Michael Mann vs. James Cameron: de los alcances y las formas del digital

El "versus" del título es un poco tramposo: no se trata aquí de tomar partido por uno o por otro cineasta. Al menos en mi caso, ambos se ubican en el pedestal de los grandes cineastas de las últimas tres décadas. Ambos, a su manera, han logrado combinar cine de género y de entretenimiento masivo (Cameron más masivo que Mann, obviamente) con claras obsesiones personales y películas que no traicionan jamás esos universos. A la vez, ambos han aceptado los desafíos tecnológicos planteados por la llegada del formato digital, y las han incorporado, de diferentes maneras, a sus películas. También, por su fama y reputación, se trata de dos "duros", dos tipos con pocas pulgas y no demasiada paciencia para las formas y cordialidades. Dos creadores que se han sabido ganar tanto amores como odios.

La entrevista de Scott Foundas a Mann, concedida a propósito del lanzamiento del DVD de "Enemigos públicos" (está en un post anterior a este, para los que entraron directo por aquí), me dejó pensando en las similitudes entre su cine y el de Cameron, y también en sus diferencias. Acá me voy a detener básicamente en un tema: el uso del formato digital. Hay muchos otros elementos que se pueden analizar en el cine de ambos, obviamente, pero lo que a mí me interesa ahora es entender cómo ambos han aceptado reformatearse "digitalmente" y lo han hecho de maneras muy diferentes. Uno podría incluir en este análisis a muchos otros cineastas -de David Fincher a David Lynch-, que también se han sumado al formato, pero se perdería un poco el eje de la cuestión.

Como ya escribí aquí, ENEMIGOS PUBLICOS es mi película favorita de 2009, entre las estrenadas comercialmente en la Argentina (estoy debiendo un TOP TEN de vistas en festivales, pero eso implica hacer un recorrido por catálogos y cuadernos de anotaciones que no creo estar dispuesto a hacer). Una película que la crítica recibió con frialdad, tanto mundialmente como en la Argentina. De hecho, hasta los que escriben en la revista El Amante, generalmente admiradores de Mann, la han ignorado por completo. En el Balance anual nadie la votó, ni uno, entre las mejores del año (y eso que hay votos hasta para "Transformers 2") y tampoco nadie la votó como la peor: simplemente, pasó de largo...

Leo la entrevista de Foundas casi al mismo tiempo que repaso las alabanzas que en ese mismo número de El Amante se lanzan a AVATAR, película que es considerada refundadora del cine, comparada con "El nacimiento de una nación" (sería una versión políticamente correcta de D.W. Griffith, suponemos) y la que devuelve al espectador, entre otras cosas, la felicidad, las ganas de vivir, la pasión por el cine y casi todo lo que el cine parecía no poder dar ya más.

Me encanta AVATAR y probablemente figure en mi Top Five del 2010 (sí, acá quedó desfasada de esta década, por lo cual cuando se hagan las listas en el... ¡2019! la tendremos mucho más masticada que en el resto del mundo, en el que la obviaron en las votaciones por no haber podido medir su impacto como sí podremos los afortunados argentinos...), pero me cuesta entender la enorme valoración de una película contra el ninguneo de la otra, cuando ambas proponen, de maneras diferentes, radicales cambios en la estética cinematográfica.

Mann lo viene haciendo hace varias películas, desde esa secuencia en "Ali" pasando por "Colateral" y "Miami Vice". Ha adoptado el formato digital y ha comenzado a correr riesgos con él, a tomar decisiones estéticas inusuales en su cine (puesta en escena, montaje, iluminación, etc.) con las que apuesta a generar una experiencia más "vivencial" de sus películas, acaso menos clásicamente "cinematográficas" que las anteriores pero --eso dice intentar, al menos-- más vívidas, realistas, cercanas al espectador, desafiándolos a quitarse de encima esa "distancia estética" que produce tanto el celuloide como la organización convencional de los planos en el sistema narrativo clásico de Hollywood (o modelo de representación audiovisual institucional -MRI- dominante, como lo llamaría algún académico) y asi experimentar en la pantalla grande (Mann viene de la televisión y acaso haya un intento de crear un "modelo de representación audiovisual" que combine ambos formatos).

Cameron no tiene "entre sus cejas" ese modelo de representación. Al contrario, lo abraza con fervor. Lo que sí ha hecho a partir de su uso de la tecnología digital es expandir ese modelo (otra de las interesantes contradicciones de AVATAR: usar un modelo narrativo "dominante" para narrar una historia en contra de esa dominación) para generar también una experiencia más "vivencial" del cine. La diferencia está en que allí donde uno deconstruye y desarma un sistema, el otro lo agranda y lo hace crecer.

Aquí, claro, entrará a tallar la relación de cada espectador con ese modelo narrativo/visual de puesta en escena y montaje. En mi caso, no tengo ningún inconveniente ni ideológico ni ético con el MRI (Bürch via Prividera, je!), más allá de que pueda reconocerlo y aceptarlo, o no, según la propuesta. Pero sin duda lo que hace más interesante, para mí, el cine de Michael Mann, es su intento de usar el digital tratando de crear un nuevo modelo formal en el camino, o al menos desviarse del preestablecido.

En ENEMIGOS PUBLICOS se topó con el desafío de trabajar un género establecido y clásico (un paradigma del Hollywood de los '30 y los '40) como es el cine de gángsters y se ocupó de deformarlo visualmente, destriparlo de buena parte de sus psicologismos de salón y convertirlo, casi, es una película experimental. Si no lo es del todo es porque se trata de una producción de Hollywood de 100 millones de dólares y, por otro, porque Mann no quiere sacar del todo los pies del plato: le interesa construir un sistema diferente que funcione y que sea una alternativa comercial, no quiere hacer películas donde las casas sean marcas en el piso (como "Dogville") ni se propone como un autor radical como puede serlo Harmony Korine en "Trash Humpers".

Ya conté que tuve la suerte de ver la película en un proyección digital y todavía tengo el brillo de las imágenes y el impacto del sonido en mi cabeza. Aquí no se vio así. Imagino que es lo mismo que podría pasarle a alguien que va a ver AVATAR aquí con el entusiasmo de haber leído que se trata de una revolución cinematográfica y la ve en 2D en el microcine de una distribuidora. Imagino que el impacto no será el mismo. Yo todavía no la vi en 2D, pero quiero hacerlo: ya cuando la vi en IMAX no fue lo mismo ya que la experiencia "de espectáculo de feria" que allí se tiene no guarda relación con la "diferencia" que existe al ver AVATAR 3D en una sala convencional de cine comparada con una película "normal").

Volviendo al tema. Siento que Cameron usa el digital y el 3D y el "motion capture" para recapturar un "paraíso perdido cinematográfico", la idea de un cine creador de universos completos, para envolvernos en un mundo cinematográfico autosuficiente, con sus códigos establecidos pero en dimensiones inesperadas. Nada más lejano del mundo real, digamos. Más bien una maravillosa reinfantilización del espectador (son decenas los críticos que han dicho que la película los ha hecho sentir como cuando eran niños) por la vía del impacto sensorial.

Mucho de ese impacto, hay que decirlo, se debe a la dirección de arte y al diseño de producción "setentista" de la película, la sensación de estar metido dentro de la tapa de un disco de rock progresivo (las de Yes diseñadas por Roger Dean, o tantas otras) o de esas historietas de ciencia ficción de revistas como Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal (leer un curioso dato aquí) más que del uso de la tecnología. Es un bellísimo y vibrante show de variedades, donde mucho pasa por lo que se muestra y no tanto por cómo se lo muestra. Para explicarlo de otra manera: yo hubiese querido ver muchos más planos como el que inicia la película, con Jake Sully saliendo de su cápsula en ese espacio sin gravedad, en donde es el concepto el que prima, la idea, y no los "muñequitos" o "chiches visuales" que hay dentro del plano. En lugar del barroquismo visual de Pandora, quiero ALIENS en 3D.

Leía por ahí en El Amante que si uno dice qué cosas le gustó y qué cosas no en AVATAR es un crítico tibio que no siente pasión por el cine o por lo que hace. Entiendo la idea (creo que Porta Fouz la compara con hablar de una mujer y decir 'esto me gusta', 'esto no'), pero tal vez yo no pueda pensar de esa manera (me puedo enamorar de una película pero eso no me impide poder "analizarla" por partes) y es por eso que AVATAR me invita a desmenuzarla casi quirúrgicamente. Recuerdo que una vez me llevaron a un programa de TV a debatir sobre STAR WARS - EPISODIO I con Sebastián Tabany y él, fanático de la película, decía más o menos lo mismo que Javier: no hay nada que analizar aquí, o sos un converso o no lo sos. No sé, demasiado "fundamentalista" para mí gusto.

Entonces, allí donde AVATAR apuesta por usar las nuevas tecnologías para agrandar la fantasía renovando sus modelos clásicos, ENEMIGOS PUBLICOS prefiere usarlas para devolver esa fantasía al campo de la experiencia "real" del espectador. Uno hace una conexión "vivencial" por la vía del espectáculo envolvente, el otro lo hace por la desmitificación de esos mismos códigos. Cameron -en la contradicción central y maravillosa de su increíble película- hace una defensa apasionada por la conexión del hombre con el mundo real a partir de un universo que es absolutamente digital. Al igual que WALL-E o que cierta música electrónica, hay muchas veces mucho más "humanidad" en lo digital que en lo analógico.

