A Most Wanted Man

The opening shot is telling. Rather than present some scenic landmark such as the St. Michaelis as a means to provide bearings, the camera merely presents an explanatory credit over a foul concrete embankment beneath a bridge on a river’s edge. You can almost smell the funk. Based on a novel by John le Carre, “A Most Wanted Man” is ostensibly about spies, but film's viewpoint is decidedly stripped of romanticism, demonstrating the Spy Game as grunts and drones in gloomy surroundings doing dirty work. They don’t simply make the job look difficult but unrewarding. To fail means global catastrophe. To succeed means it’s time to start game-planning for the next global catastrophe to avert. It is not a job for the faint of heart. It is a job for Gunther Bachmann. He is played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, forcefully re-emphasizing his ability to make anguish magnetic, and also quietly suggesting the personal demons he carried that eventually, terribly dragged him down. The closing shot is downright spooky.

His character is point man of a super-secret anti-terror team in Hamburg formed in the wake of 9/11 foul-ups, and his life is neatly summarized in a scene at a local bar wherein he and Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright), an American agent with the CIA, discuss the finer points of a joint target. Midway through this powwow, the camera, which had been contemplating them along the wall in the relative private of an alcove, switches to the table’s opposite side and we see them conversing while typical bar goings-on unfold in the background. A couple dances. A man is passed out at a table. Drinks are served. The fate of the world is being decided even as the rest of the world obliviously keeps on trucking. These people have a chance to peek behind the curtain and don’t even realize it. And, of course, it’s better that way, because once you wind up behind the curtain, you wind up like Gunther – awe-inspiringly dour, burning the candle at both ends, freshening up every cup of black coffee with booze. There is another shot in the film when you catch sight of the character’s rumpled "bacon neck" undershirt. He is entombed in dishevelment.

Directed by Anton Corbijn so as to accentuate the negative, “A Most Wanted Man” is inflicted with the grim stench of bureaucracy. Despite specifically being enlisted to do a very specific thing, Gunther is routinely handcuffed and out-maneuvered by those around him as he tries to do it. He prefers a wait-and-see approach, his superior (Rainer Bock) prefers a right-now, questions-later method. Meanwhile, Martha keeps appearing like a Central Intelligence apparition. She wants to help, or she says she does, but he doesn’t trust her, and this is understandable. Her smile is the embodiment of an animal trap, as if the upper lip denotes friendliness while the bottom lip waits with the shiv. It’s a smile seven steps ahead of everyone. It’s a character unto itself.

The story seems to turn on a half-Russian, half-Chechen immigrant, Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), desperately seeking asylum in Germany to escape torturous reprisals in his native countries. But that’s not how Gunther sees him. He sees a jihadist in the cloak of an immigrant, an evildoer with potential access to an inheritance that could fund an act of terror. And when Issa turns to a lawyer (Rachel McAdams) for help in accessing his money, Gunther and his team swoop in to enlist the lawyer and the banker (Willem Dafoe) in aiding the cause.

This is not, however, a standard procedural in which the characters follow clues and negotiate twists to achieve a recitation of that age-old phrase "Case solved", but nor is it a procedural specifically about the process of investigation regardless of result, like David Fincher's "Zodiac." Its ultimate twist is built to slowly and subtly and then is dropped on us all at once, and it pertains less to the outcome of the investigation than how the investigation's outcome simply serves as reinforcement of Gunther's outlook on and place in the world. “A Most Wanted Man” is an incredibly grim but no less gripping character study of a protagonist bound by red tape whose bedrock is tied not so much to faith as to futility, and the closing sequence is an effectively crushing reminder that the world is always one step ahead.

To try and remove all your pre-conceived emotional entanglements from the haunting wrap-up of “A Most Wanted Man” because “it's just a movie” is as futile as the film's overall outlook. It becomes a mind-numbing memorial and when Gunther Hoffman walks away at the end, all you want to do is pull him back. Of course, even as the film starts, you can tell this guy is already gone.

