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Apologies for the comparative paucity of reviews this week. I was too preoccupied with the election to concentrate on movies, and wound up watching only the two that I absolutely needed to for professional assignments with immediate deadlines, plus Knud Rasmussen which as I noted was a mistake. Now that sanity has potentially been restored, things around here should quickly return to normal. Thanks for understanding. Love you all. 

90/100

At least third viewing (more likely fourth), last seen 2003. Struck this time by how frequently Tom Reagan says "I'll think about it"—this is a film about the war between rationality and irrationality, as silently waged in one preternaturally cagey man's soul. "The two of us have faced worse odds," Leo insists, early on, when he's trying to justify taking on Caspar. "Never without reason," replies Tom. "It helps to have one." By their final scene together, though, he's striking the opposite tone, rhetorically asking "Do you always know why you do things, Leo?" Much of the film's power—and this is what escaped me in 1990, when I considered it a (very) mild disappointment relative to Blood Simple and Raising Arizona—lies in how murky Tom's motivations remain throughout, possibly even to himself. Certainly I don't think it crossed my mind, 30 years ago, that he might be in love with Leo, though I now find it hard to interpret his yearning gaze in the final shot any other way. (Side note: While plenty of realistic-for-the-era anti-Semitism gets tossed around, these characters are downright progressive in their casual acceptance of gay relationships. Nobody bats an eye, much less hurls an epithet.) The hat remains a hat, we're told, and no possible interpretation of its symbolic significance could improve upon the uncanny beauty of watching it gently land in exactly the right spot before being blown into the distance (without ever deviating from roughly the center of the frame; I frankly have no clue how they pulled that off from start to finish, apart from shooting it over and over until they finally got a magical take). Barton Fink is obviously far more surreal, but both films share that rare, treasurable quality (see also: Lynch, David) of remaining just shy of total comprehension while somehow feeling completely lucid. This one just places such mysteries alongside more basic psychological complexity, e.g. ultra-pragmatic (?) Tom placing another sure-to-lose bet immediately after finally squaring himself with Lazarre—a marvelous touch that had barely registered for me previously. 

Still, I kinda want to go back in time and slap my younger self around, because Miller's Crossing works magnificently even if you're oblivious to all of the above. (To be clear, I did like the film initially. Probably would've been like a 68 or something. But that seems too low given all of its surface pleasures.) With one exception that I'll address below, the narrative unfolds with spiky elegance, at once dialogue-driven—there are too many choice lines for me to start quoting any; I'd be here all day—and predicated on the strategic withholding of key visual information, e.g. Bernie sitting in Tom's chair (the first time) such that no part of him is visible from behind, though that seems at a glance as if it would be impossible. (I of course knew he was there and still had trouble imagining his physical position.) That last moment also relies upon Tom not reacting in any way to Bernie's presence, and Byrne's performance here is just a paradoxical marvel of closed-off raw emotion, impassive yet inflamed. (It's The Man Who Pretended He Wasn't There. Though I guess I consider that equally true of Ed Crane.) This might be Turturro's finest work, and I'm not sure that it isn't Finney's as well; J.E. Freeman never made an impression on me in any other role, but he lands the Dane so hard that it doesn't matter. I'll confess that I think Polito pushes a little too far into outright caricature (for which I'd ultimately blame Joel and Ethan, not him), and could live without the ostensible comedy involving Caspar's son, as well as this incarnation of the Coens' love for bellowing fat men. (Drop Johnson seems to have wandered in from Raising Arizona.) And of course this is a universe with essentially one (1) woman, who's defined almost exclusively by whom she sleeps with and why. (Harden makes it mostly work via sheer truculence.) But those are all the quibbles I can muster. Everything else goes down smooth.

No, wait, I forgot to note the aforementioned exception to what's otherwise one of the most satisfying gangster plots in cinema. I'm inclined to be forgiving, because the tiny "cheat" that I perceive facilitates some truly fantastic scenes—the return to Miller's Crossing in particular. Wouldn't want to lose that. (Tom vomiting, it occurs to me, is another indication of how few glimpses we're allowed into his psyche. Not something one expects given his demeanor up to then.) However. I just do not believe that Caspar's goons would have left without seeing Bernie's body. That defies reason, given that the whole point of having Tom pull the trigger is to test his loyalty. The Coens do their best to justify this by having the Dane call them idiots, but nobody's that dumb. They'd have confirmed it, not just trusted the sound of far-off gunshots...and furthermore, there's no reason why Tom wouldn't have expected them to confirm it (in which case sparing Bernie is suicidal). Again, not a dealbreaker or anything, but it always nags at me when a story pivots on something so implausible. Especially in a context like this, with its deliberate chasm between thought and action, cogitation and impulse. With the known unknown.

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Anonymous (edited)

Comment edits

2023-01-05 23:31:36 > that he might be in love with Leo That's... certainly an interesting interpretation. Only seen the movie once(in this year), but it never quite occurred to me that he could have romantic feelings for Leo. Will keep it in mind when I inevitably rewatch it to see if I find it to be a compelling reading on the film. Is your interpretation based mostly on the last scene or do you feel that that gaze is just a confirmation(though even you don't seem to be certain yourself) of a cumulative snowball(though I doubt it's this one, given the film's insistence on keeping its lead character be as understated as possible until the finale)?
2020-11-10 00:27:58 > that he might be in love with Leo That's... certainly an interesting interpretation. Only seen the movie once(in this year), but it never quite occurred to me that he could have romantic feelings for Leo. Will keep it in mind when I inevitably rewatch it to see if I find it to be a compelling reading on the film. Is your interpretation based mostly on the last scene or do you feel that that gaze is just a confirmation(though even you don't seem to be certain yourself) of a cumulative snowball(though I doubt it's this one, given the film's insistence on keeping its lead character be as understated as possible until the finale)?