Son dos películas que, en muchos sentidos, no se pueden comparar entre sí como se podría hacer entre AVATAR y "2012" (o entre ENEMIGOS PUBLICOS y, digamos, "Gomorra" o "Un profeta"). Pero en lo fundamental tienen mucho en común, aún en sus diferencias. Mann y Cameron son diferentes y apuestan a diferentes usos del digital porque uno cree en el cine como reflejo de un mundo y su experiencia mientras que el otro lo propone como una ventana a universos de imaginación insospechada. Pero la diferencia real no está en ellos, la diferencia está en uno y en cómo se maneja en esa aparente dicotomía.

Public Enemies: Chicago Vices (Los Angeles Weekly)

Michael Mann on personal crises — and his latest feature
By Scott Foundas
Published on January 13, 2010

“Is it too bright for you?” Michael Mann asks as I take the seat across from him in his Santa Monica office, the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the wall-to-wall windows behind him. Since the last time I interviewed Mann, on the eve of the release of 2007’s Miami Vice, he has rearranged his office furniture so that his back is toward the panoramic view of the Santa Monica skyline and whoever is seated opposite his large glass desk is looking into the light. Mann notices my squinting and looks around for a solution, but the translucent shades are already lowered as far as they will go. “Ah, you’re stuck,” he says in his steel-cut Chicago accent.

A little retinal damage seems a small price to pay for an audience with Mann, who gets this critic’s vote as the most consistently exciting and innovative Hollywood filmmaker of the past decade, and whose 2009 John Dillinger biopic, Public Enemies (newly available on DVD and Blu-ray), ranks among his finest achievements. It is, I noted upon the film’s release last summer, a period gangster movie entirely unencumbered by the stiffness and obvious artifice that attend so much period filmmaking — an uncommonly vibrant, immersive experience that seems situated, like much of Mann’s work, at the intersection of commercial cinema and the avant-garde, of public entertainment and private obsession.

“The ambition was to place myself in the present of 1933 and to try to make that present as vivid as it would have been in 1933,” says Mann, who also adapted the Public Enemies screenplay with co-writers Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman from Bryan Burrough’s sprawling nonfiction book. “I wanted that intensity of experience, as if Dillinger is alive and seeing it, and to some extent we’re in Dillinger’s shoes. I find that exciting. That’s the journey I want to go on if I’m imagining myself in another life, or watching a movie. I want to believe this is happening.”

It is a feeling Mann intensified by shooting Public Enemies on high-definition video, a technology the director has been experimenting with since the dynamic opening montage of 2001’s Ali, and which he more fully embraced during production of the 2002 TV series Robbery Homicide Division and the feature films Collateral (2004) and Miami Vice. While much of the discussion of digital technology as a substitute for celluloid has centered around the ability to make video look indistinguishable from film, Mann has wholeheartedly embraced HD for its own proprietary qualities. Onscreen, the action rushes by in violent jolts and swooshes — the way, I wrote in my review, “things might look if Dillinger were still robbing banks today, his exploits captured by camera phones and broadcast over YouTube.”

To these eyes, Mann is at the forefront of formulating new ideas of cinematic beauty in the digital age, though you don’t have to search far on the Internet chatter boards to find some film purists deriding the look of Public Enemies as “ugly” and “cheap.” The panic of some aficionados of representational painting when confronted with the first abstract expressionist canvases comes immediately to mind.

“Primarily, I like the depth of field and some other intangibles I can’t quite put my finger on, but you know them when you see them,” says Mann, who initially planned to shoot Public Enemies on film before executing a side-by-side comparison with his longtime cinematographer Dante Spinotti. “It’s not an analogue of film — it’s totally different. Just like when they first used steel in architecture, initially it was to make buildings that took their form from masonry buildings, even though they didn’t have to. You didn’t have to have a pediment on the roof, but a lot of early modern architecture, particularly in New York, did.

“The advantage of the technology is in a search for its own aesthetic, not to try to duplicate what you can do on film. If I’m going to do that, I may as well shoot film.”

What I remember most about Mann from our previous encounter is his aversion to explanations and interpretations of his work, and the efforts of critics like myself to back him into an auteurist corner. When I suggest that the story of Dillinger (played in Public Enemies by Johnny Depp) and his FBI antagonist, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), seems a logical continuation of Mann’s careerlong interest in professional criminals and professional lawmen (Thief, Manhunter, Heat, Miami Vice), he counters that what really fascinates him are social mechanisms and characters at an existential crossroads. In the case of Public Enemies, he notes, “There’s this Darwinian kind of crush between two forces entering society at the same time. One is organized crime moving into a corporate-capitalism kind of phase: white-collar crime, prostitution, invasion of trade unions but primarily gambling. On the other side, you have J. Edgar Hoover’s innovations, such as the centralization of data, using the new technology that was available, like long-distance telephones. Hoover was doing exactly what Scotland Yard was doing in a country the size of Illinois, so it’s a major accomplishment to do it in the continental United States.”

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Mi Top Ten: Puesto 1°

Enemigos públicos/Public Enemies (Michael Mann)


"Lo que está haciendo Mann está a años luz del resto de sus colegas generacionales. Allá donde todos empiezan a ir a lo seguro, a buscar el Oscar, el respeto de los premios o el éxito de taquilla, el tipo experimenta y se arriesga cada vez más. "Public Enemies" intenta un acercamiento jugadísimo a los filmes de gángsters y ladrones de los años '30, filmando en digital, con cámara en mano, con una imágen que podría parecer de un reality show, de un making off o de un drama realista callejero tipo "Cops". Pero todo atravesado por un riesgo formal que, hoy, me atrevo a comparar (en su relación, no sé todavía si en sus logros), al "Sin aliento", de Godard.

Deconstrucción del cine de gángsters para tornarlo políticamente relevante hoy, acción "in your face" --de imagen y sonido--, sacarse de encima por completo el look "prolijo" y "elegante" de "Heat" para ir hacia algo parecido a un amateurismo expresionista, colores vivos y la sensación de "estar ahí", viviendo todo eso hoy. Muchísimo más que "Colateral" y con más coherencia que en "Miami Vice". Una película alucinante. Scott Foundas, cenando, decía que era casi "videoarte". No diría tanto, pero sí que es admirable que el tipo siga probando y experimentando con el cine y no se quede en lo que todos sabemos que él sabe hacer.

Si bien sus riesgos redundarán en dificultades comerciales --la película es atrapante pero imagino que no será un enorme éxito-- y su antivirtuosismo formal la aleja por momentos de los conceptos de "emoción" cinematográfica clásica, me preocupa muy poco en ese sentido, ya que no soy el productor del filme. Como espectador y crítico que todavía cree que Hollywood puede encontrar resquicios para renovarse sin traicionarse del todo, "Public Enemies" me da esperanzas de que es posible tomar los clásicos y, con un enorme respeto que queda demostrado al final (no diré cómo), deconstruirlos y transformarlos en otra cosa."

Guiones originales de "Enemigos públicos", "Funny People" & "It's Complicated (Universal Pictures)

Link

Entrevista a Michael Mann (Clarín - Versión extendida)

Así en el cine como en la vida, Michael Mann no se anda con vueltas. Seco y cortante para hablar, sin embargo logra ser muy transparante a la hora de transmitir las ideas que quiso desarrollar en su filme, Enemigos públicos. El realizador de Fuego contra fuego, El informante y Miami Vice, entre otras, puede parecer un profesor universitario disertando sobre cómo era Chicago durante la Gran Depresión, hablando de armas, autos, el FBI o los cambios culturales de la época. Nunca sonríe, casi no respira. Pero se nota en su mirada y en su verborragia cuánto lo apasiona el personaje de su filme, John Dillinger, y la época en la que vivió.

En charla con Clarín, Mann arrancará --como acostumbra-- diciendo que no se inspiró en ninguna otra película para hacer la suya, que no es un fanático del cine de gángsters y que sólo vio algunas películas por cuestiones específicas. "En realidad, mi mayor inspiración es el pintor Edward Hopper --dirá--. En especial por su forma de usar el espacio negativo para dividir un cuadro en el medio, con algo que sucede a la derecha y algo a la izquierda. El eufemismo es decir que se trata de un homenaje, pero algunas escenas son directamente copiadas de él. Es fantástico. Cuando filmábamos en Chicago había una exhibicion de Hopper y fuimos con Johnny (Depp) y Marion (Cotillard). Nos pasamos horas mirando sus pinturas. Tenia mucho para decir acerca de la alienación y el fin de la esperanza de la Gran Depresión."

Pero alguna película de gángsters debe haber visto antes de rodar...

No soy un fan del cine de gángsters. No vi The Public Enemy, con James Cagney. No sé mucho del tema. Vi películas, pero por cosas especificas. Vi (la original) Scarface por la actuacion de (Paul) Muni: era Stanislavsky puro, directo de Rusia, una actuación no filtrada por el Actor's Studio. Es una distinción importante. No me siento identificado con las películas de gángsters. Me interesaba más entender la época, pero no a partir del cine. Claro que me gustan muchas películas de los '30, pero te diría que más me inspira Eisenstein o la última etapa del expresionismo alemán. Pero más todavía Hopper o Kandinsky.

