“All I am is what I’m going after.”
David Liu | 26 May 2012
Vincent Hanna is on to something. I recently viewed Heat for the fourth time after a friend suggested a late night movie to start the weekend, and for the fourth time came away admiring its visual compositions, its gritty yet figurative dialogue, its inherent affinity to literature and art.
Not unlike Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Michael Mann’s best films are brooding contemporary narratives defined by solitude, moral ambiguity and obsessive pursuit of elusive trophies. What continues to strike me about Heat — and similarly wired films like Ford’s The Searchers and Fincher’s Zodiac — is how Mann’s tireless devotion to method and mood results in a worthy analogue to great literature. Is there another American action picture that leaves its audience so wondrously full on a final sequence so tragically empty?
Art & Film: Michelangelo/Mann
David Liu | 26 May 2012
From the canvas (in this case, marble block) to the cinema.
Pietà (Michelangelo, 1498-99; marble)
Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
Near the beginning of the film, Neil McCauley walks past a replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Near the end, world-weary Vincent Hanna fights to keep his suicidal step-daughter alive.
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