"New York City has always been an important character in my films" says Spike Lee, and his latest film, 25th Hour, starring Edward Norton and Barry Pepper, is no exception. Adept at tackling strong and often emotive social issues, Lee has courted controversy this time round with his attempt to portray the post 9/11 city.
Lee's credits depict the twin lasers that shone for a time above the skyscrapers and the glowing lights of New York as a memorial to those killed in the World Trade Centre. The sequence brings to mind the opening of Manhattan, by that very different chronicler of New York life, Woody Allen. But whilst Allen's opener - Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue,' fireworks over the skyline - is triumphant and celebratory, Lee's is sombre and defiant. Director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto (Amores Perros, Frida, 8 Mile) explores the blue beams from many angles, but just as they soar above the city in the final shot of the arrangement, they quietly dissolve into the night sky.
In the same vein, the powerful music of Lee's long-term collaborator Terence Blanchard, contains notes of sadness and resilience. Discussing the origins Blanchard's score, Lee explains that the death of so many firemen (many of Irish descent) on 9/11, made them think of using Irish/Celtic themes. Lee then thought, "well wait a minute, what about Bin Laden, Osama. so we chose the Arabic type of voice that you hear throughout the film." Both musical traditions were incorporated in the main theme, and surprisingly, this unlikely fusion is highly successful.
Visually and musically impressive, this sequence initially seems to bear little relation to the plot - David Benioff's novel, on which his own screenplay is based, was written well before 9/11. But as the film progresses we see the many ways, both subtle and brash, in which Lee and Benioff have worked elements of post 9/11 New York life into the film.
The story focuses on drug dealer Monty Brogan (Norton) as he prepares to begin a seven-year prison sentence. On his last day of freedom, he must say goodbye to the friends of his childhood - Slaughtery (Pepper) and Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) - and wrestle with the suspicion that his seemingly devoted girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) sold him out to the police. As the hours tick by, Monty and his friends struggle to apportion the blame for his downfall and to face up to their individual responsibilities. In particular, teacher Jacob must decide whether to let his relationship with flirtatious student Mary D'Annunzio (Anna Paquin) move into dangerous territory.
25th Hour is the first film to actively depict post 9/11 New York. Lee says "we never saw it as a race - who was going to be the first - but we Americans are very privileged, not only do we have the so-called higher standard of living, but we haven't really felt terrorism like the rest of the world has, what happened September 11 really traumatised Americans and New Yorkers and we still feel affected. We live in a much different world now where the threat of terrorism is an everyday occurrence - we wanted to reflect that."
The shadow of 9/11 is ever present - from the credits, to a shrine to a New York firehouse in Brogan Snr's bar, to footage of Osama Bin Laden. Norton downplays the political implications, saying "Of course there's a political context to those events, but there's also an emotional context that has nothing to do with politics. It's something that happened and its part of the fabric of living in that city now. If I had felt at any time that we were shifting the focus of the story from these human-beings and their individual moral crises and digressing into a political comment, I would have been very uncomfortable with that - not that you can't make a political comment on those events - I didn't think that was what this story was about."
Indeed the deep bitterness which resounds in America a year-and-a-half on, forms a backdrop, or a "new emotional reality"(Norton), through which Lee weaves Monty's and his friend's own stories of regret. Lee is interested in the expression of such powerful emotions and the consequences of attempts to suppress them. This tension is clearly manifested through Francis Slaughtery - a stockbroker whose indifferent attitude to the national tragedy of 9/11 parallels his dismissive stance on the fate of his friend. Barry Pepper roots his character's resistance to emotion in the high-pressure society in which he moves. "The world of a Wall Street hustler is definitely an emotionally guarded one because he constantly feels threatened." Norton expands on this. "People aren't always very literal in the way they express what they're feeling. Frank's cynicism about 9/11, like the intensity of his judgement of Monty is revealed to be an emotional defence against the enormous pain and fear he feels about what's happening to his friend. In the scene in the Blue Room - the minute Monty expresses his real fear - all of Frank's judgement just disappears. To me it's a very tender portrayal of someone who is masking their fear with this toughness, and I think that's certainly a quality of people in New York in the wake of these events."
Similarly Monty's emotions about going to prison become focussed into a fear of being raped by the other inmates. Faced with a harsh emotional reality that he can neither deal with nor articulate, he envisages a physical attacker and plans how he may evade him.
This "toughness" is also exemplified when Monty reads "Fuck You!" written on a mirror. In a surreal moment, he reads the graffiti aloud, and is confronted by his reflection, who replies: "Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers grubbing for money. Fuck the squeegee men; dirty enough to clean the windshield of my car." In a lengthy role-call, Monty's mirror image declaims New York's various immigrant groups, its priests, corrupt cops, Enron, Bush, al-Qaeda, and ultimately his friends. This outburst is Monty's attempt to shift the blame for his fate, and it is duplicated by the attempts of his friends to absolve him by accusing themselves and each other. Monty's father even muses on the unlucky provenance of his son's name (he is named after actor Montgomery Clift). However Monty turns on his reflection: "No. Fuck you Montgomery Brogan, you had it all and you threw it away." Norton feels that "the film examines the way in which people slide into moral grey zones," but that here Monty is coming to accept his culpability. Norton: "A lot of people, when they feel regret, don't say 'I'm an asshole' at first, they lash out at other people, they look for someone else to blame before they are able to accept they're own responsibility."