¿Qué le atrae de Chicago en los '30?

Es mi barrio, ¿ok? Creci ahí. No crecí en los '30, pero naci en 1943 y, por la Depresión, de 1929 en adelante no hubo cambios en la arquitectura porque nadie construyó nada hasta el '38, '39. Y entonces empezó la guerra y separó la construcción hasta 1947. Así que durante todo ese tiempo no cambió la ciudad. Mis recuerdos más tempranos son de 1950, y Chicago no era muy distinta a 1933. Yo vivía a cuatro cuadras del Biograph (el cine donde mataron a Dillinger) y en los '70 iba a ver películas ahi. Era en un cine de arte. Esta historia tiene mucho de esa parte de Chicago. Siempre estuve interesado en ese barrio culturalmente y en lo que los '30 significaron en contraste con los '20. Se podría decir que el siglo XX tal como lo conocemos empezó en los '30.

¿En qué sentido?

En 1933 los viajes por avión no tenían más de cuatro años y (J. Edgar) Hoover hace volar a agentes del FBI por todo el país. El cine sonoro era nuevo y los noticieros en los cines se utilizan para capturar delincuentes. El uso del teléfono creció muchísimo. El sistema de autopistas no tenía más de tres, cuatro años. Y también son nuevos los autos que pueden andar por 400, 500 millas sin problemas. Y las armas automáticas. Todo eso coincidió para la existencia de lo que entonces llamaban "los bandidos móviles" y marcó el fin de una época y el comienzo de otra.

Mann es un torrente de palabras que apenas permite interrupciones. Y su precisión es sorprendente. Dirá: "En esos años, Hemingway escribía Muerte en la tarde: el fatalismo es un tema clave, importante. La gente enfrenta a la muerte no con pesimismo, sino de manera realista. La muerte está ahí y te mira directo a los ojos. Cada día puede ser el último. Si sos Dillinger, sabés que cada día que vas a trabajar puede ser el último. Ellos dicen cosas como 'Cuando te llega la hora, te llega la hora'. Hay un sentido del destino muy diferente a como pensamos ahora. Hoy decimos: 'Si me conozco mejor voy a tomar mejores decisiones y eso va a tener un efecto en mi vida. Y si las cosas me salen mal, será por que no me conocía tan bien como creía'. Ellos no pensaban así, para nada. Pensaban: 'Voy a hacer esto lo mejor que pueda, probablemente toda la vida, y cuando me llegue la hora, me llegará. Y eso es todo'. Es algo muy ajeno a nuestra experiencia, como ir a un pais extranjero."

Mann dice que, para él, la película en su cabeza arranca "con Dillinger sentado en el cine viendo una película con Clark Gable sin saber que el FBI lo espera afuera para matarlo" y que el tema de las armas y la violencia es secundario. "Me interesa impactar a la audiencia, no soy de los que hacen películas para mi mismo, pero lo principal para mí no son las escenas de acción. Me interesan las relaciones entre los personajes, salir de la idea del héroe frente al villano. Eso me aburre y creo que le aburre a mucha gente. La vida no es así, sólo lo es en las malas películas".

Pero las armas son casi personajes...

No, no lo son. Son las herramientas de su trabajo y representan la tecnología de la época. Hay tres cosas que me fascinan de esas armas. Primero: eran las mejores que el dinero podía comprar porque los gángsters tenían el dinero para comprar lo mejor. Estaban mejor equipados que los policías. Rifles automáticos, ametralladoras, todo. Otra cosa interesante es que eran muy innovadores: modificaban las armas, anticipando las modas de diez, quince años después. Recién en la Segunda Guerra los alemanes crearon algo parecido a lo que usaba Baby Face Nelson. Otra cosa es cuando agarrás las armas reales que usaban. Hay muchas en las oficinas del FBI en Virginia y nos las prestaron. Hay algo mágico cuando ponés la mano en ellas, todas gastadas y usadas, con cinta alrededor. Ves la caja de herramientas de esos tipos. Y significa algo, podés sentir lo que ellos sentían al tenerlas. Las armas son muy interesantes.

¿Porqué decidió filmar en digital?

No era mi plan original. Pero un día probé hacer una escena en film e hice una comparación con una cámara HD al lado. Era una escena de noche con un Buick Modelo '33, algunas personas, pocas luces y lluvia. Y miré las dos imágenes: cuando veía la de 35 mm. parecía que estaba mirando una película de época, algo que había sucedido en el pasado. Con la otra era como si estuviera ahí, esa noche. Me pregunté a mí mismo al empezar el proyecto: ¿Cómo quiero implicar a la audiencia en la película? Quería que el público tuviese una conexión directa e inmediata con la experiencia de Dillinger, que lo entendiera desde adentro y no como un observador distante. Cuando vi como quedaba en 35mm. sentí que miraba a 1933. Cuando lo vi en digital era como si estuviese en 1933.

Al filmar no podía prever la crisis económica actual, pero parece una pelicula hecha para esta época. ¿Cómo cree que se relaciona con lo que pasa hoy?

Es fundamental que la historia de Dillinger suceda en la Gran Depresión. El sabía como eran las condiciones y las usó muy bien. El resto es un accidente. Ojalá tengas razón, pero usualmente lo que sucede es que en la Depresión la gente busca fantasía, escapismo. Es por eso que no tengo duda que la pelicula del robot volador va a andar muy bien (se refiere a Transformers 2) En esa época la gente veia a Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, esas cosas. Pero no era lo mismo...
Fue mucho peor entonces...

Mucho. Pongamos las cosas en contexto: el desempleo ahora es del 8% mientras que en Chicago, en los '30, era del 25. Una de cada cuatro personas no tenía trabajo. De los 160 bancos que había en Chicago, 140 quebraron. Si eras un jubilado o estabas por jubilarte, llegabas a tu casa, te bajabas del tren, te ponías la mano en el bolsillo, y eso era todo el dinero que te quedaba. Sólo para comprar comida por dos dias. Gente con frío, hambre, sin lugar para dormir. Era tremendo. Es por eso que la gente se entusiasmaba con personas que asaltaban las instituciones que arruinaban sus vidas y por eso Dillinger fue un héroe del pueblo. Y él, claro, se aprovechaba de eso. Decía cosas como: “No estoy aquí para robar su dinero, sino para robar el dinero del banco”. Era un héroe para la gente. Y cuando las autoridades, que no podían remediar los problemas de la Depresión, tampoco podian con él, los ridiculizaba y la gente lo adoraba. Después del incidente en Little Bohemia (cuando el FBI casi lo atrapa), un comentarista de radio famoso hizo una nota sobre ese evento y decía que el FBI sólo iba a poder atrapar a Dillinger un día que empiecen a disparar a la salida de un banco y los maten de casualidad. En las peliculas de Hollywood de esa época --las de Edward G. Robinson, Clark Gable-- los héroes son los gángsters. Un par de años después cambió.

¿Cuánto hay de real y cuánto de ficticio? ¿La escena de la visita de Dillinger al FBI sucedió realmente?

Sí, sucedió. La respuesta sencilla es decir que el filme es tan verdadero y auténtico como yo soy capaz de hacerlo. Hay cosas ficcionalizadas: si fuera todo real y sin modificar nada tendría que haber sido un documental de 22 horas del History Channel. Baby Face Nelson fue matado por esas personas pero no exactamente en ese momento; Van Meter fue asesinado de la manera en que lo mostramos, pero un poco más tarde. Red fue asesinado por la espalda como lo mostramos, pero en otro lugar. Otras cosas son exactas: se escaparon de Little Bohemia como se ve en el filme. Y filmamos en el verdadero lugar: la cama, la habitación: son las mismas en las que estuvo Dillinger. La cárcel de Crown Point de la que se escapó es la misma cárcel, que fue abandonada en 1974. Era un desastre y la restauramos entera. El cine Biograph lucía como el viejo Biograph hasta un año antes de la filmación, pero alguien decidió remodelarlo y tuvimos que ponerlo de la manera en la que estaba. Johnny muere de la misma manera que en la realidad, en el mismo pedazo de vereda, mirando el mismo poste de teléfono.

¿Y sus últimas palabras?

Se sabe que él susurra algo. El hombre del FBI era uno de esos pistoleros silenciosos, a la antigua, y él le dio su mensaje a ella. Nadie sabe exactamente qué dijo. Ella era el amor de su vida. Averiguamos muchas cosas. Entrevistamos a un hombre de 90 años que nos contó la anácdota de cuando Purvis (el agente del FBI que encarna Chrstian Bale) levanta a Billie (Cotillard) para que no le peguen mas. Investigamos cómo se robaba un banco. Hablé con gente que sabe de robos, que estuvo en la carcel por eso. No cambió mucho. La forma en la que Dillinger lo hacía venía de un inglés que llegó a los Estados Unidos y trajo este sistema. El fue mentor de Walter Dietrich. Y Dietrich fue el mentor de Dillinger. De ahí viene la metodología.

