Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

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hot_locket
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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#151 Post by hot_locket » Sun Jul 05, 2009 10:27 am

It wasn't just the dialogue, though; almost every aspect of the audio mix was inconsistent (OK, the guns were always loud, I'll give it that.). Minor actions like phones being set down and doors closing go from having sound effects to making no noise at all-- often in the same scene-- and the score is all over the place. It pretty much sounded exactly like Wolverine did when the theatre I saw it in DID have a blown speaker.

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John Cope
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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#152 Post by John Cope » Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:30 pm

foggy eyes wrote:I'm beginning to wish that the discussion of digital would begin to move away from the question of "realism" here - yes, the aesthetic is surely intended to be immediate and direct, but it's almost being described as some kind of time machine. If anything, we're looking at "hyperrealism", and I think Mann is much more concerned with the mobility, texture, sensation, tactility (etc.) rather than anything else... The way he's using it to, say, render light is at times more expressionistic than the techniques I would usually associate with a "realist" aesthetic...
Though it's certainly true that DV has the effect of immediacy and a kind of "putting you there in the action" quality, such stuff seems just the surface of Mann's aesthetic intentions (though a glorious surface it is). Foggy is right about "hyperrealism" and that gets more to the heart of it all, I think. Because to me what is really going on here, and surely part of Mann's driving motive, has much more to do with the contemporary immediacy of DV itself rather than its specific application to any theme or subject. To be a little clearer, Public Enemies is another of Mann's films about myth making as personal identity and how time and place function to shape that (part of the film's great complexity and incumbent difficulty has a lot to do with this); so the DV doesn't just function as a heightened aesthetic base, it also, more importantly, functions as a medium of personal familiarity for the audience. Obviously he's using higher end equipment but the nature and quality of the images is still more directly familiar to audiences in respect to the intimacy of their own personal use. Mann seems to want us to recognize our complicity in this myth making as a willingly celebratory audience as well as our own participation in a myth making process: either a reflection of an inherent tendency toward self-aggrandizement or a worthy goal of imaginative vision in action, depending on how you see it. PE mirrors our own self-mythologizing back to us in either case. In this way the whole film acts as an extension of the truly great Manhattan Melodrama sequence Jeff referred to earlier (mirrors within mirrors within..., etc.).

That sequence in fact seems key and even integral to an understanding of the whole project--it's one of those great, late arriving moments which cause you to reassess all of what you thought you've understood up until that moment. And this is because of the extent of the implication of that sequence. It's not simply some gimmicky meta commentary; that would imply that its position is an inherently critical one. But Mann isn't criticizing anything or celebrating it for that matter. He's just documenting a process in action and asking us to recognize the dimensions of it and consider those implications. There is the extent of the mirroring within the text (how far back does this image based modeling go for Dillinger, the "movie fan"?) and the matter of how it resonates out toward us, how we receive it. That prompts a number of questions. Do we audience these images from these different sources the same way? Where is the dividing line if we claim we do? What is the means of distinction for us? Do we even view film the same way as we did seventy years ago? Conversely, is it all so inherently subjective and internalized then that insight and inspiration cannot be shared, can only ever emanate from the foundations of personal psychology? If so maybe we can only expect to objectify the action of someone else's myth making and be unable to take full stock of or even recognize the boundaries of our own.

Certainly that is where the real complications come into play here. PE functions in enough of an overt fashion as pure genre display to partially obscure the many ways it works against those easy assumptions (the camera work and sound design being just the two most obvious). I have no idea whether Mann's philosophical perspective disrupts the experience for anyone else but I have to say it did partially for me as I tried to work through and integrate what I know he's doing with what it only seems like he's doing. Because this is a Mann genre vehicle that is inflected with the product of his last few years worth of defiantly anti-genre investigations (and this includes aspects of Collateral and, far more importantly, his great Robbery Homicide Division TV series). In those cases, we could see up front the way in which Mann considered the presumptive worth and necessity of each individual element. Here, however, he seems more content to submit to standard, dare I say it, cliches. But this is ultimately not fair and doesn't give him the proper credit for having learned from his experiences and bringing that to bear in a more fully integrated fashion.

