Public Enemies

Yesterday, I finally saw Michael Mann's new gangster movie, Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the G-Man on his trail. I've been an admirer of Mann's for years, if not precisely a fan (or fanatic), and the qualities for which I've most admired him are well displayed here: restless, creative risk-taking to the limits of big-budget studio filmmaking, technological experimentation and almost casually virtuosic direction of action set pieces.

From the general audience standpoint, only the latter quality really matters. Most viewers will have no idea that they just watched a film that was not shot on film at all, but in high definition video, let alone that Mann changed frame rates a couple of times in the film to deliberately make it look like video as we're used to seeing it on TV, rather than video aping the frame rate of standard film projection (24 frames per second). This is not to say that these techniques do not affect the audience, necessarily. Most people just don't notice them and don't care about them.

In my book, this is how it should be. Technology - yes, even spectacular FX - ought not be noticed as such. An audience should be too busy engaging with the film on some human level, like emotionally or intellectually, to notice how well the technology works. For people like me, this is sometimes difficult, because we are too steeped in filmmaking itself to fail to notice the man behind the curtain, as it were. Though a small group over all, there are plenty of film fans who fall into this category. We can talk about Mann's color palette, which HD camera he used, why he shot this period film in an almost documentary style and what was behind his decision to sometimes shoot at a higher frame rate, thereby making scenes inspired by 30s newsreels appear to have been filmed by present-day cable news crews. Is this aesthetic choice a sly commentary on John Dillinger's celebrity, suggesting that things haven't changed all that much in America? Maybe, but why make such a commentary in a way guaranteed to sail over the heads of most viewers? Will they simply sense this aspect, without quite being able to put their fingers on it? (Or perhaps his critique is too commonplace, made many times before in superior films like Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands, to name two in a similar vein, as well as in many films of various quality, to have much impact.)

Whether the audience can sense the subtler changes that digital cinema can bring to the moviegoing experience is a pretty interesting question, for some, and it's questions like that that make Public Enemies an interesting film, for some. But this kind of experience is awfully cerebral, disappointingly so for a film packed with superb actors and based on such terrific characters and fascinating history. Barely anything human in the film registered with me - the only character I was really interested in was Billy Crudup's winking, bow-legged, feral J. Edgar Hoover. I applaud Mann for understanding we did not to see an elaborate backstory for Dillinger or his nemesis, for trusting his audience enough to drop us right into the action, but this does not mean every character should be a cipher. We all like Johnny Depp, but we still need a character. Christian Bale registers even less - practically anyone could have played the role to equal or greater effect. Marion Cotillard serves only a vague (and elsewhere wholly disregarded) historicity as Dillinger's girlfriend, Billie Frechette, but the affair delivers no chemistry, no romance, and only meager story- and plot-related value. Why is she even here?

Some of Mann's story choices, as friends have pointed out to me, are bold. There is no "final confrontation" scene between Depp and Bale, for example; instead, Dillinger's last words after he's gunned down are delivered to a supporting character, who tells them to Frechette in the final scene. This is one of many small ways Mann rejects conventional Hollywood storytelling - the almost complete lack of expository detail is another - and these are smart, interesting choices. I believe that this can be done, though, while still finding room for the kind of genuine, specific, shocking, documentary humanity that is required for truly engaging, full-throated storytelling.

As a postscript, I would add that it's truly weird to watch a film set in the early 1930s in which, perhaps, two cigarettes are seen. A key moment at the end of the film has Bale lighting a cigar to signal the other Feds that Dillinger has left the building - only, unless I blinked and missed it, we don't even see him light the cigar. We see the cigar, we see the matches, we see him raising a lit match out of frame, then on to something else. As an artistic choice, this smoking ban is fine, albeit weirdly and totally inaccurate, if that's really what was wanted. Except, that's not the story - this is just corporate self-censorship to spare us the shock of seeing Johnny Depp and Christian Bale smoke. The movie is already rated R. So what gives?