Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
No
Black Belt
(Redbelt, 5/19/08)
By Nicholas Nicastro
When
it comes to filmmaking, many are called but few are chosen.
Thanks to plays like American
Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's place in the
pantheon of American theater is assured. As solid as his legacy is on
the stage, though, the films he has directed in recent years (e.g.,
The Winslow Boy, State and Main, Heist) have achieved nothing better
than squishy mediocrity. Why does he do it? Clearly, he loves the medium
of film, even if film doesn't exactly love him.
So now we have Redbelt, a
movie reportedly inspired by Mamet's personal fascination with martial
arts. Specifically, he's into jujitsu, a Japanese-derived discipline
where a wrestler prevails by exploiting the strength of his opponent.
More inventive critics than I can no doubt rationalize Mamet's signature,
"rat-ta-tat" style of dialog as a form of verbal jujitsu (though
it seems more like karate to me). Fortunate for Mamet that he gets to
exhibit his enthusiasms at multiplexes everywhere. It is, alas, not
so fortunate for us.
Mamet's hero is Mike Terry (Chiwetel
Ejiofor), a jujitsu instructor who practices his craft with such idealistic
purity that he refuses to sully it in actual competition. His business
manager/wife (Alice Braga) is losing patience because his dojo loses
money. When a firearm accident blows out Mike's storefront window, the
consequences drive him to find a way to make his rent, even if it means
turning to the shady world of professional martial arts fighting.
More need not be said about the
plot, which is perhaps too full of the usual Mamet deception and double-dealing
for its own good. What Mamet wanted to make here is an old-fashioned
fight picture with a sophisticated, world-weary edge—or as some
have put it, a "thinking man's Rocky". As it turns
out, though, the original Rocky is a lot more sophisticated—and
reflects a lot more thought—than Redbelt. Indeed, unlike Mamet,
Sly Stallone circa 1976 resisted the temptation to resort to the kind
of preposterous, fairy-tale ending that sends the audience home grumbling,
not cheering.
What makes Redbelt watchable
is Chiwetel Ejiofor. Through a rising arc of performances from Love,
Actually through Serenity to Children of Men, the
Nigerian-born Briton has been revealing the skill and appeal to anchor
a movie all by himself. When Ejiofor's character is holding forth on
the integrity of his discipline, or cajoling his students to try harder,
we can glimpse the root of Mamet's attraction to this world.
But movies need more than evocative
dialog. A film about fighting, after all, should contrive to give us
a main event worth the buildup. Talented as he is, Mamet brings nothing
remarkable—little ability to visualize scenes cinematically—to
the way he shoots his fight scenes. Instead, they seem more like incidental
happenings on the way to the next Mamet declamation.
No disrespect intended, of course.
Only a few writers, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marguerite Duras,
have had much success in the very different, very collaborative art
of filmmaking. Norman Mailer, who was a much formidable writer than
Mamet, never had much success behind the camera. But at least it took
Mailer only three or four tries to accept he had no special talent at
it.
©2008 Nicholas Nicastro
back to Culture Blog