Another key scene for me was the one in which Dillinger speaks to reporters at the police station; a scene designed around making a point about his fame. And yet this is not the more straightforward irony of something like the similar scene in Badlands. Here it feels very much like an obligation rather than a privilege and this complicates our reception to this otherwise "standard" scene quite brilliantly. It's as if Dillinger has little interest in his "celebrity" as such but tolerates these intrusions as a inevitable result of the fact that his myth making, in that culture at that time, demands it be treated that way. He evidences a tiredness of it and yet there is an odd atmosphere in that room which suggests everyone knows its importance toward sustaining the roles they need to play. It all has a lot to do with the willful assertion of character as performance.

And this too seems key. Just as the time period in a sense demands a particular kind of myth making, a particular kind of depiction of imaginative possibilities, here we have one indicator amongst many that Dillinger saw all his actions, those things that defined his myth, as performance. That's why there is so much attention paid to the minutiae of the robberies as routine events staged for maximum impact. That's why we get so much detail regarding arrangements for future operations (when Dillinger and Ribisi's character were making plans it reminded me of nothing less than an actor consulting with his director). This is also why the Dillinger-Billie scenes play out in such familiar ways. This is not like the more recent Mann unions affected by a kind of self-aware externalized existential angst. The difference between Vice and PE is one of time and temperament. Crockett had lost a clarity that allowed for coherent myth making and a coherent world, so his world is flattened out appropriately. We recognize those same concerns hanging over the performance set pieces of PE but Dillinger does not--or, more to the point, he does not care about such things or see them as significant considerations. He is still able to invest in an imaginative process in a way that Crockett now cannot. Mann's inclusion of the moment in which the Depression era farm wife asks Dillinger to take her with him is both an acknowledgment of the lure of celebrity but also, more fundamentally, an acknowledgment of this difference in cultural attitude. Certainly that moment recognizes the desperate desire to escape the misery of specific social circumstances but it's cagey because beyond that it's a positioning of Dillinger's imaginative escape as a rare and vital active force; one made valid and legitimate in its own actualization.

Though I'm still inclined to prefer Vice (or even Ali for that matter), that may not be entirely fair to Mann; it may be more of an acknowledgment of my own resistance toward where he seems to be going with all this than any lacking on his part. I too wearied a bit of the lather, rinse, repeat crime scenarios Jeff mentioned. But it's more complex than that. For one thing it is, once again, all about ritualized performance, an assertion of being and identity. But Mann's career arc at this point seems to indicate that he may be moving back more firmly to what superficially resembles familiar genre ground. Vice was about as alienating a picture as I suspect he's capable of or even wants to do; after all, the very nature of that film is at odds philosophically with Mann's origins and what I think are his values still. At the time I saw that picture as an inevitable end point but now I suspect it's only a marker of passage along the way, a moment in an evolutionary process in which a certain kind of recognition has interceded. In that sense then, despite the fact that everything post Heat has felt like an ebbing away from the legitimacy of a grandiose vision of the self--a flattening or evening out of all elements, what we have with PE is a TS Eliot style return to a familiar place that feels new again, reignited with potency and possibility. The surface mechanics are more conventional than ever but Mann's confidence shines through; he's learned something tremendously valuable over the last decade about mythic proportionality and he applies it here and he has the confidence to believe that foregrounding the inner workings of his philosophic inquiry is no longer necessary.
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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#153 Post by planetjake » Sun Jul 05, 2009 8:06 pm

John, that's the best anything I've read about the film so far. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I personally loved the film and have been laying low trying to sort myself out about it. You've helped me get closer. Thanks!
Last edited by planetjake on Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#154 Post by Jeff » Sun Jul 05, 2009 9:06 pm

Thanks for that, John. Some great insight there. You've made me start reassessing some thematic things that I didn't pick up on, and I'll certainly view the film through that lens next time.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#155 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:00 am

For me, and I've been thinking on this for a little bit, what was most interesting considering the themes Michael has explored throughout his career is that in both Thief and Heat, the criminals seem to have a clear take on how precious life is is because they spent wasted years in prison. James Caan said when he was preparing the role of Frank, how he decided to approach the dialogue was to speak slowly and clearly enough for everyone to understand him, and that he uses no contractions. He felt that this was effective in communicating that this is a guy who had over a decade taken from him in prison, and that every minute of his life from now on would not be wasted. DeNiro's approach to this idea is most apparent when he's talking to Al about the recurring dream he has about drowning, and knowing that it's about not having enough time.