¿Por qué le interesaba tanto el momento previo al final, el del cine?

Vi Manhattan Melodrama y me impactó sentir que eso era lo que él estaba viendo mientras 30 personas del FBI lo esperaban para matarlo. Mucho de lo que pasaba en la película tenía que ver con él, parecían mensajes. El personaje de Gable estaba inspirado en Dillinger. El influenció las peliculas de gángsters y era una referencia directa en ese filme. Gable se basa en Dillinger y él está viéndolo, y el personaje de Gable dice: "Hay que morir como se vive". Eso no se inventó: fue una de las ultimas cosas que vio Dillinger antes de morir.

Algunas ideas sobre "Enemigos públicos"/"Public Enemies", de Michael Mann

Ya escribí un poco y publiqué bastantes cosas acerca de "Enemigos públicos", de Michael Mann. Habiendo viajado a hacer las entrevistas a los actores y al director (que ya van a ir saliendo), preferí no escribir la crítica en el diario, me parece que sigue siendo una sana costumbre.

De cualquier manera, la película me entusiasma demasiado como para no agregar algunos motivos y razones por las que, creo, es uno de los grandes estrenos del año. Acá van algunos puntos.

-Me fascina el uso que hace Mann del HD. Tal vez sea porque la vi en un cine que la proyectaban directamente así y el "grano" de la imagen, su hiper-realismo era realmente impactante. Te quedabas viendo las imágenes como si no fueran cine, tampoco un video casero, sino otra cosa. No se trata de un digital que imita al celuloide ni tampoco uno que deja ver sus deficiencias. Al contrario, es un HD usado por su electricidad, por su imagen contrastada, "televisiva", sin el filtro visual que parece existir en el combo celuloide/fotografía tradicional, más cuando es usada en una película de época.

-Además, la puesta en escena no es para nada convencional, el montaje por momentos es radical, enrarecido, "godardiano". Los planos están compuestos de manera muy especial, usando mucho un primer plano muy cercano de un lado de la pantalla y un gran "espacio negativo" en el resto, un poco a la manera de sus otros filmes (hay cientos de escenas de hombres recortados frente a la nada, al paisaje o al mar en el cine de Mann), pero aún más sucio y desprolijo.

-Sí, se puede decir que es una película desprolija y sucia, montada con el desparpajo y la falta de sobriedad de un recién llegado. El HD convirtió a Mann en un nuevo cineasta y lo está haciendo reaprender su trabajo, desarmando esa eficiencia cool de filmes como "Heat", "The Insider" y casi todo lo que hizo antes, por un approach mucho más directo y crudo. Las escenas de acción no tienen esa precisión coreográfica: funcionan como captadas a las apuradas por un noticiero de televisión.

-Si bien acercarse a un relato de época usando cámara en mano, editando de manera sucia y con la imagen fría del digital puede parecer un recurso simplista de actualización del material para acercarlo a un público joven, sólo con ver dos minutos de película se nota que no hay nada de convencional en ella, que "el recurso" está usado de forma experimental y no comercial. De "Collateral" en adelante (un poco en "Ali" también hay), Mann ha ido arriesgando cada vez más.

-Hablábamos en Los Angeles con el colega Scott Foundas acerca de lo abstracta que es la película. El decía que Mann está adelantado a su tiempo, yo decía que ciertos recursos me hacían acordar a "Sin aliento". Hay algo de eso en la forma de filmar las escenas, pero también ese mismo salto al vacío (siempre dentro de los "saltos al vacío" que se pueden hacer en una película de 100 millones de dólares con Johnny Depp) lo hace en su narración.

-No hay, casi, psicología en "Enemigos públicos". Nunca se explica de donde viene el comportamiento de Dillinger (apenas se menciona el abandono de su padre), de su novia apenas se conoce su origen étnico y de Purvis, cero. Tampoco el resto de la banda de Dillinger amerita ese tratamiento. "No importa de donde vienen, importa adonde van", dice él y dicen ellos.

-"Heat" me encanta, pero tenía "momentos actorales" de exposición, si se quiere, psicológica, que eran bastante irritantes. La escena de De Niro y Pacino servía para explicarnos qué le pasaba a cada uno, y hay otra con Pacino y su mujer (¿qué fue de la vida de Diane Venora, tan bien que está acá?) que tenía aquella frase temible: "I gotta hold on to my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be." Acá está todo eso, pero nadie lo dice.

-El sonido del filme es impresionante. Espero que les toque una buena sala, que se vea y se escuche bien. Las armas te taladran el cerebro. Yo ya veo que nada será igual aquí: vi la peli de vuelta en la sala de la distribuidora y era como una copia en videocassette TDK de la que vi en Los Angeles. La imagen, opacada, y el sonido, destrozado.

-Podría seguir con todo lo que el filme tiene para hablar, sin decirlo, de la época que retrata: el fin del mito del western y el principio "del siglo XX", los últimos héroes solitarios (tanto policías, como el gran Stephen Lang, como ladrones) y el comienzo del crimen y la ley organizada. La escena en la que le piden a los agentes del FBI que busquen donde venden una chaqueta como la usada en un crimen es ejemplar.

-Se critica la poca profundidad de los personajes secundarios y aún de los principales. Creo que ese es el punto de Mann, cada vez más. Ir destilando su cine hacia esa abstracción de la que hablaba Scott. Tom Cruise y su "I Ching" y Jamie Foxx y su "isla soñada" no están más (ok, Dillinger quiere irse a Río de Janeiro, pero eso es apenas un comentario). La frase de Dillinger ("me gusta la bebida, las mujeres bonitas, etc, etc, ¿qué más necesitás saber?) expresa ese desapego por los psicologismos de salón. Todos los personajes están ahí y se entiende muy claramente qué le pasa a cada uno con un par de líneas de diálogo (Giovanni Ribisi) o, simplemente, con una expresión en el rostro (Stephen Dorff). ¿Qué más necesitás saber?

-El personaje femenino está delineado de la misma manera que el resto y no creo que sea una concesión comercial ponerle "un interés romántico". Chico conoce a chica, hay tensión sexual, ella lo ve como la forma de salir de un vida rutinaria, le fascina y le preocupa su "trabajo". ¿No es lo mismo que pasa con todas las mujeres del cine de Mann? Y si es cierto que no es muy compleja, entonces hay que decir que nunca lo fueron. No creo que sea así (tómense un segundo para seguir la evolución de las mujeres de Mann desde sus primeras películas hasta ahora), aunque es cierto que el mayor interés del director está en los personajes masculinos.

-Es muy interesante escuchar a Mann hablar sobre las diferencias entre los hombres "psicoanalizados" o, al menos, autoconscientes de hoy, con los de esos tiempos, lo cual explica su "falta de profundidad". Acá va una frase de la entrevista que le hice que me parece notable.

"Para ellos, cada día puede ser el último... Dicen cosas como “when your time's up, your time's up”, hay un sentido de fatalismo que es muy diferente de la forma en que pensamos ahora. Ahora pensamos: "Si me conozco mejor voy a tomar mejores decisiones y eso va a tener un efecto en la forma en la que las cosas sucederán. Y si las cosas salen mal, será por que no me conocía tan bien como creía". Ellos no pensaban asi, para nada. Pensaban: "voy a hacer esto, lo mejor que pueda, probablemente toda la vida, y cuando llegue el momento de terminar, terminaré (when time's up, time's up). Y eso es todo". Es algo muy ajeno a nuestra experiencia, como ir a un país extranjero."

-Ni hablar de los ecos y las relaciones con la historia del cine que tienen tanto el filme como el personaje. Mann desprecia hablar de influencias y dice que no vio ni se inspiró en ninguna película para filmar ésta. Pero con sólo ver las dos notables escenas que tienen lugar en cines queda claro que los ecos entre ambos universos le resultan más que relevantes.

-Todos los temas del cine de Michael Mann aparecen acá. Ya todos los conocen y no voy a repetirlos. Mismo tipo de personajes, mismo tipo de situaciones, aún más destilados hacia su esencia. A diferencia del muy profesionalizado Scorsese, Mann se va alejando cada vez más de las estructuras narrativas y visuales convencionales. Es como si le cansara contar de vuelta lo mismo: simplemente lo expone como brutales ráfagas de imagen y sonido.

Y podría seguir, durante horas, enumerando las cosas fascinantes que tiene el filme (igual, creo que algunas no funcionan del todo bien), pero tengo que irme a mi trabajo real... Si ven la peli, y la quieren seguir por aquí, encantado. Aporten, critiquen, discutan: se que es una película que generará eso. Y me encanta.

Johnny Depp: "No quiero aburrir al público" (Clarín)

Link (Clarín)

"Public Enemies", de Michael Mann (IFC Review)

Aparte de dejar aquí esta muy buena crítica sobre la película de Michael Mann (yo, cada día más convencido que es una obra maestra), les recomiendo que le peguen una mirada a los "ensayos" en video que Matt hace para el Museum of the Moving Image y que incluyen un especial en cinco entregas sobre Michael Mann que pueden ver (y/o leer) aquí.

