There aren't many clearly marked, signpost moments in your life, but occasionally they come along, and you have a choice. You can either do something the same old way, or you can make a better decision. You have to be able to recognize the moment, and to act on it, at risk of saying later, "That's when it all could have been different." If you're willing to make a harder choice, you can redesign your life.
- Lance Armstrong, "Every Second Counts"
I had never fallen in love at first sight. There were one, maybe two, guys I had liked immediately, but there was always some other sort of hook: something he said, or something he wrote.
It was the same case with Spike Lee's 25th Hour - I liked it at once, and its hook was the sound, even before the first image, accompanying the opening studio logos: the whining of a dog, obviously being mistreated. I immediately thought of Amores Perros, by the absolutely inimitable Alejandro González Iñárritu: if every time a dog being kicked on screen conjures for one memories of a singular film, that's a good film. Then the opening shot: the tracking of this crazy yellow car across pylons and steel traps; the second shot, still tracking the car, ending with a close-up of its headlights. In the ensuing scene, protagonist Monty (Edward Norton) saves the dog, exactly like Amores Perroros. But more than that: I liked the crazy car, I liked the dialogue ("you want a dog, I buy you a nice puppy tomorrow"), I liked the whole dog motif immensely. By the time the opening credits rolled, I was enthralled.
I have what I call an "echelon" of directors whom I adore, whose every single film I have found (and, on faith, will continue to find) a crystal of perfection for myself and which speaks right to me, who are my Einsteins, my Nietzsches, my Bachs. Spike Lee is one of them, and to me 25th Hour is his most perfect film of all that I've watched so far. I find writing plot synopses tiresome, so I shall just cop a line from imdb's plot summary: "The 25th Hour depicts the last day of freedom for a young man [Monty] before he begins serving a seven-year jail term for drug dealing." Basically, on this last day, Monty, in a variety of ways, says goodbye to his girlfriend, his father and his two best friends. Even as he is saying goodbye, he is also facing his grim future, wondering, extremely bleakly, how to stay intact - physically and emotionally - in prison, how to survive time.
To my horror, the first line of the opening imdb review (Hollywood Reporter dot com - go figure) runs: "'25th Hour' is an unusually aimless movie from Spike Lee, a director associated with much punchier films that possess strong points of view." Well, yeah - if you're looking for a "punchy film" (what the hell is a "punchy film" anyway?), if you're looking for some point to what is really just... well, you know, 24 hours before a guy goes to prison. What can be the point? So in this film the guy mills around through one night (incidentally finding out who shopped him) and then the next morning he heads off to 7 years of prison. What do you want? A pre-emptive jail break (cue car chase, hurray!!)? A redemption story? Is that what "punchy" means?
There is no point, and this, imo, is what makes the film so brilliant. When you stand at the precipice of a moment - a day, an hour, a "clearly marked, signpost moment in your life" - which will change the course of all else after it forever, there is no point. You're scared shot to hell, there is no guarantee of anything, you are fed all sorts of tiresome platitudes, even as these well-meaning wishers are grappling with their own insecure, unsatisfied lives (Monty's best friend, Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), for example, continuing to obsess over his student (Anna Paquin) up to and right through Monty's farewell party). Is there a point in justifying a decision you made on blind faith? Is there a point in standing by something because one day you woke up and the world has changed? Is there a point in contemplating how you got to the point where you are looking at seven years of prison which is going to destroy you mentally, physically and emotionally? No - the point is there is no point. There is no point because, plain and simple, there is so much blindness as to how we lurch through this life - Monty is both aware of how he got there (he dealt drugs, and have been doing so for many years - go figure) yet strangely perplexed at the place where he now finds himself: "Six months" - six months he had been vowing to himself he was going to get out of it, invest the loot with his super banker friend, ditch the crimes and live their rewards. But he never got round to doing it - why? Who ever knows? Who knows how people get to the point of leaving a life, or a career, or a home, or a marriage, or a family? You simply somehow end up at the edge, and then you jump. I've always wondered: was there even ever a choice?
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Splendid response – as ever, kid.
I’m going to hit a predictably political note here, though … I’ve seen the film twice now, and was struck on both sittings by its power to, as it were, inflict an act of violence upon its audience. How can one sit through 25th Hour and not run ourselves through the same ethical grinder that catches all of Lee’s characters, right? Because of this, I just can’t view the film with a cynical detachment at all (unlike some reviewers in the editorial ether); you’re so right that your response should be visceral because this film provides the stimuli, intellectually and emotionally. And this, at least, is something the trades and newspaper reviews (like the San Francisco Chronicle for instance) rightly extend to America’s (and the film’s) central trauma of 9/11. Everybody’s radically disorientated. Security withheld. Which direction, next?
I did a quick scan on metacritic tonight, and it’s amusing how so many critics object to the third act escapist fantasy with Brian Cox -- and quite vehemently. The criticism invariably goes that the idealistic sentiment of this entire segment is at odds with the mood of the story, therefore breaking the verisimilitude. (!) But the whole point of the film’s concluding section seems (to me) to be to show that the film universe is not closed at all to this potential: while the American Dream exists, it is *not* untouchable. America itself can reintegrate with the patriarchal leader that offers to show a way out of the trauma, it can decamp and withdraw into itself for the sake of regeneration. It’s these very ideas (which are shaped into ideologies, dominant and oppositional), and which the film seems to be dealing with at the level of straightforward metaphor, that circulate as distractions away from the reality of the new century presented in the film. And that is fascinating to watch: it was the first post-9/11 film, in fact, right?
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As always, thanks very much for a smart and insightful comment.
I have to confess the last thing on my mind when I watched 25th Hour was a political reading, and I had to read through your comment several times to get my mind around to that perspective. I guess you are right in a sense - Spike Lee's political references (primarily that fantastic and memorable "fuck you" sequence) do mention Osama and terrorism, and, of course, the devastation and absence of WTC figure large at various points of the film - but I can't see it as an overt interpretation, I'm afraid. Lee invests far too much of the personal in all his characters - Monty's own fears, Naturelle's ambivalence, Francis's guilt, Jacob's social and emotional problems, the father's regrets, still mourning the death of his wife etc. Even the dog is part of a personal narrative arc. Hence, I tend to read it as an allegory for life rather than politics - we are lost and disorientated, yes, but in terms of where our personal events and questionable choices lead us, rather than in terms of the global vagaries of (then) recent events.
I am likewise surprised to read the responses to the "third act escapist fantasy" and, like you, I thoroughly disagree! Though, again, I really cannot see that act as being overtly political, let alone implicative of an ideological resolution to the problems of post-9/11. "Reintegrate with the patriarchal leader" in particular leaves me puzzled - where and how in the film is that suggested at all?
On my own part, (though perhaps for completely different reasons) I thought this act was absolutely brilliant and a completely inspired touch - "breaking the verisimilitude (!)" indeed! Of course it breaks the verisimilitude - it is a fantasy... because it's that road we didn't take, we might have taken, we could have taken, we should have taken. And all of us have a road not taken (if not more), at some point in our lives, each and every one of us. Which brings me back to my question: but was there even ever a choice? The film ends with the fantasy being just that - a fantasy - and Monty dozes off in the car, riding towards his destruction: he does not - cannot - help himself, as his father helplessly drives him on to prison.
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