Here, it's almost an inverted version of this idea. It's very telling when Dillinger says "we're having too much fun today to think about tomorrow". As much professionalism he puts into robbing the banks, there is a recklessness and abandon he revels in that is the complete embodiment of that statement. Only to Billie does he project any ideas of a real future, but these ideas are a pie in the sky against the reality of the havoc he causes society and the unrest he causes in the F.B.I. and local law enforcement.
SpoilerShow
I don't know about anyone else, but I got the feeling during the Manhattan Melodrama sequence that John knew the end was coming soon. Probably not as he was walking out, but soon enough. For me, this is further evident when Charles Winstead tells Billie the last words that John spoke before he died.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#156 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:44 am

Fine reading, John. I have only a minor quibble:
John Cope wrote:It's as if Dillinger has little interest in his "celebrity" as such but tolerates these intrusions as a inevitable result of the fact that his myth making, in that culture at that time, demands it be treated that way.
I think he still actually has quite a bit of interest in his celebrity status (see, for example, his pleasure in the movie theater when the newsreel shouts "he could be sitting next to you!" and the lights go up, or when he walks through the police station admiring his photographs). But like many celebrities, I imagine, he finds the interview process and the whole press deal wearisome, a thing to be suffered because it's inextricable from the nature of celebrity. He doesn't necessarily find fame wearisome, just certain parts of it, especially those that have lost their novelty.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#157 Post by foggy eyes » Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:52 am

John, I've been waiting for that post, and it didn't disappoint! You've opened up avenues and possibilities within the film that many of us are clearly struggling to get to grips with...
For one thing it is, once again, all about ritualized performance, an assertion of being and identity. But Mann's career arc at this point seems to indicate that he may be moving back more firmly to what superficially resembles familiar genre ground. Vice was about as alienating a picture as I suspect he's capable of or even wants to do; after all, the very nature of that film is at odds philosophically with Mann's origins and what I think are his values still. At the time I saw that picture as an inevitable end point but now I suspect it's only a marker of passage along the way, a moment in an evolutionary process in which a certain kind of recognition has interceded.
Yes yes yes.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#158 Post by filmnoir1 » Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:51 am

Like so many others here on the board I am an avid admirer of Mann's oeuvre and have seen each of his films numerous times. For me Thief is still his masterpiece because of the simplicity of the story and the amazing performance that James Caan gives in the film. However, in this film and his other crime films, Mann continues to display a fascination, perhaps even reverence for the criminals and policemen of the Roaring 20s (setting much of the action in Thief in Al Capone's bar The Green Windmill in Chicago) or the idea of the professional bank crew in Heat (a nod to the Depression bandits of the 1930s and the heist films of the 1950s like Asphalt Jungle, The Killing). Thus for me one of the things that I have always loved about Mann's work is his sense of history and professionalism, both of which I would argue he tossed aside in Public Enemies in order to make a film that speaks to the interests of a more main-stream audience. In Public Enemies it is not the importance of the Depression and how it impacted the lawlessness of the decade that he focuses on. Instead he concentrates on the mythos of the period and in the process simply re-creates and re-imagines this mythos for a contemporary audience. The real let down is that this could of have been a great statement about the nature of crime, America and the lengths that law and order will devolve into in an effort to display a sense of achievement.

The major flaw of the film is that it tries to be epic in scope and as a result it conflates events, omits others and completely fabricates other situations in an effort to create a heightened sense of drama. He reduces Melvin Purvis and Dillenger into two dimensional characters that feel more like they were drawn for a Dick Tracy comic strip. We are never given the reasons for these two men's actions, and instead are asked to simply trust the images and enjoy the ride. This strategy, in my opinion, does a disservice to Bryan Burrough's great work of history and belittles the complexities of this period and its impact on these people. Dillenger in fact came from a normal middle to upper middle class background. Purivs believed himself to be the last of the great Southern gentlemen who wished to serve his country and in the process became a media celebrity more because of being in the right place at the right time, rather than being a truly capable law enforcement official. In fact, it was another man named Samuel Cowely who actually is responsible for the development of the FBI and the eventual capture of John Dillenger, Baby Face Nelson and Alvin Karpis.

Furthermore, the film relies on the viewer to know who all of these figures like Alvin Karpis were and why they were so important at the time. As Burrough's book documents, Karpis was the genius of this period and may have been one of the greatest criminal minds ever produced in the US. Yet, in the film Karpis is shown to be just another hood operating in the Midwest at the time. Even the nature of the robberies depicted are disjointed and often fabricated because it was Nelson and Karpis who were planning on robbing a mail train for its payroll, not Dillenger. One of the glaring omissions is the fact that one of the reasons it was so difficult to locate Dillenger after he broke out of jail was because he had plastic surgery done and died his hair.

I enjoyed the film and Mann's visual critiques of the use of warrantless wiretapping and torture which makes the film seem even more relevant in today's context, but it would have been nice to see more examples of the real toil the Depression was taking on the country. Yet, he provides a picture of the nation as glamourous and without trouble except for these roving bandits. To focus on the celebrity aspect indeed makes the film relevant but it also ignores the reasons behind their celebrity which was the fact that the poor and working class idealized them for being self-made individuals who were achieving success at a time when the entire nation was broken.

Finally, I would argue that the most effective moment in the film is when Mann attempts to recreate for us what it must have been like for Dillenger to sit in the Biograph theater that night and see Manhatten Melodrama. Unlike the Warner Bros. gangster films of the era, M-G-M's gangster films focused on the glitz, glamour and institutional elements of urban living. Perhaps that is why this film touched him so in the film, because he realizes that he is not capable of being a Blackie type and in fact is more like Bill Powell's character a stand-up citizen who only wants to help others, no matter the cost. For me it the idea of sacrifice and determination that define this decade and many of the films crafted during it. Unfortunately Mann forgets these qualities in Public Enemies and as a result the film devolves into another case of second-rate nostalgia rather than an intelligent and insightful analysis of the period and these "characters" that emerged because of it.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#159 Post by Vic Pardo » Sat Jul 11, 2009 2:12 pm

filmnoir1 wrote:The major flaw of the film is that it tries to be epic in scope and as a result it conflates events, omits others and completely fabricates other situations in an effort to create a heightened sense of drama. He reduces Melvin Purvis and Dillenger into two dimensional characters that feel more like they were drawn for a Dick Tracy comic strip. We are never given the reasons for these two men's actions, and instead are asked to simply trust the images and enjoy the ride. This strategy, in my opinion, does a disservice to Bryan Burrough's great work of history and belittles the complexities of this period and its impact on these people.
Agreed. I urge the readers of this thread to get Bryan Burrough's book, "Public Enemies," and read it. It's well researched and filled with great detail. It covers the other Depression-era bandits as well, including Karpis and the Barkers and Bonnie and Clyde.

Some scenes from the book are recreated practically verbatim in the film. But then, other scenes, as filmnoir 1 points out, are complete fabrications. I believe I've seen every Dillinger film ever made and none of them gets it right, despite the fact that Dillinger's story has always been ripe for film adaptation. He was, after all, the first celebrity outlaw of the media age. I had high hopes for this one because of Depp's casting, but was seriously disappointed. I still like John Milius' DILLINGER (1973) the best, despite its wild inaccuracies (e.g. 54-year-old Ben Johnson's John Wayne-like portrayal of the thin, nervous 29-year-old Purvis), mainly because Warren Oates displayed enough of Dillinger's charm to make the portrayal work. Depp should have been able to do that, but he comes off as too toned down and restrained to make it work for me. I kept waiting for the magnetism captured in those famous newsreels, but it never appeared. They even recreate the scene where those newsreels were shot and you don't get any sense of the charisma that made Dillinger a folk hero.