By Matt Zoller Seitz

"The only thing important is where somebody's going." That bit of existential wisdom comes from none other than John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), the soft-spoken, bank-jacking antihero of "Public Enemies," Michael Mann's latest epic about unhappy tough guys doing what they do best. It's offered by way of flirtation, as part of Dillinger's out-of-nowhere and all-out attempt to impress a gorgeous hat-check girl named Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) -- a pitch of woo so intense, and so divorced from what Billie considers realistic feeling, that it both unsettles and amuses her. "I'm catching up, meeting someone like you," he tells her. "Boy, you're in a hurry," she deadpans. "If you were looking at what I'm looking at," "Public Enemy" Number One informs her, "you'd be in a hurry, too."

In the two-plus weeks since I first saw "Public Enemies," it has lingered in my mind more vividly than almost any Hollywood film of the past couple of years.

On first viewing, I was inclined to call "Public Enemies" minor Mann, a characterization meant not as a putdown, but a simple summary. As anyone who's read me before well knows, I'm a student of the poetic-bombastic filmmaker, whose worst films are more visually arresting and artistically committed than almost any recent Oscar winner I can recall. His films often play like Samuel Fuller by way of Michelangelo Antonioni -- violent tone poems exploring the angst of machismo and the impossibility of deep and lasting connection by way of dreamy montage, hypnotic music and disorienting, off-center compositions. I'm hugely impressed by Mann's formal restlessness, his thematic consistency and his willingness to change up his game over time (moving from the Stanley Kubrick-level anal retentiveness of his work prior to 1999's "The Insider" to a more visually and dramatically loose aesthetic, much of it stemming from his recent conversion to high-definition video and mostly handheld camerawork).

That said, "Public Enemies" initially struck me as a signpost/stopgap feature along the lines of "Collateral," a Michael Mann 101 movie that compressed some of his signature tropes into easily graspable baubles, a work less interesting for its situations and set pieces than for the way in which it seemed to find its director taking stock of recent preoccupations and stylistic tics before moving on. (Conscious callbacks to prior Mann movies abound, such as the mirroring of obsessed cops and robbers, and gestures such as Dillinger somewhat gingerly laying his gun on a tabletop when he enters a hotel-room-as-domestic-sanctuary, and telling bank customers he's after the bank's money, not theirs -- all echoes of key moments in "Heat" and its TV movie inspiration, "L.A. Takedown.") The structure of Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman's script is episodic, patchy even. Judged against the norms of modern screenwriting convention, the film doesn't cover much ground; it's episodic in a manner faintly reminiscent of mid-period Oliver Stone (think "Born on the Fourth of July" or "The Doors," films that traded narrative-advancing montage for a spare assortment of protracted, often borderline real-time scenes).

And yet, in the two-plus weeks since I first saw "Public Enemies," it has lingered in my mind more vividly than almost any Hollywood film of the past couple of years -- and I'm convinced that its ostentatiously un-blockbustery tendencies are the source of the movie's vividness. While offering many of the core elements that the marketplace demands (including a badass antihero, a crime-and-violence storyline and a love story), "Public Enemies" gives those same elements short shrift, the better to concentrate on intense but largely unarticulated feelings and psychological states.

My friend Sean Burns, the Philadelphia Weekly film critic, recently noted that Mann's latest movie is a rare summer blockbuster without any establishing shots. That's not strictly accurate (Mann does offer a few sweeping shots of Chicago streets packed with gleaming black cars and the like), but it's true to the spirit of the movie, which is at once intimate and opaque. Like so many Mann movies, "Public Enemies" puts us as close to its main characters' bodies as it can while simultaneously and paradoxically maintaining a respectful, even borderline scientific, detachment. It luxuriates in the present tense, refusing to hang labels on anybody (Mann's heroes rush through backstory monologues and often seem faintly bored by having to provide them) and insisting that we project our personalities and concerns onto Dillinger, G-Man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and company.

Contemporary sentiment dismisses such an approach as shallow, flashy, even cold; I prefer to think of it as respectfully rigorous, a means of demanding imaginative involvement from moviegoers that tend to get pissy when movies don't tell them exactly what to think and feel. (It's no accident that one of Mann's signature shots is a close-up taken from just behind a character's ear, the rest of the widescreen frame filled by out-of-focus negative space. It's intimate yet also intentionally off-putting; it denies us a view of the character's face, thereby forcing us to guess what they're thinking and feeling.)

Despite a wealth of period detail and a few thematically apt timeline markers, such as the creation of the modern FBI (characterized here as a power grab by a then-young bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover, played by Billy Crudup as a power-hungry suit who uses PR the way Dillinger uses a Tommy gun), this is not the sweeping, “Godfather”-style historical epic promised in trailers and TV ads, nor is it a guns-a-blazin’ action picture. Though the shootout sequences are predictably loud, intense and immersive -- again, shades of “Heat” -- they take a back seat to scene after scene of Dillinger and his opposite, Purvis, just being. I can already hear the majority of viewers who were bored by Mann’s 2006 “Miami Vice” (one of my favorite movies from that year, and probably as close to a hazy-dreamy Wong Kar-wai movie as Hollywood is likely to get) griping that there’s too much talkin’, not enough shootin.’ I wouldn’t presume to claim that “Public Enemies” is as intricately wrought as say, “The Last of the Mohicans” or “Manhunter,” films in which every scene, line, shot and cut is deployed for a singular, clearly defined purpose. The FBI stuff in “Public Enemies,” for instance, is unsatisfying because -- except for Stephen Lang’s rough-hewn right-hand man, who gets the film’s book-closing final scene -- Purvis and the gang of Texas Rangers he brings in as muscle are pretty standard goons-squad cops, humorless brutes with T-square jaws that don’t have a tenth the inner life of Depp’s Dillinger. That might be Mann’s point, but he didn’t need a parallel narrative to make it.

But perfection plus momentum isn’t Mann’s M.O. anymore and hasn’t been for years. He’s gotten looser and more meditative, delivering features that are blurrier than his early work (in the visual and plot sense), yet also more attuned to the fine points of the individual’s engagement with his own public image (a thread that pays off in a brilliant sequence in which Dillinger visits a police station and looks at the organizational chart on the FBI’s squad room wall). His recent films are more attentive to the moment-to-moment shifts in emotion between colleagues, lovers and friends and, above all else, more devoted to making every interaction, every moment of reflection, appear to be happening right now.

These inclinations may explain Mann’s total commitment to video. He’s virtually unique among A-list auteurs shooting in high-def in that not only does he not try to make it look like film, he goes out of his way to call attention to the fact that it’s video. Why? A theory: besides indicating a true artist's respect for the properties of the medium he’s chosen (painters don’t break their backs trying to make watercolor resemble oil paint), Mann is looking to amp up immediacy and shatter the usual subliminal reassurances that we’re watching a movie and it’s not “really” happening. Film is about things that happen to other people, usually people who are a lot richer and prettier than we are. Video is about what happens to us, at a birthday party or memorial service, in line at the bank, on the sidelines at a news event. The video-ness of the video in “Public Enemies” is discombobulating in a good way; when we look at all these handsome men and women in their period clothes, driving their period cars and speaking their period slang, we’re not seeing something that happened long ago, something safely removed from our own experience. It’s happening right now, live, right in front of us. Not many big summer films help us see familiar situations through fresh eyes. “Public Enemies” is one such movie: perhaps not minor Mann at all, but something major, a work that needs to be seen, absorbed and argued about more than once.

Dispatches from "Public Enemies," Part 3 (The Auteurs)

by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

I spent a few days in the summer of 2008 on the set of Michael Mann's Public Enemies, which was shooting at the time in Chicago. It was a night shoot—the death of John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) in front of the Biograph Theater. These observations and ruminations, which will be posted in three parts, were written at the time. Portions of these notes have since been used in other pieces, including a few posted here at The Auteurs' Notebook.

***

“Who is the director?” I think that's a question most directors ask themselves, however subconsciously. What does it mean to give direction, to point a film? Just like you can define "movie" countless ways, there are a thousand different interpretations of what directing a film means. Is the director the one with the compass, leading a party through the wilderness, like Dreyer? Or is he or she the one who has map and needs the help of others to understand it, like Cassavetes? Is the director a leader who realizes his or her weaknesses, like Eastwood? The master of a painter's studio, like Renoir? The beloved head of a corporation, like Spielberg? A romantic commentor, like Sirk?

Part of what's fascinating and infuriating about Michael Mann is that the only thing you can say about his directing is that he is a director. What he does is direct movies; his activity, his thought processes don't seem to correspond to those of any other pursuits. He isn't an artist, a writer, a critic, an entrepreneur or a dramatist. He's a movie director, and he makes it seem as if it isn't necessary for a director to think that he or she is anything else.

The set of Public Enemies is fairly ordinary. Big stars, big budget, big crew. The usual walkie noise, the disinterested police, the undermanned cafeteria a short walk from the set (in this case, a church basement: cinema, always aping Christianity). From the standpoint of planning and casting, there isn't much that distinguishes a Michael Mann film from one by Ridley Scott or Gore Verbinski. If you arrived on one of their sets and weren't told who the director was, you probably wouldn't be able to guess. Watching Mann film a scene, two things pop into your head: first, you imagine how the shot will end up looking and, second, you realize how easily the scene could be shot by someone else. Take The Insider: "true story" plot, big-name actors, large budget, Panavision. These are the basic elements of dozens of movies made around the same time. Dozens of movies I'll forget while I continue to remember, say, the fabric wrapped around Al Pacino's face, or the video monitors shown together in the interview scene. A Michael Mann image is instantly recognizable, but not a Michael Mann set-up, which makes it feel as though, regardless of what he actually makes movies about, he could make a film about anything.

