![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In Movies:
Public Enemies: There is one heartbreakingly beautiful scene in this film that is worth the price of admission alone: Dillinger and his co-conspirator, Red, are in the midst of fleeing an onslaught by the G-Men and running through the woods in winter in Wisconsin. Hearing shots fired behind them, Red slowly turns to see what's happening, and as he does so, the film's pacing slows, and Red is framed between the trees in the dark as the snow flies around him, his breath freezing in the air. It's the most effective use of slow motion I've seen in a long time and the shot is painterly and beautiful. Of course, with a wind-up like spinning out the anticipation, you know that what's coming next cannot be good for the character, and sure enough, the pitch that follows is devastating and nowhere near anything approaching beautiful.
It's odd and wonderful that a film about violence and death (and to a lesser degree, poverty) should have so many beautiful things in it--the costumes are just gorgeous, as are the cars (again, a great source of beautiful shots is the landscape reflected in several cars' polished surfaces as characters drive by). The banks that Dillinger robs are beautiful, too, but cold, aloof stone places where money is squirreled away by desperate citizens and then hoarded by greedy bankers. Dillinger's just there to liberate what's rightfully his, the money that will give him the chance to make his own way in life and escape a past of poverty and violence. But this isn't his only purpose, and his realization that the robberies are bringing him fame as well as money is a large, satisfying chunk of Depp's take on the character (trailers for the film have wisely used the shot of him in a movie theater, watching his own picture appear on screen as "Public Enemy #1!", his expression a wide smirk of satisfaction). Equally satisfying is the confrontation between Dillinger and the G-Man assigned to catch him, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale.) It's like watching a cobra and a mongoose circle each other. Dillinger taunts Purvis about the death of one of the G-Man in Purvis' command and asks Purvis if the thought of hearing the dying man's last words keeps him up at night. Purvis doesn't answer and instead asks, "What keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?". "Coffee," Dillinger replies, the smirk hovering around his lips. While not all the dialogue is at this level of snark-tastic, there's a lot of it that's poignant and nuanced, which balances the shoot-em-up sequences fairly well.
However, the thing that really made this film for me was the faces. Every character, major and minor, looks like they stepped out of a period photograph. Early on in the story, for example, Dillinger and his men have stopped at a desolate farmhouse after a jail break. As they prepare to leave, the woman who owns the house runs after Dillinger, grabs his sleeve and asks him to take her with him. He shakes his head and the camera pans back to show how dilapidated the house is. The woman and her son watch the car drive away, their expressions hopeless and dulled. The whole sequence has the feel of a Dorothea Lange photograph and the overall impact of the scene is that Dillinger was nearly swept up in the tide of poverty that's gripped the nation.
The movie wasn't without its faults. Time moved in funny ways--we went from winter to a too-hot Chicago summer night in the space of about twenty minutes, with no hints that time had passed. The story glossed over the details of the betrayal that lead to Dillinger's death--one scene was not enough to establish motivation and execution of the scheme discussed. I am eager to read the book the movie was based on to understand the sequence of events more clearly, and to get the players a bit straighter in my head. However, these things aren't obstacles to enjoying the film as a whole and there's enough more than enough good and effective storytelling to recommend this as a whole. Well worth the big screen, too.
In Books:
Angel's Advocate, by Mary Stanton: From crime, we switch to order. I'm liking this mystery series a lot, but my primary complaint from the first book extends to this second one: if you're going to have a lawyer who supposedly defends souls in celestial court, then there needs to be some celestial court action, not just hints of it here and there. This is especially vexing when this book introduces to the literal lawyers from Hell who the main character's going to go up against in celestial court. We hear from them (threatening and evil, of course), we hear about the case, we see the main character solve the case on this mortal plane, and then--annoyingly--the book turns away from the celestial court at the last minute and the epilogue makes it clear we won't see the celestial court action, just hear the outcome of the case. More celestial court time and less earthly melodrama, please!
Interred with Their Bones, by Jennifer Lee Carrell: This was a book group read and there's something about it that didn't sit right with me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's the fact that I'm beginning to think of it as "The Da Vinci Code, but with Shakespeare instead". Or maybe it's the fact that the main character, who I had inferred was queer from a large number of narrative hints, suddenly wasn't and was romancing the hero--only to suspect him as the murderer 50 pages later. This is a book I wanted to like--a reasonably competent female main character, interesting tidbits of Southwestern American history, and a quick plot. I'm curious to see what the book group makes of it.
