***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing, Harold Perrineau Jr., Forest Whitaker, Ashley Judd, Giancarlo Esposito, Malik Yoba, and Jared Harris.
Directed by Wayne Wang & written by Paul Auster
1995
112 min R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 1995
Once upon a time there was a young skier who was caught in an avalanche and his body was never found. His son grew up to be a skier and one day the son went skiing on the same slope where his father died. He stopped by a big rock to have his lunch and when he looked down he saw a body perfectly preserved in the ice. When he bent over it was like he was looking into a mirror. He realized he was looking at the remains of his father. But the strange part is that, as the son was staring at this eerie reflection, he realized that he was now older than his father was when he died. The son is older than the father.
This doesn’t happen in “Smoke.” Rather, it’s a story that gets told in the course of the movie, and it in a way captures the movie’s peculiar, vaguely magical flavor. About half of “Smoke” takes place off-screen and we are only privy to it when someone tells us. Structurally “Smoke” follows five narratives inter-connected by a New York cigar store. Yeah, it’s one of those movies, like “13 Conversations About One Thing.” Like “13 Conversations” and the skier story, “Smoke” is a fable, in which God, fate, and coincidence are closer to the surface than most of us are accustomed to. It’s less openly a fable than “13 Conversations” and more rambling slice-of-life. But don’t let all the gritty New York settings fool you.
The last thing I want to mention, before getting to the summary, is how every plot point seems beamed in from a film noir or some pulp potboiler. There’s a bag of loot, a liquor store robbery, a long-lost son looking for his long-lost father. A woman from the past returns to tell her old boyfriend that they have a daughter and she’s in trouble. And of course everyone smokes, allowing every scene to follow the rhythm of taking out, lighting up, and puffing away. But “Smoke” doesn’t feel like a noir at all. A lot of “intertwining crime stories” came out in the wake of “Pulp Fiction,” most of them with no greater ambition than a writer-director proving he can keep all the plates spinning and kill people in creative ways. But crime is a tiny part of “Smoke,” and these are interesting, sweet stories built around a theme, not formal showiness.
We start out in the cigar store, owned and operated by Auggie (Harvey Keitel), where we meet the novelist (William Hurt) who’s had writer’s block since the death of his wife. For a few days he takes in a young runaway (Harold Perrineau Jr., who was Mercutio in “Romeo + Juliet”) who saves him from getting run over by a truck. The runaway turns out to be in search of the father (always sad-eyed Forest Whitaker) he’s never met, who’s now working at a mechanic’s shop sans his left arm. We meet back up with Auggie just as an one-eyed dame (Stockard Channing) comes strolling in from the past with important news.
Our cast is perfect. No one says Noo Yawk like Keitel, and he effortlessly embodies the prickly skinned-but-soft hearted shopkeeper, hurling swears at rowdy patrons one moment while trying to sell Cuban cigars, the next moment looking after his slow-witted assistant (Jared Harris of “Sylvia”). No says “intellectual” like William Hurt; one is tempted to say that Hurt couldn’t play stupid if he tried, although I hear he does just that in “Broadcast News.” He tells a story to the guys in the cigar store and tries to be casual about it, but comes across as ashamed of how he can’t do anything without sounding superior and erudite. He takes a totally impractical and philosophical approach to his problems, which I loved. Most of us, Auggie included, would not take a bag of stolen money being on our bookshelf as lightly as he does.
The movie is bookended by two scenes that are basically just between these two men. In the first, Hurt explains how Sir Walter Raleigh made a wager with Queen Elizabeth I to find the weight of smoke. In the last, Keitel tells of how he accidentally spent one Christmas with the blind grandmother of a shoplifter. Both stories have the ring of truth but, like the movie itself, they are a bit too heightened. Neither man will reveal if he’s lying because the stories are so comforting, and such good, perfect little tales.
And there we have the theme of “Smoke,” about how valuable our spoken-of, unseen, and possibly untrue lives are to us. Whitaker’s one-armed mechanic describes losing his arm as punishment from on high, but who are we to know the mind of God? Channing and Keitel’s discussion of “the old days” is so wistful—wistfully good and bad—that we can’t believe that either of them is really remembering it right. When we meet Keitel’s strung out daughter (an early performance by Ashley Judd), she goes on and on about how great her boyfriend is and how she’ll cut poor Auggie into little pieces, but we never meet him. Giancarlo Esposito (“Fresh,” “The Usual Suspects”), in a two-scene role, talks big and showy around the cigar store, and he only exists to us as the words coming out of his mouth. And Perrineau’s runaway lives in a whole fantasy world, lying left and right.
“Smoke” could be a play, and in some ways Wayne Wang (“The Wedding Feast”) directs it like one. Almost every scene is between only two characters and almost every story is told in a single unbroken take. Actors love movies where they are allowed to deliver monologues. When they’re done well, we love to watch them. There’s the touch of “My Dinner with Andre” in how wrapped up we can get by a guy just talking. But if “Smoke” were a play we’d miss Wang’s contemplative pauses and subtly, drolly humorous cuts. This isn’t a profound movie, but is a confident, comfortable one, big-hearted and funny but with enough cruelty and cussing to keep it from being overly sentimental. “Smoke” is a little gem you should count yourself lucky to stumble across at the video store or on late-night cable, especially when you could just be stuck with another shoot-‘em-up special effects bonanza.
Finished June 10, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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