The consensus of the lower-level members of the crew is that Michael Mann is hard to work for. Some of them say they’re filling in for people who’ve quit. Others are hostile towards any mention of the director or the film; they’re sure it'll fail. They read the daily schedules and infer elaborate melodramas: Mann and Johnny Depp are arguing, Mann and Dante Spinotti aren’t talking, etc., etc., etc. It’s entirely possible that all of these things are true. Mann looks the part of a hardass; he's got the face of a college basketball coach.

Anyone who's spent time on the set of a large production knows that there's a certain enmity that can develop between the crew and the director: the crew, who've been hired to do their job well, know exactly what they're supposed to do. They're professionals. The thing about directing is that it isn't a job: it's work, it's an activity. A person who doesn't know anything about electricity shouldn't be handling the lights, but there are no prerequisites for directing a film. A director can be anyone. A director can come from anywhere. There is no education or knowledge required. The first directors had never even seen a film. Directors are all amateurs. Mann maybe even more so -- he has, with every film, moved further and further away from idioms. He's left behind grammar for expression.

***

What's spoken about so rarely is Mann's direction of performers, his mad drive to cast egoists and passionless stars and then make them express something they seemed incapable of. Jamie Foxx has never been as charismatic as in Ali and Collateral. It's like the old Jack Lemmon problem: usually intolerable, but under the direction of Billy Wilder, one of the greatest actors imaginable. Colin Ferrell was never better than in Miami Vice, Russell Crowe never better than in The Insider. Heat is nothing without Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, and it's the best work either has done in the last quarter-century. It seems almost wrong for Mann to be casting someone as adventurous as Johnny Depp in the lead for Public Enemies; you almost wish he'd cast another actor you resent, just so you can be as astounded by them as you were by Tom Cruise in Collateral (but then again, Wilder could do wonders with willing actors, too—no one but James Stewart could've played the lead in Spirit of St. Louis, and he didn't look or sound one bit like Charles Lindbergh either).

There's that phrase: the art of directing. But it isn't an art—it's an act. Henceforth I'll write it that way: the act of directing. Every participant of a film's production is an actor in the sense that their actions affect the film (and what's acting if not action, inseparable from inaction?). The cameraman is an actor, the focus puller acts with his or her hand, the sound recordist acts with the microphone. The cinematographer plays the character actor to the director's lead, like how Chris Doyle used to be the Walter Brennan to Wong Kar-Wai's romantic Bogart. It's this indestinguishability between work and expression that forms the center of Mann's current approach. "It's not art, it's action." Maybe that's why many of the classic Hollywood directors hated being called “artists.” They could freely admit that a movie could be art, but they would never say they were artists. That's the classical studio model: not a single artist on set, yet what they end up producing together are some of the greatest works of 20th century art (remember: Rembrandt wasn’t an artist, he was a painter). But you can’t make something from nothing; there must’ve been art somewhere—and there was, hidden inside the filmmakers and the audience . That’s what made the movies so primal: it was like being shown a secret talent you didn’t know you had. A sympathy you didn’t know you could muster, an emotion or an intelligence you’d always denied yourself. The art of the movies belonged to those who watched them.

"Public Enemies", de Michael Mann (The New York Times/Village Voice Reviews)

By Manohla Dargis (New York Times)

Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” is a grave and beautiful work of art. Shot in high-definition digital by a filmmaker who’s helping change the way movies look, it revisits with meticulous detail and convulsions of violence a short, frantic period in the life and bank-robbing times of John Dillinger, an Indiana farm boy turned Depression outlaw, played by a low-voltage Johnny Depp. Much of what makes the movie pleasurable is the vigor with which it restages our familiar romance with period criminals, a perennial affair. But what also makes it more than the sum of its spectacular shootouts is the ambivalence about this romance that seeps into the filmmaking, steadily darkening the skies and draining the story of easy thrills.

The thrills are certainly there in the sensationally choreographed prison break that opens the movie under a bright blue Midwestern sky that stretches across the wide screen like a cathedral ceiling. Dappled by fluffy white clouds, it is the kind of sky that tends to show up as a backdrop in paintings of the Madonna and Child, but here offers a sharp contrast to the long-distance image of Dillinger and his friend Red (Jason Clarke), quickly striding toward an enormous, looming prison. Mr. Mann goes in closer once the men enter the prison, where they help disarm the guards, and he pulls back again for the long view as Dillinger fires on the prison with a machine gun while the escapees make a run for the getaway car.

By force of Hollywood habit, you might expect that this vision of the suddenly lone gunman would serve as a prelude to another exciting joy ride about living fast and dying young. Instead it’s followed by a striking short scene of a wounded escapee being dragged alongside the speeding car while Dillinger and another man struggle to pull him up. In the most startling shot, Mr. Mann places the camera right next to the fallen man, pointing it up at Dillinger’s dark, ominous figure as he almost blots out that blue sky. Dillinger holds on until the man’s grip wilts, the dead body slipping away in one direction as the car races off in the other. Laying the blame elsewhere, he next tosses another man out of the moving car.

This, then, is Mr. Mann’s Dillinger: brave enough to stand his ground, loyal, ruthless. There’s a hint of the demonic in this portrait, particularly when the outlaw is gliding through a bank, his long, dark coat fanning around him and a tommy gun in one hand. This is the stuff of legends, of shoot-’em-ups and matinee gangsters with jaunty smiles. Mr. Mann loves this apparition of calculated bravura and initially he frames the first few heists as seamlessly choreographed set pieces. During the first robbery he shows Dillinger and two accomplices from high overhead, the camera peering straight down as the men fan across a black-and-white bank floor like MGM dancers. When Dillinger leaps across a railing, he soars.

It’s a seductive moment — the bad man seems to be defying gravity, not just the law — and much like the other action scenes, it gives the movie a jolt. It also, perhaps in homage, mirrors a similar shot of the escaping serial killer in David Fincher’s “Seven.” Like Mr. Fincher, Mr. Mann makes big-budget art movies that because of their complex pleasures and ambiguities, don’t always hit the box office sweet spot (“Seven” and “Collateral,” Mr. Mann’s movie with Tom Cruise, being exceptions). Despite Mr. Mann’s mainstream bona fides, notably with the 1980s hit TV show “Miami Vice,” and preference for muscular cinematic genres, there’s something resolutely noncommercial about his movies. Among other things, they’re deeply serious (at times to the edge of parody), which is why they rarely pop.

And “Public Enemies” is nothing if not serious, a vividly realistic if fictionalized portrait of a country deep in depression and jumping with bad men. The story centers on two dramatic antagonists, Dillinger and Melvin Purvis (a remote Christian Bale), the F.B.I. agent who doggedly, if often ineptly, led the hunt for America’s most wanted. At first the bureau’s young chief, J. Edgar Hoover (a terrific Billy Crudup, his neck thickened and delivery clipped), ignored Dillinger, deeming him a state problem. Hoover would have been spared embarrassment if the outlaw had remained out of federal jurisdiction because, when the chase was on, it was with agents who didn’t know how to conduct a stakeout or properly fire their guns.

Like Dillinger, Hoover cultivated a public profile that looked good on paper and later up on the screen. They had a lot of competition. Bonnie and Clyde were running wild, as were Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and other hoods with marquee-ready stories, some of whom make appearances here. Banks made for easy targets, logistically and otherwise, and, as the writer Bryan Burrough points out in a book about America’s inaugural war on crime, these outlaws took advantage of the public’s hatred of those recently failed institutions. Dillinger raided bank vaults and staged prison breaks to increasing approval. He shot one man to death, though didn’t always own up to the killing. It was bad for his image.

He became another kind of America’s most wanted: a star. “Get me the money, Honey,” he instructed one female teller with his crooked smile. The press raised his profile with screaming headlines, and the comic Will Rogers joked about the ineptitude of the authorities. (They were going to shoot Dillinger, Rogers joked, but “another bunch of folks came out ahead; so they shot them instead.”) Mr. Mann, working with incidents drawn from Mr. Burrough’s “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the F.B.I., 1933-34,” underscores the celebrity angle. But that’s only part of the big picture sketched out in his ambitious screenplay, written with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman, which also makes room for a love story amid the blazing guns and tabloid glory.

The relationship between Dillinger and a hatcheck girl named Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard, holding her own in this man’s world) eats up considerable time, sometimes winningly, though both actors are better when they’re apart. When not in pirate drag, Mr. Depp can be a recessive, even inscrutable screen presence, which is crucial to his strengths and performative limits. He’s a cool cat, to be sure: veiled and often most memorable when he’s staring into space while the camera soaks in his subdued but potent physical charms. He might have made a great silent star, as earlier roles suggest. Part of his initial appeal was that he seemed almost Garboesque in a movie world that increasingly makes no room for sacred idols.