(Just for the record, I'm not implying that Dillinger actually deserved to be romanticized as a folk hero. He was a criminal and good men died as a result of his actions. He shot one lawman to death himself and others were killed by members of his gang, including a kindly old sheriff who was his jailer at one point. Burrough's book does a superb job of de-romanticizing Dillinger, something I needed to read since I happen to have always been fascinated by Dillinger myself. But the fact remains that he did have charm and likability and you can see why he became famous and applauded by large parts of the population during the Depression. He was very different from the likes of Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde. Which doesn't mitigate the effects of his crimes, of course.)
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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#160 Post by Antoine Doinel » Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:24 pm

Saw this tonight [SPOILERS AHEAD] and I have to say Mann's reach far exceeds his grasp with this film. The major stumbling block for me with this film was Mann's desire to paint/side with Dillinger's mythic/tragic status that, unfortunately, the script just doesn't have enough substance to adequately address. For all the time we spend with Dillinger and, to a much lesser extenet, Dillinger/Billie, there is very little character detail. Much of Dillinger's dialogue, particularly when with Billie is excrutiatingly bad. He spouts a lot of classy one liners, but that's about it. One of the most crucial plot turns in the film, when Dillinger decides to a job with Baby Face Nelson despite it going against the very methodology which has earned him success and public goodwill, is completely wasted. There is absolutely no tension in that heist, nor do we really feel the desperation that has pushed him into those circumstances. Instead, we get two lines of dialogue that address it, and then two extended gun battles (and boy, does Mann love his gunfights in this film. They are filmed quite gloriously at times.)

The flipside to this is a painfully thin characterization of Melvis Purvis. Mann and the script seem to want to say something about the emerging strength of the FBI and their tightening grip on organized crime (done through the character of Frank Nitti, who pops up and down when convenient) but ultimately leaves those threads dangling.

The film's pacing is all over the place, moving quickly through events at the beginning, dragging through portions of the middle, and then building steam again at the end. But through all of this, you don't get any sense that Mann knows what the important events are for character building (as mentioned above). There is no doubt that Mann is great behind the camera. I was one of the early naysayers on the look of digital in the trailer, but the final look of the film, I think is great. And certainly Mann can direct a shoot 'em up like no other. But these characters are empty, floating around some glorious sets as placemarkers in a tragedy that ultimately has no story.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#161 Post by kaujot » Fri Jul 24, 2009 1:36 am

As good as I thought the film was, I do wish that Purvis had gotten a more defined character. What a tragic life.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#162 Post by souvenir » Fri Jul 24, 2009 2:06 am

I really thought Purvis was portrayed fairly and fully enough. Bale's performance surely helps in describing a man essentially defined by the people he apprehended or killed rather than any actual traits of his own. The workaholic nature of Purvis comes through with sterling sadness. Dillinger's one and only encounter in the film with him while still breathing, the Indiana jail scene, is ultimately instructive of these two men. Purvis is emotionally unprepared for his job while Dillinger recognizes the sacrifice necessary to commit to these actions.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#163 Post by kaujot » Fri Jul 24, 2009 2:37 am

I suppose what I meant is that I wanted more screen time for him.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#164 Post by Antoine Doinel » Fri Jul 24, 2009 8:35 am

souvenir wrote:I really thought Purvis was portrayed fairly and fully enough. Bale's performance surely helps in describing a man essentially defined by the people he apprehended or killed rather than any actual traits of his own. The workaholic nature of Purvis comes through with sterling sadness. Dillinger's one and only encounter in the film with him while still breathing, the Indiana jail scene, is ultimately instructive of these two men. Purvis is emotionally unprepared for his job while Dillinger recognizes the sacrifice necessary to commit to these actions.
Certainly Purvis' was defined by the people he apprehended, as he gained much media and professional acclaim for doing so. I don't agree that there was anything transmitted that was particularly "sad" about Purvis' supposed "workaholic" nature. He was under tremendous pressure from Hoover to deliver gangsters in cuffs; if he was overworked, it was simply because the nature of the job required it, but the dividend was he efforts were recognized. In the Indiana jail scene Purvis comes off as tremendously confident (something that Dillinger notes), while he is otherwise amused at Dillinger's insouciant attitude behind bars.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#165 Post by filmnoir1 » Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:06 am

