SMOKE
A film review by Martin Rich
Copyright 1996 Martin Rich
In 1990 the novelist Paul Auster was stuck with a creative block. The piece which broke that block was a brief Christmas story, about the proprietor of a tobacco shop in Brooklyn. Now that story has spawned two films, 'Smoke', and its rather different follow-up 'Blue in the Face'. 'Smoke', though dated 1994 in the credits, opened in the UK in mid-April this year. Both films are credited to Auster and to the director Wayne Wang.
'Smoke' is built from a series of carefully thought out, intricately intertwined, stories. The stories document a series of coincidences, and some intertwined lives, based around the people who pass through that tobacco shop. Interestingly, the film is specifically set in 1990, the year when the Christmas story was published.
How autobiographical is it? How much does the film play tricks on our imagination, by showing a writer and his character in conversation? Where Harvey Keitel's tobacconist tells William Hurt's author a story, is it a metaphor for the writer's creative process? Does Paul Auster create his characters first, and then think about what might happen in their lives?
One, compelling, theme is the depth that can exist in everyday life. This is best illustrated by the series of photographs taken every morning: at first sight each street scene is the same, but a closer look reveals all sorts of differences from day to day. The same is true of the stories in the film - all of them repay more than a cursory glance. Harold Perrineau Jr's Rashid (at least he's called Rashid in the credits) personifies this uncertainty, changing his name, his personality, how he fills his days according to whose company he is in.
But the greatest achievement of 'Smoke' is that it manages to be a warm, upbeat film without straying into blandness. And its characters are optimistic and likeable without being part of any fictional, idealised, happy family; in fact there is deception and dishonesty galore. It's well worth seeing.
One word of warning: don't leave the second that the first credits appear, because a significant part of the story is told over the first few credits.
-- Martin Rich M.G.Rich@city.ac.uk http://www.city.ac.uk/~sf309/home.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews