Capturing a city as it is is a priceless tool as a filmmaker. Cities have as much personality as any character in a film and if used right can become the whole focal point of the film. The “as it is” part is what some filmmakers don’t get quite right. It easy to romanticize a place that so many people feel romantically about. It’s also easy to come down too hard on the other side and exploit a grimy underbelly of a place known so well for its dirtier aspects. No city in the U.S. of A has been more exploited and romanticized than New York City. Directors like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese paint the city with colorful characters and apply a texture of it being lived in and real. Sure there’s exaggeration and embellishment but the movies are fictions, not documentaries. The only other person better at doing this is probably Abel Ferrara, who made crime and drama pictures that existed only slightly askew from reality but the city itself looked and felt like exactly what it was.
Josh and Ben Safdie come the closest to doing what Ferrara did in the 80’s and 90’s. The young duo are making films in largely gentrified New York but are digging into the nooks and crannies and pulling real people and places that aren’t highlighted very often anymore, doing so with a deft hand so as to not tip the scales into misuse. Their last film Heaven Knows What was a neo-realist synth heavy drama about heroin addicts in New York, starring and based off of the memoir of Arielle Holmes. The movie was so striking because of the way it used locations in these gentrified neighborhoods. Junkies and homeless people don’t sit in gutters. They hang out in public libraries and Dunkin’ Donuts, get high in McDonald’s bathrooms in Manhattan, and panhandle in front of Barnes and Noble. The reality of the world is striking.
With Good Time the Safdie brothers look like they’re continuing this approach to coloring the city but throwing neon colors on top of it, cranking up the pace, and enlisting the help of Robert Pattinson (who has been picking and nailing interesting roles ever since the franchise that made him famous ended in 2012). Good Time looks like something to keep an eye out for on the horizon.
Good Time opens in theaters August 11th, 2017.
Abel Ferrara’s New York City-centric revenge drama Ms. 45 screened at the IU Cinema in 2011 on 35mm.
Woody Allen’s New York fairy tale The Purple Rose of Cairo also screened at the Cinema in 2014 as part of the City Lights Film Series.
New York City-based director Martin Scorsese was recently featured for IU Cinema’s series Scorsese’s Men of Faith.
David Carter is a film lover and a menace. He plays jazz from time to time but asks you not to hold that against him. His taste in movies bounces from Speed Racer to The Holy Mountain and everything in between.