Public Enemies: There is one heartbreakingly beautiful scene in this film that is worth the price of admission alone: Dillinger and his co-conspirator, Red, are in the midst of fleeing an onslaught by the G-Men and running through the woods in winter in Wisconsin. Hearing shots fired behind them, Red slowly turns to see what's happening, and as he does so, the film's pacing slows, and Red is framed between the trees in the dark as the snow flies around him, his breath freezing in the air. It's the most effective use of slow motion I've seen in a long time and the shot is painterly and beautiful. Of course, with a wind-up like spinning out the anticipation, you know that what's coming next cannot be good for the character, and sure enough, the pitch that follows is devastating and nowhere near anything approaching beautiful.
It's odd and wonderful that a film about violence and death (and to a lesser degree, poverty) should have so many beautiful things in it--the costumes are just gorgeous, as are the cars (again, a great source of beautiful shots is the landscape reflected in several cars' polished surfaces as characters drive by). The banks that Dillinger robs are beautiful, too, but cold, aloof stone places where money is squirreled away by desperate citizens and then hoarded by greedy bankers. Dillinger's just there to liberate what's rightfully his, the money that will give him the chance to make his own way in life and escape a past of poverty and violence. But this isn't his only purpose, and his realization that the robberies are bringing him fame as well as money is a large, satisfying chunk of Depp's take on the character (trailers for the film have wisely used the shot of him in a movie theater, watching his own picture appear on screen as "Public Enemy #1!", his expression a wide smirk of satisfaction). Equally satisfying is the confrontation between Dillinger and the G-Man assigned to catch him, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale.) It's like watching a cobra and a mongoose circle each other. Dillinger taunts Purvis about the death of one of the G-Man in Purvis' command and asks Purvis if the thought of hearing the dying man's last words keeps him up at night. Purvis doesn't answer and instead asks, "What keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?". "Coffee," Dillinger replies, the smirk hovering around his lips. While not all the dialogue is at this level of snark-tastic, there's a lot of it that's poignant and nuanced, which balances the shoot-em-up sequences fairly well.
However, the thing that really made this film for me was the faces. Every character, major and minor, looks like they stepped out of a period photograph. Early on in the story, for example, Dillinger and his men have stopped at a desolate farmhouse after a jail break. As they prepare to leave, the woman who owns the house runs after Dillinger, grabs his sleeve and asks him to take her with him. He shakes his head and the camera pans back to show how dilapidated the house is. The woman and her son watch the car drive away, their expressions hopeless and dulled. The whole sequence has the feel of a Dorothea Lange photograph and the overall impact of the scene is that Dillinger was nearly swept up in the tide of poverty that's gripped the nation.
The movie wasn't without its faults. Time moved in funny ways--we went from winter to a too-hot Chicago summer night in the space of about twenty minutes, with no hints that time had passed. The story glossed over the details of the betrayal that lead to Dillinger's death--one scene was not enough to establish motivation and execution of the scheme discussed. I am eager to read the book the movie was based on to understand the sequence of events more clearly, and to get the players a bit straighter in my head. However, these things aren't obstacles to enjoying the film as a whole and there's enough more than enough good and effective storytelling to recommend this as a whole. Well worth the big screen, too.
In Books:
Angel's Advocate, by Mary Stanton: From crime, we switch to order. I'm liking this mystery series a lot, but my primary complaint from the first book extends to this second one: if you're going to have a lawyer who supposedly defends souls in celestial court, then there needs to be some celestial court action, not just hints of it here and there. This is especially vexing when this book introduces to the literal lawyers from Hell who the main character's going to go up against in celestial court. We hear from them (threatening and evil, of course), we hear about the case, we see the main character solve the case on this mortal plane, and then--annoyingly--the book turns away from the celestial court at the last minute and the epilogue makes it clear we won't see the celestial court action, just hear the outcome of the case. More celestial court time and less earthly melodrama, please!
Interred with Their Bones, by Jennifer Lee Carrell: This was a book group read and there's something about it that didn't sit right with me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's the fact that I'm beginning to think of it as "The Da Vinci Code, but with Shakespeare instead". Or maybe it's the fact that the main character, who I had inferred was queer from a large number of narrative hints, suddenly wasn't and was romancing the hero--only to suspect him as the murderer 50 pages later. This is a book I wanted to like--a reasonably competent female main character, interesting tidbits of Southwestern American history, and a quick plot. I'm curious to see what the book group makes of it.
