Michael Mann's "Magic Act"

by J.D. Lafrance

J.D. Lafrance, a film critic from Canada, is currently researching and writing a book on the films of Michael Mann. He writes weekly DVD reviews for the online film magazine Deleted Scene and has a regular column, entitled "Cinematic Pleasures," for the online pop culture magazine, Erasing Clouds.

For more than twenty years, Michael Mann has been making films that are obsessed with the common bond between men and the notion of professionalism between them. This theme is particularly prevalent in four of his films: Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986), Heat (1995) and The Insider (1999). The protagonists in these films are the very best at their respective professions: from an efficient safe-cracker in Thief to 60 Minutes producer, Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) in The Insider. These men are loners who have little time for families and personal relationships-these things only get in their way or cause their downfall. Mann's protagonists all have a goal, often in the form of a dream that drives them. In Thief, Frank (James Caan) dreams of creating a family and retiring from a life of crime. Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in Heat dreams of retiring to Fiji to see the iridescent algae that only come out once a year and light up the night. In Mann's films there is always a key scene between two people where they tell each other their dreams and personal philosophies. The conflict that each Mann protagonist faces is when their individualism collides with the desire to preserve a relationship or their family. This inevitably pushes their dream just out of reach and they are forced to face a harsh reality and make even harsher sacrifices.

Mann's films are often remembered for their distinctive visual style. His use of color (specifically blue and cool, metallic colors) and his obsession with architecture is used to enhance or reflect the mood of his characters. Mann's films are full of empty houses, lonely hotel rooms, endless oceans, and dark city streets. A strict adherence to their profession isolates Mann's protagonists from others. His films all start the same way: they immediately immerse the audience in a world with no dialogue and no explanation as to what is going on. In Heat, Neil McCauley gets off a train, enters a hospital and steals an ambulance without any explanation. The Insider begins dramatically with a blindfolded Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) being led through the streets of a Middle-Eastern city to an unknown destination. Mann's characters are already in the midst of an important job and this ambiguity forces the audience to figure things out on their own.

Based on the book, The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar by Frank Hohimer, Thief was Mann's feature film debut. This movie lays out a thematic blueprint that his subsequent work would follow. Frank is an independent safe cracker who dreams of marrying his girlfriend, Jessie (Tuesday Weld), and starting a family. To make this happen, he needs to taken on some quick, big-time scores. Frank makes a Faustian pact with a local crime boss (Robert Prosky) and soon realizes that he is bound to serve the Mob for life and this so disgusts him that he takes extreme measures to assure that he never has to deal with them again.

Thief is perhaps the most pure and essential variation on Mann's themes. Frank's entire reason for existence is to create a family with Jessie. That idea was the only thing that got him through his tough stint in prison. He carries around with him a homemade postcard that consists of a collage of the things that are important to him. For Frank it is a physical, tangible reminder of his goals. As with all Mann protagonists, he works with single-minded determination to achieve what he wants. There is a kind of desperation to his actions as he says at one point, "I have run out of time. I have lost it all. So I can't work fast enough to catch up. I can't run fast enough to catch up. And the only thing that catches me up is doing my magic act." Frank is only truly complete when he is working, which is true of all the protagonists in Mann's films. However, the deeper Frank gets in with the Mob and the tighter he tries to hold on to what is near and dear to him, the more his dream begins to slip away. The ideal of family togetherness is ultimately unattainable for Frank and so he reverts to his prison mentality where nothing matters.

On the surface, Manhunter does not seem like Mann's most optimistic film. It explores one man's eerie trip into the mind of a serial killer. Profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) reluctantly comes out of retirement to track down Francis Dolarhyde (Tom Noonan), a man who slaughters whole families to fulfill his own power fantasies. Graham is able to pursue the killer by thinking and dreaming as he imagines the killer does.

While Graham keeps in the tradition of Mann's intensely professional protagonists, he is also one of the filmmaker's most complex characters. Graham is more than a driven investigator. He is also an extremely sensitive person who is compelled to do what he does out of a need to save others from being brutally murdered. However, there is an additional dimension to Graham. He has the ability to adopt the mindset of a serial killer. He is able to think and, more importantly in Mann's world, dream like the killer does. Graham says at one point that the key to the killer's motivation lies in his dreams. Like other Mann protagonists, he is torn between his duty to catch Dolarhyde and to maintain a steady relationship with his family. However, as is the custom with Mann's films, the two become intertwined and Graham is forced keep his family safe when it is threatened. Manhunter is a thematic evolution from Thief in the sense that Graham is successful in preserving his family and protecting it against destructive forces whereas Frank failed.

The origins of Heat were based in large part from the experiences of an old friend of Mann's, Chuck Adamson. The policeman had been chasing down a master criminal in Chicago in the early '60s and one day their paths crossed and they talked over coffee. Mann remembered this story and incorporated it into his film as the classic centerpiece between two legendary actors, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The core of Heat is the relationship between career criminal Neil McCauley (De Niro) and dedicated cop, Vincent Hanna (Pacino). Mann essentially takes Caan's career criminal from Thief and Petersen's intensely dedicated cop from Manhunter and places them in the same film together with the sprawling metropolis that is Los Angeles as its backdrop. The scale and star power of Heat was unlike anything Mann had ever tried before and firmly announced him as force to be reckoned within Hollywood.

From the beginning, Mann shows a sharp contrast between Neil and Vincent's professional and personal lives. They may be the best at what they do but their personal lives are a mess. Neil is a loner who lives by the credo, "Don't keep anything in your life you're not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner." Like most Mann protagonists he lives in a Spartan, empty home. Mann's establishing shot of its interior utilizes a saturated blue filter with the ocean infinitely stretching out in the background. However, Neil falls in love with Eady (Amy Brenneman) and he is forced to choose between her and his dedication to taking down scores. Vincent is on his third marriage and is gradually losing touch with his wife, Justine (Diane Verona), and her daughter, Lauren (Natalie Portman). Justine does not understand Vincent's devotion to his job or his obsession with taking Neil and his crew down and this results in a rift between the two that if never repaired by the film's conclusion.

It makes sense, then, that these two men understand each other better than they do their wives or girlfriends. They are more open with each other than with their loved ones because there is a mutual respect and bond between them. Over coffee they tell each other their dreams and Neil's is particularly illuminating. "I have one where I'm drowning. And I gotta wake myself up and start breathing or I die in my sleep." Vincent asks him, "You know what that's about?" To which Neil replies, "Yeah, not enough time." Like Frank in Thief, Neil's dilemma is that he does not have enough time to do everything he needs to do. Neil is a fascinating variation on Frank's character in the sense that he too is forced to decide between preserving a relationship and his work but, unlike Frank, he wastes too much time deciding on which one to follow. When Neil finally does make up his mind it is too late and he is punished for his indecision.

Based on actual events, The Insider concerns Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a research scientist fired from his job at large tobacco company Brown and Williamson for refusing to go along with company policy. By voicing his displeasure, Wigand had apparently violated his extensive confidentiality agreement that forbade him from talking about anything to do with the company. Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), producer for the television news magazine, 60 Minutes, persuaded Wigand to tell his story. In his interview, Wigand accused then president of Brown and Williamson, Thomas Sandefur (Michael Gambon), of perjury when he and other tobacco CEOs told Congress that they did not believe nicotine was addictive. CBS intervened and threatened to kill the Wigand interview because they feared a threatening multibillion dollar lawsuit from Brown and Williamson which would kill a pending sale of CBS to Westinghouse Electric. Wigand's character was slandered in the public and Bergman had to refute of all the claims and find a way to get the interview back on the air and intact.

While the family life scenes in Heat felt weak and under-developed at times, they are much stronger and are more crucial to the narrative in The Insider. Wigand's family life, in particular, illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of his character. For example, the scene where one of his daughters has a severe asthma attack is shot with a shaky, hand-held camera which gives the scene an urgent immediacy as Wigand rushes to save his child. He calms the little girl down by explaining to her the scientific principles behind her attack. This scene is important because it establishes that Wigand is a man who loves and takes care of his family.

Bergman and Wigand secret meeting at a hotel is both clandestine and professional in nature. The two men verbally spar, testing each other, much like Lektor and Graham do in their initial meeting in Manhunter. At one point, Wigand says, "How do radical journalists from Ramparts magazine end up at CBS?" To which Bergman responds, "I still do the tough stories. 60 Minutes reaches a lot of people." As with Neil McCauley and Vincent Hanna in Heat, Bergman and Wigand use conversation to get a feeling for each other, testing one another in order to see if they share each other's obsession for being professional. Once each man recognizes this then they feel more comfortable with each other and a mutual trust is established.

There is another scene between Bergman and Wigand in a Japanese restaurant that is the centerpiece of the film much in the same way as the Lecktor/Graham conversation in Manhunter and the Hanna/McCauley restaurant scene in Heat are important. They all represent a convergence of the driving forces from these films. The characters meet, verbally spar with each other, convey-either implicitly or explicitly-their worldview, and most importantly sort things out between each other.

Crowe is excellent in this scene as he reacts to Bergman asking him to list all the bad things he's done in his life that could be used against him in the media. Crowe looks down as if embarrassed. He hunches over defensively with his hands together and is visibly upset as he nervous pauses between each incidence or the way he pushes back his glasses with his middle finger every so often, and his jerky head movements. The tics and mannerisms are so believable here.

The Insider is Mann's masterpiece because it represents the perfect union of his highly stylized mise-en-scene with his thematic pre-occupations. The style never overwhelms the content. The movie also shows an evolution in his themes. Once again, a protagonist's family life is destroyed as a result of his professional nature but in this case it was for the greater good. Wigand did what he did because he felt that the American public had a right to know that cigarettes were purposely made to be addictive. In doing so, he sacrificed his own happiness and security.

Where Mann will go next with these themes remains an intriguing mystery. His latest film, Collateral (2004), is due out in August and features Tom Cruise playing a contract killer who forces a cab driver (Jamie Foxx) to drive him to various hits over the course of one night. It should be interesting to see how Cruise's character compares to other Mann's protagonists and their obsession with professionalism.