Asked about the inflammatory potential of Monty's "Fuck You!" tirade, Norton says, "fundamentally I don't think you can ever do anything interesting if you're worrying all the time about it being misconstrued. That said, I don't think that's happening. Other than journalists saying 'were you worried about it?' I haven't had a strong sense of anybody misinterpreting that sequence. It's an equal opportunities bit of insulting. People have walked up and said 'it lambastes the immigrants' and I've said: it lambastes a lot more than that." Lee feels the same. "We would have had a lot more problems if we'd left some people out, but by having everyone in it, you're home-free." Both agree that the sequence is actually a kind of love poem to the city - Monty's way of preparing to leave the place that, for better more than for worse, is his home. Lee has remarked that "New York City has always been an important character in my films" and here we gain an insight into a volatile love/hate relationship.
This is one of the sharpest episodes in the film and it demonstrates the director's passion for the topical and the provocative. Lee, however, feels that such free expression is being stifled. He says "If you want to say something unique with a different voice, then its becoming much harder." Scornful of recent industry trends and the production-line ethos, he says "This past year Hollywood made more money than ever before, so that means we're going to have more of the same - more formulaic, more prequels, more sequels - I'm going to leave the two Matrix films out of that cos I like those - comic books, television shows. It's the dumbing-down theory, the lowest common denominator; it's affecting the whole American culture. This Joe Millionaire thing - 40 million people watched it, Temptation Island, I'll blame you for American Idol, cos that came from over here, right? Some of these things, I just scratch my head and say 'what is happening?"
With 25th Hour Lee rejects Hollywood's all too well trodden path in favour of a reflective, if somewhat anti-climatic ending, which mocks formulaic expectations. As the film opens, Monty gives an abandoned dog another chance at life, but at the close we are left with the apprehension that Monty may not be so lucky himself. This isn't Maid in Manhattan (filmed in New York at the same time as 25th Hour), it's 'a Spike Lee joint' and as such there may well be no last minute reprieve, no happily ever after. In 25th Hour, nothing is certain except that life isn't that easy.
A great cast makes 25th Hour very watchable, but this isn't Lee at his best. Interestingly the director has returned to the same events-of-a-single-day device used to immense effect in his break-though film - Do The Right Thing (1989). Yet 25th Hour lacks the conviction which energised this early work, and despite the determined performance of Norton, Monty Brogan, unlike Mookie in Do The Right Thing, fails to provide the interest and the pivotal force necessary to draw the strands of the film together. This is unfortunate as Norton clearly feels strongly about his character and the film as a whole. In response to possible criticisms of his sympathetic portrayal of a drug dealer he says "Its not my instinct to judge a character I'm going to play, I try to judge the piece - 'does the story as a whole make a statement that I can get behind?'. If tragedy is going to function you have to be drawn into a human identification with the main character because it makes the impact of his fall meaningful and allows the message to be delivered." Norton believes the film presents "a very strong and unequivocal statement about the consequences of not examining the morality of what you're doing."
The level of Norton's commitment to this project is thrown in to stark relief when an inquiry is made about a future film role. Asked, 'hypothetically,' how he would feel if forced into taking a part, Norton remarks: "hypothetically speaking? I would resent it intensely. I would encourage anyone who is a fan of my work to skip the film." The 'hypothetical' film in question is Paramount Picture's upcoming remake of The Italian Job from F. Gary Gray. Norton's resentment is grounded in a long-running dispute with Paramount (who kick-started his career with Primal Fear (1995)). The studio threatened to sue Norton if he failed to meet a "contractual obligation" by appearing in a film of their choosing, despite having apparently rejected a number of Norton's suggestions for fulfilling his obligation (including an offer for Paramount to make 25th Hour). Norton appears grudgingly reconciled to appearing in The Italian Job, which will also feature Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. "Hypothetically. I would try to get through it as best I could without insulting my colleagues who weren't involved in the series of decisions that put me there." Norton is nonetheless upbeat about contemporary filmmaking: "I'm encouraged by a new wave of voices out there, the PT Andersons, the Finchers. My generation is arriving in a way that is very exciting."
Despite his earlier gripes about the industry's homogenising tendency, Lee shares Norton's enthusiasm. "My love of cinema is getting stronger every day, you've just got to keep fighting. I'm going to take the liberty and speak for Edward and Barry, we love what we're doing and we make a lot of money doing what we're doing.
"99% of people go to their grave having slaved in a job they hate all their life and we're very blessed cos we all love cinema and we're doing it - I say my blessings every night because it didn't have to be like this."
Elizabeth Griffin
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