The Black Dahlia

"I don't understand it, therefore it must be stupid."

2006

Review: Updated September 22, 2006

Director: Brian De Palma

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Scarlett Johansson

Sure, but it’ll be triply confusing then.

THE SETUP:

Hollywood murder exposes a whole mess of dirty secrets.

DISCUSSION:

Before you begin this review, please answer one simple question that may determine your reaction to this film:
When I see something that I don’t understand in a movie, I think:
a) I need to think about that some more.
b) That must be really stupid.

If you answered A, you might enjoy this film. If you answered B, you'll probably find it boring and stupid.

Obviously I was super-psyched to see the newest Brian De Palma film, and it sounded like the perfect movie for him to do: it has the sexualized violence toward women that he seems to draw so much inspiration from, the artifice of Hollywood and the filmmaking process, and a noirish setting and atmosphere that would allow for much striking image-making. And although this film has been getting mostly poor reviews, for me he delivered on all counts.

The movie opens with a race riot between Latinos and sailors. Our protagonist is Bucky, played by Josh Hartnett, and he comes across Lee, Aaron Eckhart, beating the shit out of some thugs. They have been matched up by the police department to have a publicity-seeking boxing match, as Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice. They have the match, which Bucky has been paid to lose. He does, the police are awarded the funds the match was held to raise, and Bucky and Lee are assigned as partners.

They become friends off work too, and form a sort of sexless menage a trois with Lee’s girlfriend Kay, Scarlett Johansson. When Bucky asks why they don’t have a baby, Kay responds “well, you’d have to have sex for that.”

They are observing a brothel when they are involved in a shootout, and just as you’re thinking “so is someone going to find a mutilated corpse here or what?” the camera moves up over the building, past some crows, and we see the body of Elizabeth Short laying in the field behind. The body was cut in half at the waist, its face split ear to ear, and I was impressed that De Palma leaves the image off there in the distance, where it retains a creepy power. The entire scene is exciting for the way it sets up that while this shootout is happening here, this other discovery is waiting just behind, and the whole thing is handled in one smooth, classic De Palma long, intricate take.

Bucky and Lee are assigned to the murder at Lee’s insistence. TONS of information is delivered during the next hour, and I’m not going to go through it all, but suffice to say I sort of gave up on sorting it all out as the movie was progressing and just gave up and watched. It was only hours later, lying in bed, that I figured out what happened in the whole thing. I think it would all make sense upon a second viewing, and it made a good-enough sense when walking out of the theater, but just be aware that this shit is COMPLEX.

Josh goes to a lesbian bar [where k.d. lang is performing] and meets Hilary Swank as Madeleine Linscott, of a rich family that dabbles in many business interests. He starts interviewing fellow aspiring actresses who knew Elizabeth Short, who went by the name Betty. One of them is dressed as an Egyptian, and soon a number of her fellow extras is seen standing in a sort of cage in the back of a truck. This is the most potent image of this film's moving portrait of Hollywood at that time as a place where women are rarely more than attractive baubles for men's use. Josh goes on a date with Madeleine and meets her father and insane mother, played wildly by Fiona Shaw. Lee is getting more and more dangerously obsessed with the case. And there’s a nasty former pimp of Kay’s that’s about to be released from prison.

So by this point, about an hour into the whole thing, you’re thinking “where is the energy? Where is the momentum? This is interesting, but it’s just kind of meandering.” Well, hold tight folks, because while the first half bears the burden of delivering a buttload of information and laying out complex relationships, the second hour gets exciting, then more exciting, then MORE exciting. I had to take a piss for the whole last hour of the movie but couldn’t leave my seat.

Although De Palma very smartly tends to modulate how obvious he’s going to make his directorial hand depending on the seriousness of his subject matter, and in this case is beautifully restrained, there is another bravura showpiece in a shootout / murder that takes place on a marble staircase. It’s just another in his long line of masterful sequences of direction, editing and slowly rising tension.