Mr. Depp looks good as Dillinger — few contemporary actors can wear a fedora as persuasively — but the performance sneaks up on you, inching into your system scene by scene. The same holds true of “Public Enemies,” which looks and plays like no other American gangster film I can think of and very much like a Michael Mann movie, with its emphasis on men at work, its darkly moody passages, eruptions of violence and pictorial beauty. Mr. Mann’s digital manipulations, in particular, which encompass almost pure abstraction and interludes of hyper-realism, is worthy of longer exegesis, one that explores how this still-unfamiliar format is changing the movies: it allows, among other things, filmmakers to capture the eerie brightness of nighttime as never before.

“Public Enemies” doesn’t look like the usual gangster picture, not only because it’s been shot in digital, but also because Mr. Mann is searching for a new kind of gangster story to fit the times, one that makes room for greater ambivalence, and lawmen and outlaws who are closer to one another in temperament and deed. If he doesn’t fully succeed, it’s because he knows that the gangster’s rakish smile is at once a fiction of cinema and one of its great, irresistible lies. During the big finish, Dillinger grins wryly at a black-and-white Hollywood picture with Clark Gable as the kind of gangster who could only have been invented by the movies, a gangster who is as false as the bullets that finally stopped Dillinger were real.

“Public Enemies” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Bloody gun violence.

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By Scott Foundas (Village Voice/Los Angeles Weekly)

"They're all about where people come from. Nobody seems to wonder where somebody's going." So says the Depression-era bank-robber-cum-folk-hero John Dillinger upon surveying the clientele of a chic Chicago eatery in a key scene from Michael Mann's Public Enemies. And, much like its subject, Mann's exhilarating movie exists in a state of perpetual forward motion.

Dillinger (played superbly by Johnny Depp) spends most of the movie on the run, and so does the movie itself. But even when Dillinger is at rest—in those moments when he finds himself in jail or in the arms of a woman—Public Enemies exudes a nervous tension, the sense that flight is imminent. (One of the tensest scenes takes place at a traffic light.) It's a feeling that Mann intensifies by shooting the entire movie with a battery of high-definition video cameras—most of them handheld—that record the action in violent jolts and swooshes, the way things might look if Dillinger were still robbing banks today, his exploits captured by camera phones and broadcast over YouTube. The result, like Bonnie and Clyde 40 years earlier, is a period gangster movie that scarcely feels period at all.

Visually, Public Enemies seems like the summation of something Mann has been steadily building toward ever since he first incorporated video-shot footage into the dynamic opening training montage of Ali in 2001. Where digital methods have gradually become the industry standard by simulating the dense, luxuriant textures of film, Mann embraces video precisely for the ways in which it is unlike film: for the hyper-real clarity of its images, for the way the lightweight cameras move through space, and for its ability to see sharper and more deeply into his beloved night. At every turn, Mann rejects classical notions of cinematic "beauty" and formulates new ones. The sounds and images rush at you, headlong, and before you can fully get a handle on them, something else takes their place. (I am haunted by one particular shot, of Dillinger being wakened by gunshots, the camera springing off his body as if it, too, had been startled from sleep.)

Dramatically, the movie offers a variation on a favored Mann theme—an elegant, professional criminal and a dogged lawman (here, Christian Bale's implacable "G-Man," Melvin Purvis) pursuing each other into an existential void. Compelled by processes, Mann saturates Public Enemies with vivid details, never belabored, of '30s-era intelligence-gathering techniques and the minutiae of Dillinger's balletic jailbreaks. Although the credits say that the screenplay was adapted by Mann and two other writers from Vanity Fair reporter Bryan Burrough's 600-page account of the 1930s interstate crime wave and the rise of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover (played by a very amusing Billy Crudup), the movie Mann has made more often suggests a redo of his own 1995 crime saga Heat, though reduced nearly to the point of abstraction. There are long stretches in Public Enemies when it feels as if Mann, like the French noir master Jean-Pierre Melville at his most elemental, would be happy to film nothing but men in tailored suits and charcoal overcoats slicing through landscapes, illuminating the night with bursts of yellow gunfire. Some storied members of Dillinger's gang are barely afforded a line of dialogue, while Dillinger himself emerges as the tersest in Mann's gallery of flinty, self-aware men of action. In lieu of crackling monologues, Depp says, simply, "I'm John Dillinger. I rob banks." Likewise, those robberies are brisk, expedient affairs rarely lasting more than two minutes each. Where Mann staged the heist sequences at the center of Thief and Heat as a kind of grand opera, Dillinger's are closer to proletariat street theater.

Dillinger talks about getting out of this racket, of making one last score and then dropping off the map with his lover, the French–Native American coat check girl Billie Frechette (an excellent Marion Cotillard), but even as he's saying it, we (and she) don't quite believe it. He seems no more able to stop robbing banks than Mann is to stop making movies. Fittingly, those two obsessions—filmmaking and law-breaking—converge in Dillinger's storied last stand at Chicago's Biograph Theater.

Onscreen at the Biograph that fateful night was Manhattan Melodrama, a surprisingly unsentimental, proto-Mann 1934 crime drama starring Clark Gable and William Powell as childhood friends who grow up on opposite sides of the law—one a small-time hood, the other a D.A.—and compete for the affections of the same woman (Myrna Loy). What Mann and Depp do in that scene, as Dillinger watches this parallel version of his own life, ranks among the cinema's most eloquent depictions of the way the spectator identifies with the moving image. "Die the way you lived. Don't drag it out," says Gable shortly before being escorted to the electric chair—words that cut to the essence of Dillinger himself, as well as Mann's career-long interest in men who live by their own codes, outside the strictures of normal society. Seeing Dillinger's face in the reflected light of the screen, it's as if he sensed, even then, that while his own mortality lay in wait, his legend would long continue to flicker.

Dispatches from "Public Enemies," Part 2 (The Auteurs)

By Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

History is made at night, at least around here. It gets dark, the police come and cordon off two blocks of Lincoln Avenue. Autograph seekers huddle around a McDonalds at the south end of the street. They bicker with police deep into the night. Two blocks have been redecorated according to archival photographs: there are dress shops, a Chinese restaurant, a pool hall, a grocery store with a window full of wax fruit. They've taken down the street lights and put up old-fashioned ones. They glow with a beige light instead of the usual yellow. Fake trolley tracks have been laid down in the middle of the street, with foam brick underneath them. The Biograph Theater’s marquee, repainted 1930s black, advertises Manhattan Melodrama, the last film John Dillinger saw, and the miracle of air conditioning (it's the secret reason cinephiles like the summer).

If you come here in the daytime, you’ll find a squad of security guards. Three men guard an alleyway, empty except for a box of empty Coca-Cola bottles. Three men to guard one box: the lengths we go to in the name of continuity. Another guard’s half-empty soda cup sits in the Biograph’s box office booth.

When you see this during the day, it’s like you’ve wandered into the wrong city, the wrong decade. At night, when the cars start running, noisly making their figure-eight loop around the set, when the costumed summer strollers walk slowly down the street, pretending that they’ve just left a movie or a restaurant or are coming home from work—then it’s something else. I think of the last time this city heard the spastic growl of so many Ford Model A engines. They sound like hail when it drums on a metal roof. It must bring back old memories for the bricks. You end up thinking about how someday, should movies disappear, we’ll look back and marvel at the lengths we went to for them, the way we now look back on Gothic cathedrals and wonder about how people could have spent decades on a church. We recreated the past, avoided the present, all for the sake of a few minutes on a screen.

***

Public Enemies is being shot from a script Mann co-wrote, based on a book on the crime wave of 1933 - 1934. At the center are a bunch of folk characters: John Dillinger, Melvin Purvis, Baby Face Nelson, J. Edgar Hoover. Around here, they're still remembered. I'm shown a shop that was once a speakeasy; the big metal door, like the one in any good gangster movie, is still there. Upstairs there's a blackjack table that they say Dillinger used to play behind. Its current owner shows me a prized possession: a chip monogrammed JHD—John Herbert Dillinger. Later I hear that one of the landlords around here had sat on Dillinger's knee when he was a little boy. 75 years later, it's still the same town. The Biograph had to be repainted, but it's still here, even if people go to see plays there instead of movies nowadays. The alley is still there, the old building. "It's all true," I think.

The "true story" has become such a staple of American cinema in the last decade, but I think Mann's "true stories" are the only ones with any truth to them. It's because he's more interested in the feelings or the ideas than the facts—it's what makes Ali stand out in crowd of Rays and Walk the Lines. It's more important that the actors express than impersonate. Will Smith only has Cassius Clay's haircut, the same way Johnny Depp will only have John Dillinger's moustache. But Smith has a charisma, and that tomcat voice, equal parts feline and masculine. Of course the set around us is all facts, illustrated: what the cars of 1934 looked like, how the people of 1934 dressed, what the color of a 1934 Chicago streetlight was. This is the work of the art director, the production designer, the costumers, their crews. It's not the facts that Mann is here to give us.

