Wed, July 9, 2003
Glengarry Glen Ross
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I've been a fan of David Mamet for a while. In high school I read his book On Directing Film and found its insights unique and valuable. I've appreciated his appearances on Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist and I think his screenwriting style is fascinatingly textured. I enjoy his hyper-real dialogue and twisting plots. His Ronin is one of the few Robert De Niro pictures I like. (Along with Marty Brest's Midnight Run, which is just another reason I'll be going to Gigli opening weekend.)
I've heard many good things about Glengarry Glen Ross. A friend worked on a production of the play and constantly raves about it. Students on Inside the Actors Studio bother Kevin Spacey about it incessantly. It features a powerhouse cast. Recently, the film was (finally!) released on DVD, so I had a chance to see what all the fuss is about.
Glengarry Glen Ross is strongly written and features vivid, interesting characters. However, it feels more like a play than any adaptation I've ever seen. The lines are read with such precision that they stray even farther from normal speech than Mamet's usual tone. Foley's directing style has always been flashy, but I think the material would have been better served by the approach he used in Confidence than the overt colors and stark lighting that defines Glengarry Glen Ross. In the scenes like Jack Lemmon's visit to a potential investor's home, the camerawork and editing are masterful, but in the scenes in the real estate office and particularly the restaurant, the lighting calls too much attention to itself and the staging seems too laboriously planned. Coupled with the fact that many lines sound more like audition readings than conversations, this makes the film a little inaccessible.
But I liked the film. I particularly enjoyed the MacGuffin aspect: the film is all about selling real estate so you would think that it would be necessary to understand something about sales or real estate, but not at all. Those things are just there to provide a motivating force for the character study that unfolds in front of them. I like that a lot. Also the cast is, as mentioned, exquisite. It's a small group but that doesn't make the film feel limited. It's a truly gifted ensemble and they're spellbinding to watch. Pacino in particular – I usually find him a bit "over the top," but in this film histrionics are de rigueur and he makes an elegant but understated contribution. (I haven't done the math, but watching the film you get the feeling that his screen time is less than that of Lemmon, Arkin, and Harris. Still, his character is key and the moments that he appears on screen are infused with a certain dominating spirit which shapes and focuses the other performances.) Watching the actors work is rewarding, but it's interesting that I couldn't help noticing that Mamet did more with a less accomplished cast when he directed his own script House of Games.
The 2-disc DVD set is packed with special features although few of them are especially valuable. Generally, the focus appears to be on sales, with a ten-minute documentary from the 1950s about a furniture salesman and a longer series of interviews with salesmen and filmmakers about how Glengarry Glen Ross is influenced by the salesman lifestyle. As I said, I think sales has very little to do with the film, so these seem out of place.
The other features include cast profiles which have always seemed silly (more informative and current information is always available at IMDb anyway), but the remaining handful of features actually meant something to me. First is commentary. I didn't listen to the full feature commentary, but brief "bonus commentaries" are included from a handful of collaborators. I listened to Alan Arkin's and Alec Baldwin's and they were informative. Baldwin in particular is not someone that I feel we generally take seriously as an actor in the sense of "the craft," but he does teach an acting class in New York now so I guess he knows something. Listening to him talk about his process and his experience on the film was quite awakening.
Finally, the features include a short tribute to Jack Lemmon which consists of interviews with an odd but welcome selection of people. Director James Foley is there, but I don't remember anyone else from the film being featured. Lemmon's son Chris is sort of the main attraction, with a few other guys thrown in. Peter Gallagher is there (he worked with Lemmon in Short Cuts) and really gives Kevin Spacey and Peter Bogdanovich a run for their money in the impressions department. He does a beautiful Jack and a funny Walter Matthau as well. The tribute isn't all that great but I always like hearing stories about the big actors in the old days. Also, it provides a glimpse at James Foley, whom I'd never seen before. He's an odd guy. He talks very quickly and he looks like Henry Thomas and Jeremy Davies had a sixty-year-old baby.