> that he might be in love with Leo That's... certainly an interesting interpretation. Only seen the movie once(in this year), but it never quite occurred to me that he could have romantic feelings for Leo. Will keep it in mind when I inevitably rewatch it to see if I find it to be a compelling reading on the film. Is your interpretation based mostly on the last scene or do you feel that that gaze is just a confirmation(though even you don't seem to be certain yourself) of a cumulative snowball(though I doubt it's this one, given the film's insistence on keeping its lead character be as understated as possible until the finale)?

gemko (edited)

Comment edits

2023-01-05 23:31:36 My thoughts on the subject are heavily influenced by discussions of the film on a now-defunct discussion group, nearly 20 years ago. Here's a representative exchange. (I won't include the names since I'm not asking their permission, but at the time the group was public so I don't think sharing this here constitutes an ethical breach or anything.) > I realize a claim like this is one of the more annoying tropes of > the kinds of narrative deconstructions found in gender studies > classes at small liberal arts schools, of which I am an alumnus, > but I see Tom as having a highly sublimated crush on Leo, and Tom > as being a deeply closeted homosexual. Absolutely. That's always how I read Tom's murky motivations. As it turns out, a very long time ago (before the term "gender studies" was even invented), I wrote a term paper at a (not so small) liberal art school for my "The Gangster Film and Film Noir" class titled something like "Beyond Devotion: The Right Hand Man in the Gangster Film". The basic thesis was that in just about every classic ganster film, there's this recurring dynamic between the gang leader and his #1 henchman wherein the latter's feeling for his boss seems to extend well beyond mere loyalty. The right hand man's love (and there is no other word) usually manifests itself as a fierce protectiveness that almost always starts out with an intense dislike for the leader's (reliably faithless) moll and more often than not leads him to sacrifice his life for his boss. MILLER'S CROSSING is technically a Gangster Film, not a Noir. (In the Noir, the dynamic changes and the moll becomes the femme fatale who leads our hero—the former right hand man—to betray his loyalties). I have no doubt that Messrs. Coen knew *exactly* what they were doing when they decided to take on the classic Gangster film.
2020-11-10 00:47:12 My thoughts on the subject are heavily influenced by discussions of the film on a now-defunct discussion group, nearly 20 years ago. Here's a representative exchange. (I won't include the names since I'm not asking their permission, but at the time the group was public so I don't think sharing this here constitutes an ethical breach or anything.) > I realize a claim like this is one of the more annoying tropes of > the kinds of narrative deconstructions found in gender studies > classes at small liberal arts schools, of which I am an alumnus, > but I see Tom as having a highly sublimated crush on Leo, and Tom > as being a deeply closeted homosexual. Absolutely. That's always how I read Tom's murky motivations. As it turns out, a very long time ago (before the term "gender studies" was even invented), I wrote a term paper at a (not so small) liberal art school for my "The Gangster Film and Film Noir" class titled something like "Beyond Devotion: The Right Hand Man in the Gangster Film". The basic thesis was that in just about every classic ganster film, there's this recurring dynamic between the gang leader and his #1 henchman wherein the latter's feeling for his boss seems to extend well beyond mere loyalty. The right hand man's love (and there is no other word) usually manifests itself as a fierce protectiveness that almost always starts out with an intense dislike for the leader's (reliably faithless) moll and more often than not leads him to sacrifice his life for his boss. MILLER'S CROSSING is technically a Gangster Film, not a Noir. (In the Noir, the dynamic changes and the moll becomes the femme fatale who leads our hero—the former right hand man—to betray his loyalties). I have no doubt that Messrs. Coen knew *exactly* what they were doing when they decided to take on the classic Gangster film.

My thoughts on the subject are heavily influenced by discussions of the film on a now-defunct discussion group, nearly 20 years ago. Here's a representative exchange. (I won't include the names since I'm not asking their permission, but at the time the group was public so I don't think sharing this here constitutes an ethical breach or anything.) > I realize a claim like this is one of the more annoying tropes of > the kinds of narrative deconstructions found in gender studies > classes at small liberal arts schools, of which I am an alumnus, > but I see Tom as having a highly sublimated crush on Leo, and Tom > as being a deeply closeted homosexual. Absolutely. That's always how I read Tom's murky motivations. As it turns out, a very long time ago (before the term "gender studies" was even invented), I wrote a term paper at a (not so small) liberal art school for my "The Gangster Film and Film Noir" class titled something like "Beyond Devotion: The Right Hand Man in the Gangster Film". The basic thesis was that in just about every classic ganster film, there's this recurring dynamic between the gang leader and his #1 henchman wherein the latter's feeling for his boss seems to extend well beyond mere loyalty. The right hand man's love (and there is no other word) usually manifests itself as a fierce protectiveness that almost always starts out with an intense dislike for the leader's (reliably faithless) moll and more often than not leads him to sacrifice his life for his boss. MILLER'S CROSSING is technically a Gangster Film, not a Noir. (In the Noir, the dynamic changes and the moll becomes the femme fatale who leads our hero—the former right hand man—to betray his loyalties). I have no doubt that Messrs. Coen knew *exactly* what they were doing when they decided to take on the classic Gangster film.