The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Verbal Kint
I have this habit – not sure if it’s a bug or a feature – of getting easily distracted during movies. And I don’t mean the-neighbour-is-talking-on-the-phone kind of distraction. I get side tracked by seemingly inconsequential things in the movie itself. So right in the beginning, if I see the Paramount or Universal logo, I may start thinking about the studio culture. So many connections everywhere. I am one of the few people who judiciously reads all the titles before and after the movie.
Then the titles stop and we are watching the first few frames. I am drawn to how the movie feels. It is difficult to put in words what this exactly means. I think it has to do with colours, lights and camera movements. Sometimes just by looking at few frames, you can tell when the movie was made. That’s why I always marvel at how fresh All The Preseident’s Men looks even after 40 years. The animation in early Star Wars movies does not have the pre-CGI feel, which makes it remarkable. I was hypnotized by the colour combinations in Kurosawa’s Ran. The dark frames of Jason Bourne series with greenish/bluish tinge are my favorites. I love the way Gordon Willis playes with light and shadows. Francis Ford Copolla’s The Rainmaker looks so ordinary minus Willis. How would Willis have shot it?
When the movie ends, I wait to see the details of the soundtracks. Sometimes, I have heard the track before and hearing it again with the compelling visuals establishes it firmly in my mind. For instance, in The King’s Speech, near the end when King George VI makes the wartime speech, the background score is Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 in A Major, Op 92 : Allegretto. The combination of the climactic scene combined with Beethoven’s score was a moving experience for me. At other times, I don’t know the music. I discovered many great gangster rap tracks while watching Straight Outta Compton.
This does not mean that I don’t pay much attention to the script. As it happens, all my favorite movies have excellent scripts.
What about a movie which has excellent script but average visuals?
Ergo, The Usual Suspects. Actually, I am being hard on the movie when I say it has average visuals. They are better than average. It would be hard to guess the year of the movie from the visuals. What I mean by average is no frame or shot strikes you as something special. Ditto with acting. With the exception of Kevin Spacey, all other actors are relatively unknown. They are good at their craft. What’s most appealing about this movie is the plot itself.
A truck loaded with guns goes missing in New York. Cops roundup five suspects who are known criminals. When they are released, they get together to plan another robbery. One of these five men is Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), a cripple. He is nicknamed Verbal because he talks too much. Few twists and turns later, Verbal is in custody narrating what happened after they were released. Interrogating him is spacial agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri).
Kujan has been working in customs and is intrigued by one name that keeps popping up in different situations – Keyser Söze. No one has seen Keyser Söze, there are no available pictures of him. People have worked for someone who worked for someone who worked for Söze. Is he real or is he an urban legend? No one knows but everyone in the underworld is terrified of him. Even before Verbal is charged, pressure from above ensures that he will get complete immunity. Word is that Keyser Söze is behind this. Kujan thinks that Söze is out to get Verbal. He implores Verbal to turn state’s witness. Verbal declines.
A movie is a narrative. The Usual Suspects has a narrative inside this narrative and this is where some people get confused. What if the second narrative is unsatisfactory or the loose ends don’t add up? Does that mean that the main narrative is faulty as well?
I almost forgot to praise Kevin Spacey. Kevin is a very dangerous actor in that he makes acting look so effortless that –
1. One starts thinking that acting is a piece of cake
2. You forget that he is there in the film. Kevin does not change his gate-up for the movie, except for the body language of a cripple. What’s remarkable is he makes you forget about Kevin Spacey, the Oscar winning actor.
Even though The Usual Suspects won an Oscar for best screenplay (Christopher McQuarrie) and another one for best supporting actor (Kevin Spacey), the great Roger Ebert gave it a measly 1.5/4 stars and included the movie in his “most hated films” list.
It was a movie well ahead of its times.