One challenge the film does face in terms of expecting people to understand it is that the emotional arc of the Lee character is only comprehensible in hindsight, and you, the viewer, have to put together why he acted the way he did and intuit what his emotional state must have been after the movie is over. This is a strength of the film as a work of art, but does require a process of thought on the part of the viewer, which is apparently too much to ask.

It is also unfortunate, given the audiences of today, that the first hour is devoted to the laying out of relationship, as by the time we reach the second half, I’m afraid most people have tuned out and given up. All I can do is to repeat what I said at the beginning: for me the second half had me on the edge of my seat.

Okay, here’s where I explain my take on what’s happening with the Eckhart character, of interest mainly to people who have already seen the film. Others can rejoin us after the end spoiler mark.

SPOILERS! > > >
It seems that Lee [Eckhart] is involved in some shady dealings with the Linscott’s, Hilary Swank’s family. That’s why he knows that there’ll be a shootout at the brothel just before the Short body is found. This is also where the money Bucky finds toward the end comes from.

When Bucky threw the matchbook to Lee, Lee saw that Bucky was getting involved with the Linscott’s, and that if he got too involved it would expose Lee [turns out I was wrong about the matchbook detail... see my reconsiderations after viewing it again at the bottom]. This is why Lee became so obsessed with the case and wanted to solve it himself, because it could discredit him, lose him his job and probably lose him his girlfriend in Kay [already drifting toward Bucky]. In fact, the danger is precisely that Bucky will be the very one to expose it, which would be particularly humiliating, as Lee was the more admired partner, more respected on the police force. All of this answers the question of ‘why all that boxing stuff at the beginning?,’ because it builds the characters and relationships between the two men. Again, although it makes the movie richer as a work of art, this way of handling the story does make it harder for the audience, as they have to put together why things happened, and what their emotional impact is, after the movie is over. Poor, poor overburdened audience.
< < < SPOILERS END

The most disappointing thing about this movie is the way it’s being received. It’s being called boring and pointless, style over substance, Hartnett is being called unemotional, and the ending laughable. It’s funny because there was an article in the Times yesterday about how people who like De Palma don’t just think his detractors are of another opinion, but are IDIOTS, and this morning I am finding myself getting all riled up over what I perceive as critics' and audiences' steadfast refusal to think.

Yes, this film is very complex. And while for many people that apparently means it's too dumb to see, for me it means that you need to pay attention. Like I said, I didn’t unravel one particular plot strand until hours later. Now we all know that one thing a professional film critic will rarely put in print is: “I didn’t understand it,” so instead they just damn the whole movie and call it an incoherent mess. And audiences seem to be absolutely unwilling to consider that if they do not immediately understand something on the first go-round, it must be stupid.

The other criticism that’s really pissing me off is that Hartnett is a blank slate as an actor. I was totally unimpressed with him until I saw Wicker Park, in which I came to understand that he is a RESERVED actor, but has the rare ability to move from restrained to hyper-emotional in 0.3 seconds, which is why I suspect that he was hired for this role. It’s a shame that professional critics and audiencegoers alike tend to be unable to distinguish between an actor that is blank and a character that is supposed to be cold and emotionally reserved. Hello people, his nickname is 'Mr. Ice!' I would say "What do you need, a sign?” But THERE IT IS: a sign!

And then there’s the sad reality of modern moviegoing that anything that people don’t care to understand and is floridly out of the ordinary is “hilarious.” Fiona Shaw is the one getting that here, for her wild performance of an unhinged drunkard Hollywood wife. Well folks, unhinged drunkard Hollywood wives do exist, and they sometimes do silly things, but those silly things are not always ‘hilarious.’ These people can be somewhat intrusive to one’s theater experience, as they are laughing out loud at parts that have serious shit going on, it’s just that they don’t understand it. I recall watching The Sixth Sense with an audience that was laughing through the terrifying opening scene, in which a murderous mental patient with a gun has broken into the house, because he was in his underwear and was making funny faces.

I think this film will become more and more well-regarded over time [keep in mind that everyone's beloved Scarface was panned and received a Razzie nomination upon release]. It’s always that way with films you need to think about and films you need to see more than once—and you definitely need to see this one more than once [I am going again in a few days and I am PSYCHED!]. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have critics or audiences willing to put much thought into movies that demand it, but fortunate that De Palma continues to blissfully ignore them.

UPON SECOND VIEWING:
I was REALLY keen to see this again, just a few days after I had first seen it, both to clarify the story and just revel in some of the glorious sequences. On second viewing it seemed much more well-constructed, and I was more aware of how gorgeous the photography is. The undertone of the way Hollywood at the time mercilessly chewed up and spit out women is also more apparent; there is not one woman here who is not compromising herself in order to get further in life—mostly by using her sexuality—in a world ruled by men and men’s fantasies. Also more apparent is that this is very much in the De Palma canon by being in many ways ABOUT movies and the false realities they create.

SPOILERS > > >
Turns out I was completely wrong about the matchbook thing. It’s still true that the reason that Lee is so obsessed with the Dahlia case is that unraveling of that case will expose his own crimes, and the attendant humiliation he will feel, but the matchbook was not the important moment in that, as he is becoming obsessed long before. The tossing of the matchbook is a pivotal moment, as he realizes that Bucky is getting involved with the Linscott’s and goes over there to do damage control, but I suspect there may be something more to it that I’m not getting. Watching it again, we see that the earthquake occurs RIGHT after Bucky tosses the matchbook, which could mean nothing, or mean that this is a pivotal point, but I am more inclined to interpret this somewhat literally: it is an Earth-shaking event. I just can't quite figure out what that might be. If someone wants to write me and tell me what they think, I would be delighted to discuss it.

My reconstruction of the murder is this: Crazy mama Linscott and George, the deformed man, had an affair way back when. Madeleine is actually George’s daughter. Mr. Linscott burned George as revenge [making the Balto story a wonderful character touch]. The Linscott’s were involved in the making of The Man Who Laughs, the film Bucky, Lee and Kay go see at the beginning. This story became emblematic of George’s deformed face [George is played by William Finley, in a nod to his deformed character in De Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise], and Mrs. Linscott painted the picture and gave him the novel based on that. George developed a somewhat unnatural attraction to his daughter [all of this would explain Madeleine’s rapacious sexuality], and became interested in Elizabeth because she looked like her [the De Palma ‘doubles’ theme again]. George liked to “touch dead things.” The Linscott’s arranged a date with George and he and Mrs. Linscott killed her for his pleasure. Mrs. Linscott carved her face into a caricature of The Man Who Laughs out of her semi-hatred for her daughter and ironically, as “the cruelest joke.”

One also notices that Kay is presented in white and light tans throughout, in contrast to the black dress of the Dahlia and Madeleine. In the last scene, the light in her house in unnaturally white, then Bucky turns around and hallucinates the corpse of the Dahlia on the lawn. After this the light returns to a more normal hue. I interpret this as a statement on his idealization of Kay as a figure of redemption for him. As long as he idealizes her, the opposite image of evil will also remain apparent. When he is able to see her as she is, her goodness mixed with her deceptions and lies, he is able to gain some balance and put the horror out of his mind.
< < < SPOILERS END

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this may be De Palma’s best film. While all of his movies contain sequences of brilliance, they are also notoriously loose and contain elements that don’t quite gel. This one may not have the dizzying highs he can provide [aside from that stairway sequence], but it's as tight as a popcorn fart—and that’s pretty damn tight—and there is not one dischordant element. Everything is locked solidly in place and there is not one indication of lack of confidence at any moment. Brian De Palma IS the man.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

YES! But understand that it is very, very complex and you will need to put a lot of thinking into it.