Week 13: appreciation/depreciation; the review/2

Smoke, the movie, 1995

I am not a smoker but I can imagine this scene, the act of smoking, the smoke swirling into the air, thin grayish fingers, completely weightless until it is gone and all that is left is a small mound of ashes in the ash tray and a hint of smell in the air to remind us of what was.

This is how I feel every time I watch this movie. I go through a whole slew of contracting emotions; from slight boredom at the movie slow progression to a growing  interest  in this group of people revolving around a Brooklyn cigar shop,  and the various complications of their life ending with deep satisfaction during the last scene; Auggie’s Christmas story. And then it is over and aside from that lingering sense of “feeling good”, there is nothing left.  

Trying to capture this elusive movie on paper is difficult.  If it wouldn’t sound corny I would say that it’s like trying to hold smoke in one’s clenched fist.

Let’s start with what it is not. Don't look for special effects, explosions, car chases or gun fights here; this is a movie with an emphasis on dialogue, ambiance, and characterization. The film has been perceived by many as too literate for its own good and it may seem, at times, needlessly stylistic.

And did I mention, slow? The minimalist conceits of Adam Holender's camerawork and the mood invoked by director Wayne Wang's leisurely pacing of scenes might seem to those who disagree with the film's meandering style as lazy, but the film surely is not.

Author Paul Auster and director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) worked on the story for years before it reached the screen. Paul Auster based the script for Smoke on a 1990 short story he wrote for "The New York Times." He also wrote and directed the film's sequel (of sorts), Blue in the Face (1995).

A Brooklyn cigar shop is the setting for this drama, director Wayne Wang interweaves the stories of several characters that have fractured family relationships in common. Harvey Keitel is Auggie Wren, poetic owner of the Brooklyn Cigar Company, a store that he considers the center of the world -- a place where all of humanity eventually parades through. Other characters include Paul (William Hurt) a grief-stricken novelist; Ruby (Stockard Channing), Auggie's long-ago girlfriend; and Rashid (Harold Perrineau Jr.), a teenager who is befriended by Paul after saving his life and seeks his estranged father (Forest Whitaker).

 “What is the weight of smoke?” asks novelists Paul Benjamin in the beginning of the film.

 Not much but so much. Like the pictures that Augie takes of the same spot in his corner street. He shoots them every morning at the exact same time and while they appear to be the same, a closer look and taking the time to examine them closely, reveals how different they really are.  What is the weight of one Corner Street in New York and the life of few people who might not be very important at all, but yet they are.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, including the "J" train as it slowly creeps up the track towards the Williamsburg Bridge, and the old Williamsburg Bank in the foreground is the opening shot. A beautiful shot of that part of Brooklyn; close enough to hear the train but far enough to keep the other city noises in the background, it is also a good start and a fitting introduction to the smoke store and Auggie.

Auggie Wren is an enigma; at first sight one sees a rugged man worn out by the day-to-day routine. Those who know him better, like widower novelist Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), find a keen philosophical spark behind the skewed demeanor of a cigar shop proprietor.

The scene where Keitel and Hurt are sitting inside the cigar shop looking at Keitel's photo album and the latter identifies his murdered wife in one of them, is one of the most moving and provocative scenes and so is the entire last fifteen minute segment, essaying "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story", a distinctive piece that originally appeared in the New York Times in Christmas 1990. The film's closing dialogue perhaps sums the whole idea in the best possible way. 

 “Wren: If you can't share your secrets with your friends then what kind of friend are you? Benjamin: Exactly...then life just wouldn't be worth living.”

This is also the most unexpected moment in Smoke, Auggie's Christmas story. It’s sad, touching and funny all at the same time. It’s filmed once in color and again in black and white, while the closing titles are projected on the screen. In the story, a younger Auggie is returning a lost wallet to an elderly lady living in the New York’s Projects. The wallet was dropped by her grandson in a robbery attempt of Auggies’ smoke store. It’s Christmas day and these two lonely people; Auggie and the elderly lady share an unexpected Christmas meal at the end of which she falls asleep and he sneaks out of her apartment with a stolen camera, he picked from a pile of many others, stolen ones, he found in the apartment. And so this story takes us a full circle to the beginning of the movie and we get to have a slightly different view of Auggies’ love of photography.

Paul Auster is a brilliant writer, the acting is superb, and the script is excellent. Smoke is a funny, sometimes poignant, slice-of-life film with a whole lot of heart. The story is like a colorful quilt, patches of individual stories touching and separating and the end result is like a warm enveloping blanket one can be submerged in.  

So what is the weight of smoke?  We actually get the answer based on an old story. If you smoke the cigar and then weight the residue and subtract from the weight of the unsmoked cigar what is left is the weight of smoke. And in the case of this movie, good storytelling, and that “feel good” lingering feeling we are left with, that is the weight of smoke.