But let us suppose you knew those things already. Well, then, the word I would choose would be "lagoonal".
It's murky, is Hard Eight, melancholic; a whisky-soaked late-night sojourn around a Reno of faded casinos and cut-rate motels, in the company of a cast of sorry hustlers, the kinds of people you'd find left slouching and shuffling across the threadbare carpets once all the highflyers had moved on through.
There's a wonderful sense of life sprouting in interstitial spaces, as if PTA is taking his camera and zooming in from the Reno skyline, past the glamour and noise, into the cracks, the 3am streets, the freeway diners, the deserted bars, and waiting, waiting, for something, anything, to occur.
What occurs is that Sydney, an ageing gambler played with rumpled poise by Philip Baker Hall, meets a young man (John C. Reilly) sat forlornly outside a diner, and offers to take him inside for coffee and cigarettes. After showing the man how to scam a casino for a free room and some food, the two become partners. They grow fond of one another, develop a father-son relationship, but then the young man becomes embroiled with cocktail waitress Clementine (a very good Gwyneth Paltrow) and two-bit hoodlum Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson), and Sydney, protecting his naive protege, is forced into a world he wanted to have left behind.
The focus is on character, on letting moments organically grow. It's a full hour before the plot really grinds up, but all the hanging out we do up to that point really grounds the film, really makes us care about its cast - and it is beautiful, riveting stuff.
PTA, in his first feature film, is a thrilling director, assured, original, as intriguing in coffee shop two-shots as crucial points of tension. That early casino swindle could be so sedentary, and yet in PTA's hands it is elegantly explained and utterly engrossing - a kind of Ocean's Eleven to bag a bed for the night and a sandwich or two. And this perfectly sets up the world these characters inhabit, their motivations, their desires. Sydney is playing for scraps, but he is playing well, noble and professional, and we wonder what has happened to him to wind him up here.
It looks gorgeous as well. A colour palette of greens and reds and underwater blues. Lenses up close, isolating subjects, racking focus, softening backgrounds. Lots of night shots. Lots of neon.
It is a dreamy world, yet a lifelike one, also. Many of the characters, scenarios, and stretches of dialogue are reminiscent of Tarantino, yet a vibration away, from a quieter universe, more low-key, more sombre, more tender.
Hard Eight is a stunning debut from a magnificent director; a gem gleaming out from beneath nebulous waters. In a word: lagoonal. Give it a watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment