299. Keane

Song - Somewhere Only We Know (Keane)

Movie: Keane (Lodge Kerrigan, 2004)

Occasionally the voices in his head retreat, and when they do William Keane (Damian Lewis) can just about resemble a functioning adult. In one of these moments he meets Lynn (Amy Ryan) and her daughter, offering them 100 dollar to be able to stay in their New York hotel a couple more nights. She hesitantly accepts and invites him the next evening for some takeout in their room. An innocent dance follows and at the first hint of sexual potential she asks William to leave. He does without protest and with respectful consideration. In the next shot, it's the day after and we see a distressed William fussing about, hunched against a wall on a street corner. As the camera pans to the open space on the left it reveals a desparing Lynn in a phone booth, trying to reach her husband (Keane is the second film in a row here about a woman's unsuccesfull efforts to settle down in Albany with a man who may not be right for her) or at least find out whether he even is at the location she is calling. The scene evokes the painfully misjudged phone call from Taxi Driver for good reason. Both films are about a man in mental torment walking the streets of New York in the mistaken belief a woman will fall in love with him if he saves her from a situation she doesn't want to be rescued from. and both Scorsese and Kerrigan are compassionate in their understanding that their protagonists are still lucid enough to sense that human connection might offer a way out of their misery, but too far gone to have the capacity for it.  

Kerrigan's approach is however different to Scorsese's. Taxi Driver plays out as an expression of Travis' inner life, every scene feeling on the verge of boiling out, as if possessed by De Niro's volatile, vulnerable mania. Keane is an intense film where the camera almost constantly stays extremely close to William, seeing every detail of his anguish as he contorts himself around New York. Even so, it allows more distance between the audience and Keane than Taxi Driver, remaining at all times a naturalistic third-person account of a mentally unwell person. We first meet William at a major transit station in New York where he walks around in a daze trying to retrieve his daughter who apparently disappeared some time ago. The film's ending impliees that something like that really did happen, but Kerrigan leaves it relatively open for interepreation and his decision late in the film to show Keane look for jobs during one of his more rational episodes potentially flips the narrative even further on its head. The implication that only now we are finally watching Keane do what he actually came to New York for fully conveys how much his mind sidetracks him from acting on his correct intentions. 

I am a fan of slightly surreal accounts of a night that gets progressively more irrational, and of urban odysseys with a sense of the absurd. Combine the two and you can barely ever go wrong, which is why After Hours remains Scorsese's greatest movie. The best of these films wouldn't work without its collection of strange characters that pester, confound or annoy the main protagonists in their attempts to stabilise their situation. Often there is an implication that these side characters suffer from a social or psychological ill, but even when they are not used for comic effect/building atmosphere they are quckly tossed aside and forgotten after they've served their purpose for the film. Keane is consciously presented here as one of those people society would prefer to ignore, and often does. Kerrigan frames him constantly around passengers in transit, cars, busess and trains, all passing him by, paying no heed to his agony unless he gets into their face. He builds a lot of sympathy for him in the process, and ends the film at exactly the right point, allowing us to leave Keane on a positive note, despite knowing full well that what follows is gonna hurt even more than what came before. But we don't need to see that.

298. His Girl Friday

Song - Words (Bee Gees)

Movie: His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

I will probably like His Girl Friday more on repeated viewings. Woody Allen bringing out Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall is one of my favorite moments in cinema; Cary Grant noting of Ralph Bellamy's character that "he looks like the fellow in the movies, Ralph Bellamy" paved the way for it (and for Woody Allen's entire persona). Besides, the idea that there is an entire host of peculiar characters outside of the frame that can enter the movie at any given time to divert whatever's going on is pretty much at the heart of Hawks' film. So is the notion that it's funny to watch people frenetically talk over each other about entirely different subjects, especially when they are pompous blowhards such as the professor in media studies complaining that there is not much to Fellini and Beckett beyond their technical proficiency. He is rightly put in his place by McLuhan, and anyone who's seen Annie Hall will know better than trying to sound like that guy. But what do you do when you see a classic that you find techincally impressive, but a little hollow? Blame it on Cary Grant, maybe? I think the film as it its best during its surpisingly long stretch in the middle when he is barely on screen. 

Another favorite, Tarantino, has never let an opportunity slip to declare his love for His Girl Friday, and it does play like one of the keys to his entire filmography. You can see Hawks' movie in all his work, even when he doesn't neccessarily make an explicit reference to it. The Hateful Eight for example is most succesful when it lets the door to the cabin take center stage, essentially becoming a film about the efforts to enter, exit and close it, and how power relations change depending on who is in and out. The same can be said for His Girl Friday, which I found a bit disappointing when it focuses on the relationship between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, but rather marvelous when it is about the municipal press room as the city's center of power. Journalists, criminals, policemen, and crooked politicians all try to occupy it and are forced to constantly adjust their actions based on who is present and absent, and why. Everyone is always missing some crucial piece of information (or the ability to obtain it), and knows it without entirely being able to put their finger on what they lack. Hawks is a master in blocking, and in evoking group dynamics. Even when a specific combination of people is only on screen for a brief amount of time, you get a great sense of how they all relate to and act around each other. In the meantime the phones keep ringing, with every call having the potential to change the context. 

Of course the main thing that connects His Girl Friday to both Allen and Tarantino is its focus on dialogue, but there is a key difference. Tarantino and Allen write as if their dialogue would be memorable whichever actor says it. His Girl Friday is directed to to highlight that Grant and Russell will be memorable whatever they say at breakneck speed. I prefer the first approach even if Tarantino in particular is sometimes the writer equivalent of a basketball player ostentatiously admiring the big three he just hit. It's hard to blame him; it's incredibly difficult to write styllized literary dialogue that is self-conscious about the pleasures of its rhythms, structures, inventions and diversions, and also meaningfully moves the story forward, deepens the characters, and adds complexity. In His Girl Friday Russell and Grant play unscrupulously determined journalists and former lovers who are aware of each other's rhetorical skills and know that they can never lose their guard if they want to remain true to their intentions, feelings and ideas. One slip of the tongue and you may lose the argument. It's all quite entertaining but the film never really bothers to build upon what we learn of them. Instead Grant and Russell spend entire acts communicating the exact same ideas about each other, only worded differently. 

I absolutely don't mind exercises in style that serve little purpose beyond showmanship. However, a movie that is more interested in how its actors express themselves than in what is being expressed needs to get every key role right, and I felt that Cary Grant was somewhat miscast here. 'Friday' refers to Robinson Crusoe's slave and the title seeks to convey the nature of the relationship between an editor-in-chief (Grant) and his star journalist (Russell). Of course this dynamic only exists in Grant's mind; Russell is a much better and more ruthless journalist than he'll ever be and doesn't need his paternalistic sense of protection and guidance. That's part of the joke, but for a joke to work the set up has to be believable, and Cary Grant's meek, gently confused affect is at odds with his savvy scoundrel confidently pulling all the strings. It's hard to conceive of him ever being in a position to be the Robinson Crusoe to any Friday, let alone one with as steely nerves as Russell. As a result a lot of his dialogue comes off as completely inauthentic.