Michael Mann. It 's the first time I write a post on one of his films, and I'm pretty excited. Because Mann is one of the directors that I like best of all: for me is an author without equal in cinema contemporary, and not just in the U.S..
Here I focus only on his latest film, beautiful, like all those that preceded it. Public Enemies is a work without flaws, is a great film by a great director, is a Hollywood megaproduzione and commercial success, but also a linguistic experiment succeeded perfectly. It is not a historical reconstruction, nor a film "natural."
The film recounts the final years of John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and his love affair with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), against the backdrop of the Great Depression, also said there is crime fighting conducted by FBI Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) under the command of the controversial J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), a war eventually won by the American authorities with the killing of Dillinger and other legendary gangsters such as Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson.
Set in the '30s, the film is shot entirely in digital. Why? This is only an exercise in style? No. Mann is perhaps the most technically advanced film of all contemporary American cinema, this is already his third film after the digital sublime Collateral (2004) and Miami Vice (2006), which means that its decision to continue to use the digital aesthetic choice corresponds to a very precise and very forward looking.
digital cinema On the image one could write a book, is clear. But perhaps there may be sufficient to point out that digital cinema has two main facets: that of naturalism and that of its opposite, which is the way chosen by Michael Mann. The cinema since its beginnings has always had this analog choice, etc. Lumière or Méliès. etc.. But since the means of recovery, after those of the assembly, have converted to bits, it is as if the duplicity above it was somehow extremist. That means prosumer digital cameras , extremely light, mobile and financial (prefigured by the expression Astruc caméra-stylo ) have revolutionized the way of documentary films and filmmakers have given to generations of young people and the penniless opportunity to comment, however, on the other end of the continuum the technology of production, the quality of digital media recovery pro has grown exponentially and is now at a quality level equal to that of traditional analog cameras, so that the recovery digital characterized increasingly as an alternative to them.
Now, all the good riassuntino above is precisely to place the work of an author such as Michael Mann, who, at some point in their career, chose to use the new means of engaging in a new aesthetic. Its digital antinaturalism autocontraddirsi seems every shot, for example because of the incredible depth of field or the new ultra-realistic color cameras allow you to get. Instead, in Mann did not care about realism: what interests him is to tell stories, and stories are always worth the time you ask. It 's a realistic film as a masterpiece Collateral , dominated by the symbolism, the geometry and from abstraction? It would be like saying that mathematics is a natural. And Miami Vice, with nothing on his shots?
In Public Enemies Mann masterfully continues on his way. He made a film about a historical period and precise figures of American culture, yet does not care about history. The script of the film is full of what a scholar of the story called "caveats" (follow this link ) or a literary scholar would call "poetic license": I like to think that infidelity so-called " facts "is quite a challenge launched to those who have written history as winners. They are Hoover, the FBI, then U.S. administration's self-proclaimed winner of war on crime, but who are the real villains in the film if not them? E 'J. Edgar Hoover (masterfully played by Crudup), Baby Face Nelson not to play the absolute evil: If Nelson is a bloody psychopath driven only by his instincts, Hoover is - but in turn psychopath - a cool calculator, an opportunist, a sadist and a cynic who believes the act for the good of society and is willing to sacrifice even the very legality of which claims to be paladin. Absurdity and his entire company of which he is opposed to the figure is produced by John Dillinger: idealistic, romantic, heroic, an outsider that even in its materialism maintains a core of glass. A Dillinger, as at the end of Mann, the reality does not care much: both seek the dream, both love the cinema. And two of the most beautiful scenes of the film take place precisely at a cinema in the first, a sequence almost devoid of action but that takes your breath away, ideally Dillinger challenge the conformism of American society, threatening to be recognized in the middle of a packed house but anonymous viewers-automata, in the second, moving, Dillinger is identified with the protagonist last saw the film before he died, as he is a gangster, played by Clark Gable. Mann reiterates here without a doubt, in total empathy with her character, which counted more than anything should be part of everyone's dream, desire, aspiring to Elsewhere. That's what the bottom Public Enemies: A History of Elsewhere, a film produced by technical means born to follow as possible to reality, but here transformed into an instrument of redemption from the slavery of thought unique, the digital that does not tell "The Story", but only a story and tells it beautifully, without worry about what is correct or reasonable. But who are the public enemies of the title? The robbers and murderers that history has defeated the criminals or worse but better organized and that the story they wrote?
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