Owning Mahowny

There is a specious scene at the tail-end of “Owning Mahoney” (2003), existing only to sledgehammer us with analytical explanation, in which our protagonist, the Dan Mahowny of the title, a compulsive gambler, is asked whether he has ever felt as high on the rest of his life as he has on gambling. He says no. Well, if this is true, no compulsive gambler, as demonstrated in the previous one-hundred minutes, has ever had less fun betting away a small fortune.

The recent “Wolf of Wall Street”, for instance, fell under intense fire for glamorizing addiction and thievery. This critic did not subscribe to said notion because this critic failed to see how crawling down stairs and across the pavement on account of loss of motor function while foaming at the mouth on account of popping too many Quaaludes is glamorous, but never mind. Anyone who took umbrage to Martin Scorsese’s opus for beautifying debauchery would be well advised to seek out “Owning Mahowny” as counter-programming, a far more dour portrait of the sway and awfulness of addiction. This is a joy-free zone.

As the film opens, Mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is named assistant manager at a Toronto bank, a trusted employee who upon gaining that trust almost instantly begins exploiting it, embezzling chunks of money to fund his gambling habit. On a weekend jaunt to Atlantic City, the camera catches sight of a foreign high-roller, greeted by the unctuous casino manager (John Hurt), and what quickly becomes clear is how little interest Mahowny has in following in those particular footsteps. He takes no free drinks, turns down a free prostitute and doesn’t even want sauce on his free barbecue ribs. He likes his cheap suits and his clunky car just fine. All he wants to do is gamble.

Yet, we see so little gambling. The film becomes nearly as interested in Mahowny’s illegal schemes, shockingly simple, sitting in his corner office and drawing up fake loans and forging signatures. He gets checked up on, kinda, but no one seems interested in digging too deep, not even the auditors. Eventually the FBI stumbles into the midst of his scheme, a development handled in a perfunctory manner, as if director Richard Kwietniowski barely yearned to deal with it.

The film is like “Shame” but without the shock value. Or the sex. Mahwony has a fiancé (Minnie Driver) but I think a case could be made that they have never slept together – or, if they have, neither one them enjoyed it, denied it, and have never discussed it again. The script never makes clear why she loves (and that’s the word she uses – “love”) this schlub in the first place, except that maybe she’s as desperate as him. And as desperate as the casino is to abscond with Mahowny’s money. A subplot involves the way in which the casino aims to keep big-spenders spending so that they always go in the red, which Mahowny always does because he just can’t help himself. Whatever thrill he may obtain from garnering winnings is internalized, if it exists at all. When he calls his bookie (Maury Chakin), he rattles off sports bets in an desperately automated tone, the who and what and where of no importance.

This is a grimy rabbit hole away from reality, a character study of addiction, and as such it was difficult to absorb in the wake of recent events. You wonder why Hoffman took this role. Because he knew it, inside and out? Because he wanted to purge something? That’s mindless psycho-babble. What is clear is the preciseness of Hoffman’s performance, a self-disgust radiating off him in waves, a hunched-over walk forever underscoring the way in which he doesn’t want anyone knowing his “personal business.” And what is his personal business? Any time anyone calls him a gambling addict, he corrects them. “I have a financial problem,” he explains. In other words, because he is financially bereft, he has to steal money in order to gamble that money to make money for himself. Except that’s not really what we wants to do.

The addict’s subconscious wants to lose it all, and hell be damn sure he will. The character on whom Dan Mahowny was based served his time and apparently straightened out his life. The film barely acknowledges this real-life happy ending, plunking it down in a closing credit. Perhaps because the film knows this happy ending is all too rare.

In Memoriam: Philip Seymour Hoffman

I was literally watching "Moneyball", on TV, over lunch, when the inconceivable news came down that Philip Seymour Hoffman had died at the age of 46. I had just finished the scene in which Hoffman as manager of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's - the real-life Art Howe - attempted negotiating his contract with the general manager (Brad Pitt) only to be rebuffed. As Hoffman walked away, he wriggled his left hand, as if suggesting an impending heart attack from the wear and tear of his pressure-packed profession. For that role he had willingly shaved his head, reveled in paunch and even took to wearing an abominable polo shirt that I imagine ably echoes the wardrobe of most Major League Baseball managers. For a stage-trained actor, for a man who won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Truman Capote, for a man who wholly embodied the late rock critic Lester Bangs, the role of Art Howe seemed so unlikely.

