LITTLE ODESSA. _____________________
Main title: directed and written by james gray. (1994) Drama. 100min. Perfomed by tim roth, edward furlong, moira kelly, vanessa redgrave and maximilian schell. Music by dana sano.
Story: The film takes place today, in New York. Joshua (tim roth), a professional killer, comes back to his native (and Russian) neighbourhood, Little Odessa, to kill a jeweller. His brother Reuben (eddy furlong) is told of his return and wants to spend some time with him. _____________________
LITTLE ODESSA has obviously a Tragical dimension. It contains the Oedipus complex, the presence of a Chorus (the film music in fact) and irony : the young Reuben can be aware of his destiny through the movie he sees at the beginning.
Little Odessa is also a movie dealing with cinema, with the themes of "identification" (Reuben almost admires Joshua, as a film hero...) and the "field of vision" (the way Joshua comes into or goes out the shot is extremely significant vis-à-vis his own situation in his family and society. Or better, remember the great analogy Gray did between the western Reuben sees in the prologue - the screen in this movie theater seems to have a hole in it because the film burns during the happy end - and the bullet which made a hole in the white sheet at the end and kills Reuben).
Little Odessa can be interpreted in many ways of course, that's all its interest. One can see in this film a biblical story (a jewish and patriarchal family, with the themes of the good and evil, brotherhood or "wandering"...); a search for identity (Joshua seems not to know who he is, that's probably the main reason of his "come back" to his native Little Odessa. Reuben is also in quest for himself; he really needs the image of someone to create his own personality); an observation of our inability to communicate with each other (lots of telephone scenes for example); or simply a kind of chase against death (the imminent death of the mother looks like a countdown; Joshua also prepares the assassination of a man and Josh is himself endangered by death because people want to kill him). ....etc.
However, if it is true that James Gray's main intention is obscure, his stylistic approach is very clear : no sen-ti-men-ta-li-ty. His camera is like a voyeur, seldom near the characters (very few close-ups) and it leads to the audience's inability to identify with the characters. Gray's mise-en-scène is motionless and seem to mummify, in a way, the actors who cannot really escape from it. (The characters are clearly like prisoners of their environment, their own acts or mouvements, let's say it, they are the prisoners of their innerself actually.) Another way to avoid that emotional identification is Gray's treatment of sound which often contradicts what is showed on the screen. For instance, the seemingly happy grandmother's anniversary was overshadowed by a sad and cold choir as if the characters were like ghosts.
The term "ghost" could be one of the keywords of Little Odessa, not only because all the characters seem to lack feelings, or existence (even the mother, who is showed like a living dead), but also because Gray uses an onirical style (with the use of the choir) which makes the whole film extremely cold and disturbing. However, this style is associated with a true-to-life style with notably, the use of the steady-cam (as if the film was a documentary). It gives the impression of realism but actually underlines that notion of ghost characters and creates a state of weightlessness.
Little Odessa is one of the most personal and powerful movies of this end of century. And there is certainly something significant in that word "end" since that this movie describes a director's vision of the apocalypse to a certain extent...
Alexandre Tylski. cci@insat.com
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