife. She stares at him with an expression both of love and pain, tears in her eyes. He exchanges with a smile, greatly overjoyed to see his wife after the hell of the film’s earlier gunfight. As he begins to move forward, however, Charlene gestures, quickly and discretely with her hand, for Chris to stay away. He stands stricken, and, after getting directions from a nearby basketball player, drives away. Now, my words are a pitiful attempt to explain the sheer power of the sequence. The entire spectrum of emotions from their scenes prior are represented in one stroke of a hand; she is saving him and leaving him to the wilderness, a kind gesture and a cold one. Mann’s tenderness and restraint in this sequence are incredible.
These gestures, these small moments, are built around the gigantic ones. The tale of equality and respect between a cop and a robber comes full circle to one of the most shattering conclusions in the history of cinema. Mann ends this film with a bang and a small gesture, an intuition and a fury, leaving the viewer only with messy, uninhibited emotion. The two protagonists inevitably square off, in a near-mythic dreamscape courtesy of LAX, and find a moment of beautiful clarity, Mann again condenses the feelings of the entire film into one image, both utopian and tragic. But my words are inadequate. Mann’s long since left them behind. An American Masterpiece.
I didn’t come nearly close to discussing all of the films elements, so this is just the humblest of starting points. Well, discuss!