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PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009)
UNIVERSAL BLU-RAY
d. Michael Mann; pr. Michael Mann, Kevin Misher; scr. Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann, Ann Biderman; bk. Bryan Burrough; ph. Dante Spinotti; ed. Jeffrey Ford, Paul Rubell; m. Elliot Goldenthal; cast. Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Giovanni Ribisi, James Russo, David Wenham, Channing Tatum, Billy Crudup (140 mins)
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The American Capacity for Genre Revisionism
Johnny Depp is the finest actor to emerge from what is known as Gen-X, the generation that replaced the baby boomers.
Beginning with his work on the modish but successful 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, the actor went from small roles for such as Oliver Stone in Platoon to delightful, charming work in such as Benny & Joon (opposite emerging Gen-X talents Mary Stuart Masterson and Aidan Quinn) before developing one of the most interesting and successful of contemporary actor-director partnerships with Tim Burton on Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd and the forthcoming Alice in Wonderland. However it was his rogue-ish work on the popular Pirates of the Caribbean series that catapulted him to US superstar status. Depp is one of the few American superstars to simultaneously appeal to both the mainstream and the independent sensibilities, effortlessly switching between big-budget and avant-garde work, his presence alone guaranteeing a return on whatever he chooses to do. In that, he is an actor of enormous power, somewhat belied by a humbling nonchalant low-profile in comparison to his Hollywood peers.
However, Depp has a quality that few stars historically have had (and certainly almost unique amongst the crop of actors who now comprise Hollywood “royalty”) – the ability to submerge individual persona within the symbolic demands of the characterization. There is a chameleon quality to Depp. His personality is almost irrelevant, submerged within the characters he plays. In much of his fantasy inspired work, when working in costume and make-up, Depp himself can be almost unrecognizable. Indeed, when contrasting his work in Edward Scissorhands and Pirates of the Caribbean the transformation in characterization and makeup is so striking as to recall the work of silent actor Lon Chaney Jr. Chaney was known as “the man of a thousand faces” for his ability to transform himself through heavy makeup into often hideously deformed and freakish characters (the full-grown son of dwarf parents, Chaney had a lifelong fascination with “freakism”).
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Michael Mann and the Re-Mythification of American Cinema
There is perhaps only one other actor to match Depp’s ability to transform himself into a role: Russell Crowe.
Recently seen as the journalist in State of Play, Crowe shot to fame first in his native Australia playing a neo-Nazi Melbourne skinhead in the controversial Romper Stomper, a role he prepared for by shaving his head, donning a swastika and walking into Melbourne bars to study people’s reaction. Hollywood seized on Crowe after his Academy-Award winning work as the schizophrenic mathematician in Ron Howards’ A Beautiful Mind, after which he was contacted by Michael Mann to play the tobacco-industry informer Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider. Crowe put on glasses and gained weight to play Wigand, surrendering himself to the role. Mann was so impressed that when director Ridley Scott propositioned Crowe to don Roman armour for the lead in Gladiator and Crowe hesitated, Mann convinced him.
And Michael Mann should know.
Undoubtedly one of America’s finest directors since his creative production work on the hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice led to his single-handed definition of the modern serial-killer movie in the very first Hannibal Lecter film Manhunter (starring Englishman Brian Cox as Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter, a role later usurped and made famous by Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs). In Manhunter, the very first Hannibal the Cannibal appearance took place in a stark white cell. The killer behind bars talks to the man who captured him, FBI Manhunter Will Graham (played by William L. Peterson, an actor whom Mann had first cast in a bit role opposite James Cann in Thief and who went onto a lucrative television career as the star of the original CSI, in a role not dissimilar to Will Graham). Slowly, Mann’s camera cuts between them, eliminating the physical bars that separate them until killer and cop-profiler stand face to face in mutual recognition.
In the film’s most confronting moment, Hannibal perceives that Graham, brought back from retirement to investigate a serial killer known as “the tooth fairy”, is there to re-acquaint himself with the serial killer mindset, empathy with the dark fantasies of which had earlier brought Graham to psychological collapse and hospitalization. Risking his sanity to enter the mind of his nemesis, the serial killer, Graham has come to see Lector to “get back the scent”. Lector soon recognizes this and after indulging Graham about helping him profile the new killer, confronts Graham and asks Graham how he caught him. Graham stands up and bangs on the door to be let out. Lector continues: “the reason you caught me Will is that we’re just alike: you want the scent, smell yourself”. Let out, Graham flees: running as fast as he can down corridors artfully abstracted by Mann’s perfect architectural composition until exhausted, he collapses on the hood of his car in horrifying recognition of his relationship to his nemesis – one and the same.
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The Recognition of Nemeses
For Mann, the moment of recognition of similarity between cop and killer dissolves the boundaries of law and order erected to separate them, barriers which make them adversaries despite their similarities.
Yet Graham in Manhunter is allowed an “out” that is denied all other protagonists in Mann films: he returns home to his wife and child for a normal life. That option was denied the protagonist cop and criminal duo in Mann’s next film, Heat, an astonishingly exhilarating crime drama which paired together (for the first time) Al Pacino (as the cop) and Robert DeNiro (as his nemesis, a career bank-robber modelled on the character type Mann had essayed a decade earlier in Thief, about a safe-cracker played by James Cann). Heat galvanized the critics and Mann became an A-list director, one of the very few to have creative control over multi-million dollar productions. With such creative freedom Mann stands as America’s finest contemporary auteur, and his obsession with the psychological dualism between cop and criminal (or, symbolically, outsider and authority) finds its most mytho-graphic expression in his most recent film, Public Enemies, another bank robber versus cop drama. Here, the bank robber was modelled on a real life figure, John Dillinger, and played by the new man of a thousand faces, Johnny Depp.
And in Public Enemies, Mann re-stages the confrontation between imprisoned criminal and the manhunter responsible for his capture.
Cop and criminal once again confront each other, separated by the bars of a prison cell (does Mann dissolve these bars this time?). The cop is Melvin Purvis, personally appointed to hunt and kill Dillinger by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, an egotist who puts his personal vendetta against outlaws above his allegiance to the US constitution. In Public Enemies, like Manhunter and Heat, there is only a brief exchange between the two men. Dillinger (Depp) knows his kinship to Purvis – both have been face to face with friends who have been shot. But here, there is a difference and Dillinger spells it out for Purvis: both are killers, but where Purvis may have the authority to kill and does so from a distance, Depp does it face to face, up front. Where in Manhunter, the cop was vulnerable and emotional and in Heat was strong enough to face down his enemy as an equal, in Public Enemies he is indifferent, a cipher, his individual personality eclipsed by the responsibilities of his job. And in Manhunter, Hannibal the Cannibal could never leave the cell (though was clever enough to have influence beyond it) whereas in a few scenes Dillinger is out again, the criminal who could not be restrained.
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USA BLU-RAY PURCHASE INFORMATION: Public Enemies (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]
UK BLU-RAY PURCHASE INFORMATION: Public Enemies [Blu-ray] [2009][Region Free]
AUSTRALIA BLU-RAY PURCHASE: Public Enemies
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