Summer of Sam
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Buena Vista International on 14 January, 2000; certificate
18; 136 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Spike Lee; produced by Jon
Kilik, Spike Lee. Written by Victor Colicchio, Michael
Imperioli, Spike Lee. Photographed by Ellen Kuras; edited
by Barry Alexander Brown.
CAST.....
John Leguizamo..... Vinny
Adrien Brody..... Ritchie
Mira Sorvino..... Dionna
Jennifer Esposito..... Ruby
Michael Rispoli..... Joey T
Saverio Guerra..... Woodstock
Brian Tarantino..... Bobby Del Fiore
Ben Gazzara..... Luigi
It's exciting to own a camera; you can look through
your viewfinder and comfortably mould life into perfect little rectangular
artworks. Click on a button, and you've preserved a moment of reality. Cine
cameras are even better; you've got the means to capture more situations
in more depth, and hey, you're making movies!
The filmmaker Spike Lee got his first cine camera
in the Summer of 1977, and the imagination of the gifted young New Yorker
must have been running wild. He must have done a lot of dreaming at that
time, a lot of playing with his camera, and a lot of important thinking.
I'll bet he remembers it well.
Lee's new film "Summer of Sam" is
about that summer in his city, and takes a lot of time to illustrate the
atmosphere. This was the strange, short time when disco and punk music were
concurrently successful. When the Yankees had Reggie Jackson, and were winning
the World Series. And when a serial killer dubbed 'Son of Sam' was terrorising
the Bronx.
'Sam', eventually identified as a crazy mailman
named David Berkowitz, stalked brunette women, or however they were with,
and blew their heads off with a .44-caliber pistol. He sent creepy letters
about his motives to the police, and to newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin;
his case made front-page news every day; and he was as hot a topic of
conversation as the sun, music or baseball.
Among those discussing 'Sam' are Lee's main
characters, a bunch of Italian-American guys who hang out on a street corner
all day, letting boredom and poverty lead them into talking a lot of crap.
Vinny (John Leguizamo) is a chain-smoking, disco-dancing hairdresser who
can't help but cheat on his wife Dionna (Mira Sorvino). His best friend Ritchie
(Adrien Brody) is losing popularity in the neighbourhood, because of his
punk hairstyle and his romance with Ruby (Jennifer Esposito), the local slut.
Joey T (Michael Rispoli), a drug dealer, and his goon Bobby (Brian Tarantino),
slouch back and watch everything through arrogant eyes, convinced that they're
better than all the scum out there, and that they'd kick the crap out of
anyone who wants to try them.
Lee plunges into this community and lingers around
to see if any themes emerge. "Summer of Sam" is partly recollection, and
partly a daydream about how elements of summer '77 could have driven people
crazy. We get chilling glimpses into the apartment of Berkowitz himself,
witness the tension and ignorance of our guys lead to the feeling that someone
in their neighbourhood must be 'Son of Sam', and watch the lynch mob
find its justifications for singling out an innocent culprit because he is
different from the crowd.
"Summer of Sam" displays much fast cutting, grainy
nostalgic footage and fancy tricks with lighting and loud music; like most
of Lee's work, it's a visually and aurally engulfing film. As emotions get
tenser, the temperature gets hotter, Sam takes more victims and people take
too many ludes, Lee ups the film's pace, volume and reliance on close-ups,
leading us into some frightening scenes of vigilante
scapegoating.
The film is so involving because it seems to be
a dance around Lee's memory and imagination. Yes, it falls far short of greatness
because it's not really about all the themes that it brings up. But Lee has
already made one strongly plotted examination of the way a community can
be pushed over the edge in summertime, with his 1989 masterpiece "Do the
Right Thing". Here he's trying something new.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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