letting go
by Douglas Messerli
Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann, and Ann
Biderman (screenplay, based on a book by Bryan Burrough), Michael Mann
(director) Public Enemies / 2009
Even his beautiful girlfriend, Billie Frechette (played by French actor
Marion Cotillard), is described as a "blackbird," since she is, she
declares, part American Indian (a ridiculous proposition given Cotillard's
appearance). Like the heists he hauls from bank vaults, Dillinger steals her
love simply by declaring she's the girl for him; she has, evidently, little
choice in the matter, and winds up in prison for a two-year term for lying to
the police about Dillinger's whereabouts.
All those who surround Dillinger are doomed, in part because of the
ridiculous obsession of the then young Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover
(somewhat tongue-in-cheekly played here by Billy Crudup). Through his stand-in,
Chicago agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), Hoover is determined to put the
Bureau on the map, resulting in greater respect and Congressional funding,
which means, in his own terms, that it is "time to take the gloves
off." It is almost as if Dillinger and his crime sprees were perfectly
timed with the changes in the FBI to make it a national institution.
Just as Dillinger, who brutally kills while seeming, in the public
consciousness, as a kind of Robin Hood—in part for stealing what he calls
"bank money" as opposed to the money of everyday investors—so the FBI
(and by extension, Hoover) demands both blind obedience and love. One of
Dillinger, it is clear, is a man on the "go," a man who wants
"Everything. Right Now." But like so many American would-be
adventurers, unfortunately he does not truly know what he wants and has nowhere
to go. He can hardly imagine the life he promises in Buenos Aires or Caracas.
Indeed, as Depp plays him, Dillinger is a man with few deep thoughts, and is
forced by the very speed of his living to deliver any ideas up in one-line
quips. In a conversation with Purvis in which Dillinger describes the horrible
vision of a dying man, suggesting that the memory will keep Purvis awake nights,
Purvis asks: "What keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?" to which
Dillinger replies "Coffee."
In another instance, when Billie complains that she knows nothing about
him, Dillinger answers: "I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast
cars... and you. What else you need to know?"
Accordingly, while the movie is spell-bindingly watchable in its dark
moments, from the interiors of the banks, hotel halls, and the inky shootout at
the Little Bohemia Lodge in Northern Wisconsin—where it is almost impossible to
tell the difference between Dillinger's gang members and the FBI agents—to
Dillinger's final moments in a movie theater, Mann's fable falls apart every
time it attempts to establish any aspect of character or explore its simple
ideas in any depth. In fact, one might almost argue that although Public Enemies is often lovely and
exciting to watch (Depp plays Dillinger, at times, with a balletic beauty),
there is little story, and even less substance, to ponder. In short, one might
describe Public Enemies as a film
without a script. And, in that sense, it might as well have been a silent film
instead of one with three listed writers! Like Dillinger, Mann is so determined
to get there fast that when, at the
end, one of the agents visits Billie in her prison cell determined to tell her
that Dillinger's last words were "Bye, Bye Blackbird," the myth (in
fact, Dillinger, like the victims he describes in the film simply slipped away
without saying anything) falls apart, and we find no meaning in the act,
particularly because he has reported to Purvis that he couldn't hear what
Dillinger said. Is that last sentimental gesture meant to show there is a heart
beating in this empty kettle?
At several times in Public Enemies
John Dillinger is told that he has to learn how "to let go," to let
go of his girlfriend, his actions, and, at some point, his very life. Mann has
grabbed on to the Dillinger fable as if it were a broncing bull and rides it
for its two hours and twenty-three minutes as if that achievement might create
something of great signification; but in the end, all we have witnessed is a
mighty blur of leg and hide. If only for an instant he had let go and fallen
off we might have witnessed a bruised human being upon the screen.
Los Angeles, July 7, 2009
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2009)
Reprinted from Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer,
2012).
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