Shooting the past in HD—why not? 1934 wasn't in 35mm any more than 100 BC was all in marble statues. The key idea of Ali was that the 1960s were a time when people actually lived, not just some set of important moments that we can look back on. That public figures were people. It was history without irony or bemusement. Mann shooting a film set in 1930s on video isn't a post-modern conceit: Mann genuinely believes in video's ability to capture certain things film can't pick up (and vice-versa—hence he's shooting part of Dillinger's death on 35mm). It's a question of video's way of capturing background movement, of the way leaves fluttering in the background can overtake the image. "What's missing from movies nowadays is the beauty of the moving wind in the trees," D.W. Griffith said four years before his death. Griffith, who gave us the monumental image, wished for a day when the elements of an image could subvert its composition. For waves that could look so strong that they could overtake a figure framed against the ocean. 35mm, always forgiving to the human element, gave us a way to master the world. The figure against a landscape was a figure first and a landscape second. HD—especially Mann's beloved CineAlta camera, and especially at night—is harder to control. It's as like we've razed a forest to build a city and now find trees growing on every corner.

It requires a new thinking. The director who uses it has to be looking for something that he or she wouldn't find in 35mm. What Mann is after here is something he's attempted to get with film before and only sometimes succeeded. The image of Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles) dying in Ali, for instance—photographed with such tactile focus that the image becomes less about the gun shots that Van Peebles' eyelashes. We realize that he's blinking, that he's still alive as shot after shot hits his body. It's Mann's most violent image, and that's because it acknowledges the fragility of life. The human detail overtakes the violent center. Even more than those first few minutes of Ali—where a jogging Will Smith is shot on washed-out digital video—it's the start of Mann's HD tendency.

***

We're sneaking around the set, observing the crew and extras. Certain mannerisms return when people are costumed. Men snap suspenders. They tug on their pantslegs as they sit down. A bar has been requisitioned for the movie, and when extras order drinks on their break, they instinctively remove their hats, setting them down next to their beers. An actor dressed like a policeman (or, knowing Michael Mann, a real policeman playing a policeman) enters, and I’m briefly worried, because we’re smoking indoors, which is illegal in the city. It takes a half-second to realize that, real policeman or not, he’s just another actor and, real interior or not, this has become a set. He pats one of the beer drinkers on the back.

In the alley behind the bar, the second unit is shooting a scene. Some policemen are stopping the G-men leaving the scene of the Biograph shooting. One of them shouts loudly, asking them who they are. A PA directs foot traffic, telling people when they can cross and when they can't. The video feed monitor is a stop light. All clear. We dash.

Dispatches from "Public Enemies," Part 1 (The Auteurs)

By Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Above: Stand-ins help rehearse a scene from Public Enemies. Photo by Rob Olewinski.

I spent a few days in the summer of 2008 on the set of Michael Mann's Public Enemies, which was shooting at the time in Chicago. It was a night shoot—the death of John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) in front of the Biograph Theater. These observations and ruminations, which will be posted in three parts, were written at the time. Portions of these notes have since been used in other pieces, including a few posted here at The Auteurs' Notebook.

***

I've seen John Dillinger shot many times. Once, it was Warren Oates who got gunned down. I've seen it happen to Lawrence Tierney, too, and then there was a soft-focus re-enactment in a television documentary, an anonymous actor in front of an anonymous movie theater. But how many times have I seen Johnny Depp get shot now? Each time, it's more or less the same (but of course, every take is subtly distinct, which is why we have multiple takes). The artificial streetcorner with the alley. He walks along the sidewalk, dressed in a summer shirt and straw hat. The streetlight falls on his back, a crease in the shirt formed a shadowy valley. I imagine it as an image—the shirt as a landscape—and I think: "I want to wear my shirts that way, a little untucked." Depp doesn’t look like Dillinger, but it doesn’t matter. That rakish face looks like how Dillinger should feel. Dashing, like a vagabond—the way we want Our Dillinger (there’s that Chicago logic, that funny way we cling to our monsters: they might not be good people, but they’re our people). A man comes up from behind and clicks the prop gun. Again and again. Depp falls forward, and the camera, handheld, follows the movement of his body, plunging as he crumbles.

The film is being photographed in HD, but this shot, in slow motion, is being filmed on an unblimped 35mm camera. It's got a furious, high-pitched clicking. On the video assist monitor, we can see the angle: the cameramana following Depp from behind. While they repeat and repeat and repeat the shot, technicians light the next scene, which will be in front of the Biograph Theater itself. The marquee has been redecorated so that it looks like it did when Dillinger was shot there. They're working diligently, separated from the current set-up by a throng of extras who stand silently, arms folded, watching Depp die, hopeful to glean some bit of "genius" to further their acting careers. A large camera sits on a dolly, covered by a transparent plastic sheet like a couch in a furniture showroom.

And of course, I’m thinking: "In life as in the dictionary, ideas come before images." Here I know the image, but I don’t know the idea. It becomes the great game of film-viewing, watching through the video assist a rough estimate of an image that hasn’t been made yet. An image that might not even make it into the movie. The thing about cinephiles is that, when you take us out of the cinema, we get hungry. We latch on to everything that might resemble a movie. The onlookers have their Depp, I have my little screen.

Some directors sit in a folding chair in headphones, watching the video assist. Some talk through their assistants. Michael Mann directs standing up. During every take, his attention darts from the monitor (there is only one and only one camera; two more monitors are set up with the little tent to shelter them from rain, but they're blank) to the action going on twenty feet in front on him and back. A director is responsible both for something real and something filmed. A director is two people at once—a director, supervising some real event, and a filmmaker, shaping some future image.

Mann paces. After every few takes (and of this shot, there'll be dozens) he darts over to the actors. He takes Depp aside, standing close to him, talking over actions and movements which the actor occasionally mimes out. On this hushed street, you can hear just about anyone’s voice, but not Mann's. He talks quietly. Or, maybe, he talks just as loudly as he needs to.

Over the years, Mann's approach has changed. At the beginning of his career, he seemed like a contemporary of Jean-Jacques Beineix. He was the Beineix who wasn't a misanthrope. Now he's the only obvious contemporary to Claire Denis and Johnnie To. His career is the story of a director who began with "the look" and discovered the image. From the "cinematic" to cinema. The Mann of Thief through Manhunter, like Beineix, seemed to care about the appearance of the image more than the image itself. They're good movies, but making good movies isn't enough. It was about staging things for the camera more than capturing an image. Closer to a photogram than a photograph. I remember a scene from The Keep like I do a scene from Beineix' The Moon in the Gutter: I remember the color, the lighting, but not whether the images were close-ups or wide shots, whether the camera moved, whether it was one shot or several. Even The Last of Mohicans seems to have been made by someone thinking: "What if we made a movie that looked this way?"

He's always worked on location. Back then, he'd start with something at least partly real and make it feel completely artificial, completely plastic. I recognize Lake Michigan in Thief, but only the way you recognize a triangle or a square. What I see first is a color and a line. Images that sort of scuttle themselves, marooning the viewer. (It's possible to also think of a roster of ferrymen, directors who use the film to row the audience out to a certain place and then bring them back in time for the end credits: Shirley Clarke, Eric Rohmer, Yueh Feng, Charles Burnett, David Mackenzie, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Aleksandr Sokurov. These directors should not be confused with kidnappers like Santiago Alvarez or gallery guides like Peter Greenaway.) But something happened around Heat. Aesthetics gave way to ethics, imagery to images.

The first shot of Thief and that final tableau from Heat are obviously directed by the same man—or at least by the same tastes—but the ideas aren't the same. It's the difference between letting your tastes find something and having a feeling inside you that you use your tastes to express. The first shot of Thief and the last shot of Heat: rumbling electronic music, night time, lights forming a V shape that disappears on the horizon. In Thief, it's a man getting into a car and driving away. In Heat, it's two men perfectly still. Funny how it's only in a moving image that we can really capture stillness. In neither image are the figures "acting" in the traditional sense. James Caan just gets into a car. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino pose; they look like statues (but then I think: "Statues also die."). Similar images, but not the same. Like that conversation De Niro and Pacino have in their only other scene together in the film, the final shot of Heat is Utopian. Two people expressing themselves completely and shamelessly. I think it's that ideal that Mann has aspired to since: to let go of preferences, of standards in framing, editing, composition and to express whatever he might be thinking or feeling through the image. Instead of simply telling their stories, he will become one with the characters he admires.

Watching the death scene in Public Enemies, repeated over and over, I realize that there are really two key performers here: Depp and the cameraman. Two well-rehearsed actors. Since Collateral, Mann has been treating the camera more and more like something that can perform. No one else has shots so actorly, expressing in grand gestures but also small nuances. I think of the way the camera pulls back as Jamie Foxx scrambles out of his taxi, and how Foxx's terror is nothing without the camera's movement.

"Public Enemies", de Michael Mann (HBO First Look)

Part 1



Part 2

De cualquier manera, viendo estos clips no se alcanza a apreciar la radicalidad estética de la propuesta de Michael Mann. Primero, porque la calidad YouTube no permite ver bien el específico grano y brillo de la imagen. Segundo, porque la edición de este Especial no respeta el montaje extraño y los planos "a mano armada" que tiene la película. Pero, bueno, algo es algo. Para el resto, mejor esperar a ver la peli...