"Zen Pulp"

Do I ever love the video essays of Matt Zoller Seitz, which can be found over at Moving Image Source. In fact, I shared another video essay of his last June on The Follow Shot.

Here, Seitz gives us a sensational five-part series that he titled “Zen Pulp” on the TV shows and films of Michael Mann.

Be sure to click the lower right-hand button in the video player, because this really should be viewed full screen, particularly during Part Four where he gives a shot-by-shot analysis of Manhunter.

I loved it!

-MM

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PART ONE

In this first vid embedded below on Miami Vice, Matt says, “The city presented on the show was ultimately no more “real” than the title locale of Casablanca, a film that Vice, in its glamorously grubby way, often resembled—a global way station, a port city where people came to make a fortune and remake their identities and where international political forces—the CIA, the FBI, the Medellin Cartel, the IRA, the Yakuza—wrought havoc with individual lives. The weekly body count made real-world, mid-’80s Beirut or El Salvador seem like Club Med. Crockett, Tubbs, and their fellow officers rarely went a week without shooting several people and having several more killed on their watch—often innocents too naive or stupid to realize their dreams were unattainable. The show's depiction of violence is Exhibit A in the case for Mann as an irreconcilable mix of reporter and huckster. Depicting the impact and aftermath of violence, Vice was at once empathetic and glib. The bloodshed was grotesque and lovely. It meant everything and nothing. And by next week, it was usually forgotten.”



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PART TWO

“Michael Mann's heroes are thieves and killers, G-men and cops. They exist both inside and outside the system. Some like working in concentrated groups; others are lone wolves. But they all have certain traits in common. They are radical, sometimes fanatical individualists. They have a code of honor and stick to it. They value loyalty. respect, and professionalism and despise incompetence, equivocation, and ass-kissing. Above all else, they prize their freedom—freedom to live in the present moment, pursue their happiness without interference, and define themselves on their own terms. But their pursuit of their biggest dreams and highest ideals invariably puts them at odds with larger forces: representatives of institutions, governments, organizations, and cartels, big guys that reflexively seek to subvert, control, or profit from the little guy, and that destroy all who resist.”



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PART THREE

Matt has a quote so good, I wish he’d said it sooner so I could’ve used it in my sex article: “There is no such thing as casual sex in a Michael Mann film, because for his characters, sex is a respite from everything else. The lovers' bed is a sanctuary from the oppressiveness of life, the only place where they can experience true bliss. Mann is one of the most modernist of Hollywood directors, but when the action shifts to the bedroom, he becomes a religious filmmaker.”



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PART FOUR

This is probably the best in the series. Matt focuses his attention on Manhunter and gives lessons on the Shot-Reverse Shot technique as well as scene-by-scene analysis of the finale.

He says, “The film is itself a mirrored narrative, dividing its attention between Graham and Dollarhyde and then, in its final third, letting Graham recede so Dollarhyde can take center stage. It's no coincidence that we finally get a good look at the killer after Graham has accessed the buried part of himself that understands Dollarhyde; nor is it accidental that whenever Graham has a eureka moment that reveals Dollarhyde's essence, we hear rage welling up in his voice. Dollarhyde represents the hideous aspect of Graham that the agent must channel, confront, and defeat in order to defend the domestic paradise that Dollarhyde threatens, and from which he must ultimately separate in order to live in peace with his family.”



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PART FIVE

Crime Story, yeah baby! I used to love that show. Seitz tells us that “despite the peculiar specialness of Crime Story, it bears the dramatic hallmarks of a Mann production, starting with its two-sides-of-a-coin approach to its hero and villain. On first glance, Torello and Luca seem as different in their ways as Detective Vincent Hanna and thief Neil McCauley in Heat: strong antagonists marked by their respectively hot-blooded and ice-cold approach to their lives and jobs. But like Hanna and McCauley, Torello and Luca have similar weaknesses, including hair-trigger tempers. And both men are so obsessed with their jobs that they foul their nests, destroying the relationships that are theoretically most important to them.”