The new issue of Sight and Sound has a three page essay about the strengths and weaknesses of the film which I would recommend everyone read. While I echo many of the sentiments expressed here about Mann's technical abilities, what is sorely lacking in this film is a measured sense of history combined with dramatic realism, if we can employ this term. Too much of the film is based around the sensationalistic journalistic accounts of the period in combination with the mythos regarding that fateful period of the summer of 1933-34. While Mann credits Burrough's book, the final product does not indicate a thoughtful reading or analysis of the historical facts. While I recognize that in some cases filmmakers must create drama where there is no drama, in this case the drama is missing because Mann does not connect the dramatic historical facts and motives of the robbers to explain the reasons behind this crime wave and the belief in the country that a Federal police force was valuable. Nor does the film explain how these criminals were able to operate so well for so long without censure.
While I appreciate the film and Mann's attempts it just did not match my expectations. Furthermore I am not sure that Mann really understood who his audience for this film was going to be, because it may have been crafted to appeal to younger viewers, especially women, with the inclusion of Johnny Depp, yet the film has struggled to reach that audience. Gangster movies of the 1930s are not readily identifiable for younger viewers because they lack the knowledge of the period and the viewing history to appreciate what it is the film is about. Perhaps in a few years the film will find a better life but for now I would still rather watch Public Enemy, Scarface, Roaring Twenties and G-Men than a post-modern attempt at dealing with the themes and issues of the 1930s.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#166 Post by foggy eyes » Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:15 am

Antoine Doinel wrote:But these characters are empty, floating around some glorious sets as placemarkers in a tragedy that ultimately has no story.
I know what you mean, but that's a really odd thing to say. Perhaps "it doesn't have the type of story that I like to see in a movie" would be more appropriate.

Anyway, everybody should turn to The Auteurs for a constructive and progressive (pro-Mann) discussion...

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#167 Post by Antoine Doinel » Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:35 am

filmnoir1 wrote:Furthermore I am not sure that Mann really understood who his audience for this film was going to be, because it may have been crafted to appeal to younger viewers, especially women, with the inclusion of Johnny Depp, yet the film has struggled to reach that audience. Gangster movies of the 1930s are not readily identifiable for younger viewers because they lack the knowledge of the period and the viewing history to appreciate what it is the film is about. Perhaps in a few years the film will find a better life but for now I would still rather watch Public Enemy, Scarface, Roaring Twenties and G-Men than a post-modern attempt at dealing with the themes and issues of the 1930s.
Some good points filmnoir1, but I have to comment on this. It's not up to Mann - or any filmmaker - to cater to an audience. That said, if the studio was expecting Mann to craft a stylish, glitzy summer blockbuster with this material, I'd love to know what they were smoking at the time. Audiences have no problem with period gangster films. The Untouchables was a wild success and it was a film with a similar theme and time period, but with a far less lugubrious execution. The casting of Johnny Depp had something to do with bringing women into the theater, but it also allowed the studio to give $100 million to Mann to play with. All this said, I think this is the last time for a while that a studio is going to hand Mann $100 million for a film. The film probably will only break even once it open internationally, and for a tentpole film, executives can't be happy with that. On top of the huge financial disappointment of Miami Vice (a film with a $135 million budget), Mann is going to be hard pressed to work with such budgets again anytime soon. Or if he is, he is going to be extremely reined in, probably being forced to bring a cut in under two hours and losing the right to final cut.
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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#168 Post by Antoine Doinel » Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:49 am

foggy eyes wrote:
Antoine Doinel wrote:But these characters are empty, floating around some glorious sets as placemarkers in a tragedy that ultimately has no story.
I know what you mean, but that's a really odd thing to say. Perhaps "it doesn't have the type of story that I like to see in a movie" would be more appropriate.

