When I was 17, I went to see Heat, knowing only that it was a crime thriller with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer, directed by Michael Mann, whose previous film, The Last of the Mohicans, I had enjoyed. The three hours of watching Heat changed my life, though I didn’t know it at the time, because I went on to write a PhD on the films of Michael Mann which was subsequently published as a book. What I did know at the time was that I had experienced something special, as I came out of that cinema feeling as though a wave of energy had passed through me. It was a revelatory experience in terms of realising what film can do, say so much, express so much and allow me to feel something entirely new about the medium.
Heat is my favourite film for a number of reasons. Firstly, every element of the film is perfectly attuned to every other element – plot, character, performance, theme, setting, production design, editing, cinematography, sound, music, direction, location – all are harmonised with utter perfection. Secondly, despite having seen it multiple times, every viewing brings me great pleasure in the revisiting of familiar elements, and I also keep finding new details such as a lingering shot in a room left empty, a bottle on a table, even identifying a stunt performer. Thirdly, it works on multiple levels: a crystalline piece of cinematic craftwork; a gripping crime story; a sociological examination of post-industrial America; a modern urban tragedy; a philosophical investigation into hyperbolic masculinity. The film rewards all these readings and more. If that’s not reason enough to love a film, I don’t know what is.
Titanic is a film that I saw a couple of times in early 1998, and many times since then. I have also been defending it ever since then from those who treat it as some sort of abomination. My love for Titanic is not based on being contrary, although it is multi-fold. I find the film superb in its production design that creates palpable and tactile environments that merge beautifully with the visual effects to shift between past and present, manifesting the act of telling history. Titanic is not a true story, rather, it is a tale of telling and a drama of recording. The constant visual emphasis on image recording including film, portraits and photographs as well as memory, the array of images presented and re-presented – all contribute to a remarkable meta-cinematic investigation into the creation of narratives. Furthermore, on a straightforward emotional level, Titanic never fails to move and enchant me. I’m a hopeless romantic and despite knowing how it ends, the emotional voyage (pun intended) of the film always transports me. It also demonstrates James Cameron’s extraordinary skill for sustained set pieces, since virtually half the film is a prolonged action sequence. I feel myself right there on the ship, alongside Jack, Rose and the other passengers, my heart in my mouth until the finale rips it out. One criticism that I understand, although I do not share it, is that the characters offer little to engage with. This is key to my enjoyment of the film, and indeed film more widely, because the less character there is the easier it is for me to project myself into the film. The most powerful cinematic experiences for me are not where I follow a character’s journey but go on a journey myself. Titanic has been taking me on a powerful emotional journey for more than twenty years, and I’m always happy to let it break my heart on that iceberg all over again.
2001: A Space Odyssey is the finest example of cinematic art that I have ever seen. The plot would fit on the back of a postage stamp – birth of humanity to dawn of new species – but the attention to detail in the mise-en-scene and the extraordinary combination of cinematography and editing make it a genuinely transportive experience for me. Furthermore, one of the major criticisms that the film receives is for me a great strength. Arguably, the most sympathetic character in the film is a computer, the HAL 9000. I don’t particularly engage with HAL any more than I do with the humans, and therefore I am not distracted from the experience of the journey, the Odyssey, itself. As I mentioned in relation to Titanic, lack of character and characterisation is not a problem for me, as through Stanley Kubrick’s exquisite direction, I feel myself part of the revelation when Moon Watcher starts to use bones as weapons, myself on the journey to and across the Moon, I spin through space away from the Discovery, and most memorably, I travel through the stargate and beyond the infinite. This sequence is the film’s pinnacle, where sound, colour, emotion and reason and the divisions between them merge into pure sensation, in possibly the most profound and compelling sequence I have ever encountered in cinema, an incredible and transportive experience to strange new places.
By default, this is my top horror film, which sparks the debate as to whether The Silence of the Lambs is a horror or a thriller. Narratively, it has the structure of a detective thriller, our heroine Clarice Starling investigating one serial killer with some advice from another one. In terms of mood and atmosphere, it works as a horror film through its production design, music and perhaps most of all through its cinematography and editing. Although there are some monstrous scenes such as Dr Hannibal Lecter’s escape from custody and the climactic basement sequence, I struggle to think of any filmed conversation as terrifying as those between Starling and Dr Lecter. Yet director Jonathan Demme never overplays his hand, shooting with a sparseness that makes the psychic wounds all the more cutting and open. A palpable sense of menace hangs over the entire film, but despite the potential for melodrama (as demonstrated by the film’s sequel and prequel), the film is a masterclass in restraint and suggestion, which is so much more horrifying than outright gore. The Silence of the Lambs can be described as a detective thriller, but for me works first and foremost as a psychological horror, and one of the most significant that I have seen.
Blade Runner is a film that has grown on me significantly over the years. I first saw it when I was too young to appreciate it, perhaps because it was too grim a vision of the future that I did not want to engage with. Blade Runner offers a dystopic nightmare of a world in which hope, equality and life have been largely devalued. At the same time, I have come to appreciate it as a hypnotic and mesmerising vision with a haunting, otherworldly beauty. That the presentation of something so bleak could be so beautiful is testament to Ridley Scott’s superb direction, Jordan Cronenweth’s gorgeous cinematography and Lawrence G. Paull’s exquisite production design, as well as Vangelis’ melancholic score. Blade Runner’s Los Angeles is the gloomy city of film noir turned up to 11, with enough rain for a monsoon and enough filtered, neon light to accentuate the expressive mise-en-scene of sets, costume and performers. And these performers express characters that raise questions over what it means to be human, to be a person, to be a slave, the role of memory and identity, all within the framework of an investigation narrative where the truth is far more slippery than any execution, or ‘retirement’, might be. The combined effect of these cinematic features is to transport the viewer to this city of the damned, in what may be the most detailed and (chillingly) plausible dystopic landscape ever committed to film. Many sci-fi films predict the future. Blade Runner, to its great credit, seems to get parts of it right.