tigerman2001

I don't know where to begin. In some ways it'd be easier just to sum up by saying "what?! like, what the hell, dude?," because it's hard to begin or end thoughts about a film that seemed to have neither beginning nor (in more ways than one) end. For that matter, the sandwich-oriented two-word review alleged in the classic "This Is Spinal Tap" would be entirely appropriate.

The positive: it's nicely shot.

The negative: everything else.

The acting's okay in parts but I can safely say all the principals have been better in other properties. The script and direction conspire to make this an incomprehensible mess, one that also has pretty much nothing at all to do with the reality of the Black Dahlia case (so much so, in fact, that I don't see any point at all in including that murder, let alone naming the film in its honor). Not having anything to do with the the actual case would be okay, really, if the film had at least one thing worth recommending other than the catchy title and the promise inherent in the same (an unsolved and very sensational murder; "Zodiac" did that very well).

At the 84-minute mark, despite having yet to make any sense of this monumental pile of ego-driven self-indulgent crap, I thought perhaps some kind of blessed conclusion to the film was imminent. But, no; sadly, I had another 26 or so minutes left to endure. Admittedly, about 20 minutes later the story started to resolve itself just a little, although Frau Blücher ("whinnnnnnyyyy") delivering her demented soliloquy didn't exactly act to clarify anything, but when the film finally lurched to the glorious sight of a fade-to-black I was still left wondering what, exactly, I'd just watched.

I'm not saying that films should always spoonfeed us the plot, or that a non-traditional narrative or one that's more than a little off-kilter or nonlinear doesn't have worth when executed well, but this film just plain makes (almost) no sense right from the start and proudly never lets up with its puerile nonsense. I have a feeling that the hour De Palma cut from his original print would almost certainly not explain more but, rather, would merely increase the length of an audience's suffering, perhaps finding new ways to totally lose even the most careful follower of whatever it is that in this case stands in for narrative. It's enough to make Richard Simmons frown. I mean, it's really BAD.

"LA Confidential" covers some of the same ground and is not only a more successful attempt at a modern, color ode to film noir but features a story that actually makes sense and characters that we might actually care about or at least see as human archetypes. If you want to approximate this trainwreck of a film without actually exposing yourself to its corrosive nastiness (nastiness is fine, in its place, but in this case it's redeemed by, well, NOTHING), play the "LA Confidential" DVD backwards while listening to "Revolution #9" frontwards and banging yourself on the head with a rolled up copy of "Pretentious Auteur" magazine. De Palma has made some good films; this is most definitely not one of them. In fact, this is the film that should be shown to all who aspire to celluloid creativity so that they might learn from the errors of Brian's ways and, we hope, not inflict upon us the horror of anything remotely like this film getting a big budget and wide release despite being several steps below "Sweet Movie" in terms of palatability and comprehensibility. And, predictably, some who actually claim to have found worth in this waste of money, talent, and film stock seem to assume that they're privy to some truth that eludes the ignorant hoi polloi who dismiss the piece (these are possibly some of the same people who liked "Heaven's Gate"); De Palma's massively expensive joke is on them.

Ugh.

It seems that Mamet is one of the Wunderkinder to many, who can do no wrong on stage or screen. Bleh. I've seen a few of the films he's written and, yeah, they tend to be very good. I barely remember "Heist"but vaguely recall that it seemed to go nowhere pretty quickly; I'm sure I enjoyed it to at least some extent merely as a result of the presence of Gene Hackman, one of those actors who elevates anything he's in solely by virtue of his presence. Unfortunately, Mr Hackman wasn't in "The Spanish Prisoner," though I think the main problem here is that a real director wasn't directing the thing.

Early on in the piece I was trying to reconcile what I've always heard Mamet was noted for -- realistic dialog -- with the garbage I was hearing the actors on screen parrot. 'Parrot' being, given Mamet's way of working with actors (well, 'dictating to' is probably more correct), definitely the word. Part of the problem was quoting ancient Phoenician poets or whatever the hell much of the early dialog consisted of, a trait absent in 99% of the world's relatively sane population and less convincing when the direction comes from a man who seems (understandable, from a writer's perspective, as it may be) a total control freak when it comes to actors delivering his dialog. The fact that Ricky Jay (who, though a cool dude, is a very obviously limited and self-conscious 'actor') delivers some of these lines probably has less to do with their failure than Mamet's helming the affair.

I mean, I've spent my fair share of time in some quite diverse subcultures and seen a fair bit of the world, spending a great many years in academia and the like as well as, in common with probably most Americans, in the middle of crowds of people who appear to be Method actors auditioning for "Idiocracy 2," and neither intelligentsia nor your basic Joe Halfwits talk anything like Mamet's model in this film. Oh, so the dialog's STYLIZED? Well, whoop-de-doo; if it's stylized, maybe he didn't stylize it ENOUGH because, really, it's not that interesting. And its delivery in this film is pretty uniformly stilted, wooden, and unconvincing. That's both the fault of the words themselves and of their delivery, but in this case I think we can deflect the blame for that away from the actors (well, most of them) and toward the Director who rules delivery of his sacred dialog with an iron fist. The whole also feels very _stagey_, as in old Dave forgetting or not knowing that film is inherently a different kind of medium than stage performance.

I have the feeling that many who've reviewed this film are praising Mamet because it's the done thing to do. That the emperor's clothes are, at best, somewhat threadbare is of no apparent concern. The plot's interesting enough, though largely predictable fairly early on (and I am one who tends to let myself get immersed in a good movie, who's not ashamed that he didn't see the twists coming in films like "The Usual Suspects" and "The Sixth Sense") and suffering from a tendency toward hammering us over the head with clues, whether real or false. Overall, I think, if this film's any indication then Mamet's work is at its best when directed by someone else. Obviously I have little on which to base this (like I said, I barely remember "Heist" and this one's cured me of any tendency to want to rush out to watch any further Mamet-directed films) but from watching other films for which he only has writer's credit I get the impression that his dialog and plots are far more effective in the hands of directors (and editors) who feel free to play a little more fast and loose with those structures and with actors who're working without metronomes.

Sure, some actors may be thrilled to speak Mamet's words but I know a lot of actors would probably hate working with someone who demanded such absolute control over what was coming out of an actor's mouth. There's inherently a conflict between those who make the film and those who write it, but this film's one indication of how much weaker a film can be when the writer's vision is all that matters. Forcing stutters, incomplete sentences and repetition is NOT the magic key to writing realistic dialog and, anyway, a competent actor (or a halfway-competent actor under competent direction) should be able to improvise such realistic dialog delivery around the lines on the screenplay that, yeah, more often than not probably ARE too clean and neat to reflect real dialog. Mamet's a good writer, sometimes, but the fact that he's recognized that real speech includes stops and starts and tangents doesn't mean he's qualified to make a film that's any more realistic than average and when he does give such a try and fails it's a cop-out to claim that the reason it's not realistic is because it's "stylized," or "hyper-realistic," or that perhaps we just don't understand and couldn't begin to fathom the genius of the man.

I've seen worse -- the recent "The Marine" still stands proudly high as one of the worst films I've seen, largely because I probably ruled out a lot more worthy candidates before I actually tried to watch them -- but this film's a bit of a dud, largely because it's mostly just a non-event and even the climaxes are anticlimactic. The pity is that it's one that probably could have been three or four times as interesting, suspenseful, and engaging if directed by any of the directors who've made successes out of other Mamet scripts. At the very least, it'd have been nice if the movie was as interesting as the blurb on its DVD case...

Did you...? Ahhh... Yes, I...yes, I said that. I did. But...well...never mind. Fishes fly hale, more's the pity.