Anyway, everybody should turn to The Auteurs for a constructive and progressive (pro-Mann) discussion...
No, it's not that I didn't like the story, it's that in my opinion, the film didn't address many of the thematic elements with very much substance or missed key character developments entirely. I outlined my problems with the film in my post.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#169 Post by foggy eyes » Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:57 am

Antoine Doinel wrote:No, it's not that I didn't like the story, it's that in my opinion, the film didn't address many of the thematic elements with very much substance or missed key character developments entirely. I outlined my problems with the film in my post.
I meant that you said it was "a tragedy that ultimately has no story", which is just weird. And impossible.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#170 Post by filmnoir1 » Fri Jul 24, 2009 2:43 pm

I am not implying, I hope that any filmmaker should cater to an audience in terms of their pushing the boundaries of the medium to another more "artistic" sense. After all, if one really thinks about Hitchcock's filmmaking is was an example of a type of experimental filmmaking that combined a cohesive narrative and affect. Yet, what differentiates Hitchcock, Ford, and so many of the other classical Hollywood directors was their talent to understand how to combine the commercial needs of the studio with their own artistic visions. If there is any director working today that displays this type of awareness then it would have to be either Spielberg or Haneke. Both filmmakers demonstrate a respect for those who have come before them and how they tested and changed the nature of filmmaking, even as they attempt to challenge and in some cases break many of these standard modes of filmmaking.

That being said, my problem with Public Enemies was not the cinematography, which throughout was gorgeous and does elicit a feeling of heightened sensitivity for the images. The use of digital photography is not something to bemoan because it is here to stay and can be very effective in the right hands. Clearly Mann is capable of this as he demonstrated brilliantly in Miami Vice. The problem with Public Enemies is that the film is often too superficial and even when Mann seems to have some depth or statement to convey, he simply introduces an image and does not follow up on it. As someone else has noted in the scene where we see the FBI men in the phone company office with all the eavesdropping equipment, it is an interesting moment but one which is tossed into the film quite matter of factly as is the inclusion of Frank Nitti. Not everyone knows the history of the 1920s and 1930s in terms of crime and gangsters, but Mann seems to be relying on a previous knowledge, rather than to explain the importance of a man like Nitti to the world of the film and to history.
My last point is in reference to the script and the idea that audiences do not like or understand gangster films. Someone mentioned Untouchables as a model that viewers would be aware of and draw upon in viewing this film. Untouchables was made in 1987 and as a film educator, I would simply point out that many people do not possess a knowledge of films prior to the late 1990s much less those of today. I am hoping that when this is released on dvd that there is a longer director's cut that may illustrate the care and respect by Mann that he has heretofore displayed.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#171 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:54 pm

Bought the DVD and watched the extras and listened to Michael's commentary, although dry he did manage to make it interesting in places. My opinion of the film has strengthened considerably after seeing it again. It has it's flaws, but they aren't as numerous as they were in Miami Vice.
rs98762001 wrote:I thought the score was way too heavyhanded and portentous. Aside from that one bluegrass-y theme, it could have come straight out of The Thin Red Line.
You're not too far off. There is a piece from The Thin Red Line that's mentioned (oddly enough, with a cue from Heat) in the music credits. But I think what you see as heavy-handedness and portentous I think does a good job of cementing dramatic points throughout, especially in the final moments of the film.

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Re: Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

#172 Post by khan0890 » Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:02 pm

Michael Mann is apparently directing a pilot written by David Milch for HBO. While he exec produced ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION i believe it's his first foray into TV directing since LA TAKEDOWN.

Here are the details: http://www.nyccine.com


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Re: The Wild Bunch (Mel Gibson, 20XX)

#174 Post by Monterey Jack » Sun Sep 30, 2018 3:33 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Tue Sep 25, 2018 3:00 pm
Michael Mann
Are we talking raptly hypnotic, pre-2004 Mann, or fuzzy cell-phone, post-2004 Mann?

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Re: The Wild Bunch (Mel Gibson, 20XX)

#175 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Sep 30, 2018 4:01 pm

He's talked about wanting to shoot on film again, so it wouldn't be an unreasonable idea for him to do this, especially if it's not a modern take.

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