Masterpiece

I watch Heat about once a year. I saw it in the theaters when it came out, around 1995 or so and liked it quite a bit. One summer, I had two VCRs hooked up together at my house and so I dubbed a bunch of videos, one of them was Heat. Since then, I've watched it here and there on a shitty video copy about once a year. Last night, after a 552 screening, I came home and felt like watching something and I turned it on. I finished it this morning.

The general consensus within film school about Heat is that it is, in Soo Hugh's words, "a beautiful, flawed film." People like it. A couple people love it. But most everyone feels it necessary to point out the flaws. I think a couple common issues are with the Natalie Portman character, the fact that Jon Voigt seems to know everything out of thin air, and with the driver character/grill man, who has a few little scenes and then a small part in the bank robbery in the end.

There is little I can say in response to the flaws of the film. Like anything you love, there isn't anything I'd change about it, including the flaws. After script analysis, I tend to try to figure out some simple structural notes about films while watching...when the end of the 1st act occurred, when the end of the second act occurs, what is the theme? what is the main tension? Heat is tough, because it is both an ensamble piece, but also a crime drama. So the main tension is clearly about Vinent's pursuit of Neil and whether he can capture him. But there are so many other characters, in some sense, it is more about whether Vincent's crew can take down Neil's crew.

The first act tension is locked rather late into the movie - when the cops spy on the crew from the Chinese Restaurant. The end of the second act is when Vincent declares that Neil is gone, and goes to the hotel to find Natalie Portman and her attempted suicide. The third act is the shortest, but is all about whether Neil and Vincent will change, and become "regular type guys."

What I love about the film, beyond the best action sequence ever put to celluloid, and some fantastic dialog, is the theme - the entire movie is thematically about male and female relationships. It is incredibly cold, as Michael Mann is wont to be, but cold, as a description, I think falls a bit short. It is more fundamentally tragic.

A solid critique of film would be about the DeNiro-Eddy story, because it is rather quick how he decides, "it wouldn't be worth going anywhere anymore without you." Their's isn't a love story where you see the passion between the two characters, but rather a story of enormous lonliness. The restaurant scene, where everyone is coupled, except Neil, is what prompts him to call her...it isn't that he's fallen in love, it's that he is tired of being alone. Neil's house, devoid of furniture, is the physical representation of his heart/soul - completely empty. He explanation that he is "alone, not lonely," seems like a reasonable explanation, pointing to how diciplined, but unneedy he is. But upon reflection, being alone is even more tragic, as alone connotes a permanant state, whereas lonely is a temporary state to be cured by meeting someone. Neil and Vincent are and will remain, ALONE.

The movie has always been a 5 for me, but it's creeping up into my top 20, maybe even top 10 of all time. I've watched it more times than nearly any other film, except perhaps Pulp Fiction or Chinatown.

Of all the living filmmakers, Scorcese is widely considered to be the best. There are obviously others, Altman, Spielberg, Coppola, Allen, but none of them hold the public esteem the way Scorcese does.

But if you asked me to take pick Michael Mann or Scorcese in a one-on-one, no holds barred, film-off, well, I'd take Michael Mann any day...