Last year at the Academy Awards, where Hoffman was nominated for his Supporting Part in Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master", the camera caught sight of him in the audience with his young son, Cooper. It was unspeakably touching. I adored the idea that he would take along his little boy for Hollywood's biggest night, fatherly love shining through. A few months later it was revealed that Hoffman had checked into detox for prescription pill and heroin addiction. It blindsided me. The man who squired his son to the Oscars was the same man who resorted to snorting heroin? It seemed so unlikely.

I had seen Philip Seymour Hoffman before "Boogie Nights", but the first indelible image I have of him in my mind is coming through the back gate at Jack Horner's pool party. It is nigh impossible to manage being ironic and endearing simultaneously to the sounds of "Sexy Thing" by Hot Chocolate, but he pulled the trick. He was so remarkable as Scotty J., and still such a virtual unknown, that it must have been easy to presume he was playing a part drafted in the zone of his own persona. Then years passed, roles and more roles were played, and this was proven wholly false.

He formed a regal actor/director partnership with Paul Thomas Anderson - that actually began with "Hard Eight" - and culminated last year as Lancaster Dodd, the maybe, maybe not title character of "The Master." It concluded with him singing acapella "(I'd Like To Get You on a) Slow Boat to China" to Joaquin Phoenix, a sequence as riveting as it was mysterious. In hindsight it feels like the perfect ethereal conclusion to their collaboration. Of course, that's just hindsight, and all of us would have preferred to see that collaboration continue. Life, however, as it so often does, had other plans to which we will never be privy.

His versatility was a trademark, as was his raw power which he only unleashed when role and scene required it. He could be comic, theatrical, restrained, electrifying, vulnerable. It is the vulnerability I think of today. "He can convey such vulnerability in some roles," once wrote the late great Roger Ebert, "that we're on his side without the script needing to persuade us." I think it's safe to say, from observing the outpouring of appreciation on my Twitter feed yesterday afternoon, that we were on all his side. Whether his death was a result of a drug overdose, as has been reported, or not, and what drove him to relapse, is not my business. That's between him and his loved ones, and I offer his loved ones my deepest condolences. We all have demons, we all have failings, but that does not make us failures nor demons.

In "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" Hoffman played Andy, one of two brothers who perpetrate an ill-fated jewel heist. Really, the film is less about the heist than what leads to the heist and the fall-out when the heist goes awry. Andy is portrayed as suffering from a myriad of problems, but one of these is a severely expensive drug habit. My intention is not to play psychologist, to state that he must have taken the part on account of his own travails, but how the character of Andy, sensing rightly or wrongly that he had no way out, went down the substance abuse rabbit hole. The sensation of life closing in on someone (anyone, any of us) is nearly inexpressible, but he expressed it, casually, quietly, and then violently.

Yet, other moments in Hoffman's canon suggest a resistance to this notion. Consider "Jack Goes Boating", the 2010 film which was the only one he directed. It was modestly received, admittedly imperfect, but one for which I retain much fondness. Perhaps because his paralyzing introversion was something to which I could relate. In front of the camera he played a big-hearted, if socially awkward (utterly inept?) lug, who fancied himself a rastafarian, wearing dreads, holding up The Melodians' "Rivers of Babylon" as a personal anthem and "Positive Vibes" as a personal mantra. He cooks dinner for his girlfriend (Amy Ryan) and invites his friends (John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega). But the night does not conform to the ideal he had created of it in his head. His precious dinner he worked so hard to concoct is overcooked. His friends decide to get drunk and get high and argue. Jack panics and withdraws to the bathroom. His friends refuse to let him wallow. They reach out to him. They force him to reach back.

Life is never ideal. It has its complications, its imperfections, it rears its ugly head, and we find different ways to cope. In "Jack Goes Boating" everyone is trying to cope, they succeed and they fail. But for one moment everyone sets that shit aside to minister to their loved one. I wish it how was the film ended. It's not how the film ends. Because it's not how things work. I wish it was how things worked.