It's not me, Babe,
No, No, No it's not me Babe,
It's not me you're looking for Babe. Bob Dylan
Home alone last night, I indulged in 174 minutes of a real guy movie: "Heat." I knew Pacino and De Niro, both in their prime, could not disappoint. I was not prepared for a tour de force, a masterpiece! This rates with The Godfather, Goodfellas, and A Bronx Tale; but deeper in insight, sensitivity and poignancy.
Hard criminal De Niro and obsessed detective Pacino, long before they meet, recognize in each other their equal. They are mirror, mimetic rivals: tough, smart, aggressive masters of their respective universes. It is a classical cat-and-mouse game, but unusually well done. They are doubles, almost doppelgangers, of each other. Which is why they know they must kill each other.
Exactly half way through the movie (which lasts almost 3 hours but feels like 5 minutes) they sit across from each other over a coffee in a dinner. It might be the best dialogue in any movie ever. They eye each other. Quiet. An indescribable feeling of awe. I am tempted to say mystically, they know each other, without words. Their facial expressions; the tone of voice. I cannot describe it. They speak a few words, but each is deep and true and penetrating. They reverence each other. A profound, mutual, virile affection. They know they will battle to kill each other. It is calm; sober; reverent. The plot prior to the coffee leads up to it; the plot after flows from it. This is classic male agon: rivalry, combat, warfare.
About it: a virile sobriety. In this age of the therapeutic and narcissistic, this is not about feelings. Not personal. This is business. They agree: De Niro does scores; Pacino chases bad guys. Not personal. No resentment, hurt feelings, victims. The cold objectivity of a Supreme Court Judge; of the Catholic sacraments; of the magisterium of the Church; of a good 12-step meeting. Like NBA athletes who clobber each other furiously on the court but then enjoy jokes and drinks later. Like Lee and Grant and their generals at Appomattox: after years of killing each other, old friends from West Point, they are gracious, congenial, respectful and affectionate. Like dealings between management and union at UPS where I worked for 25 years. Company and union leaders both came up from the ranks: same class, culture, types. As son of a union organizer and nephew of a slew of union men, I respected my antagonists. We competed, but within a framework of objective rules and rubrics: the contract. When, according to the contract, I was wrong, I was wrong. Cut and dry. Nothing personal! No human resource involvement; no intersectionality; no victim groups; no hurt feelings. Objective. Sober.
The Dualistic Male World
Every man, from adolescence, lives in two worlds: that of home, mother, wife, family; and the outside arena of competition/teamwork, achievement/failure, life/death, win/lose. Every man knows this intuitively. A woman does not, emotionally, understand this. This includes: sports, fights, argument, politics, war, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, crime gangs, culture war, geopolitics, spiritual combat, ad infinitum. Few movies capture so well the asymmetry, the dissonance between the two worlds as does Heat.
In the best case scenario, of course, the man triumphs in his arena of competition, becomes a "made man," and returns home, a hero (however modest) to provide and protect his cherished wife and family. But things often go awry. There are men who develop double lives: devoted husband and secretly a hit man, a spy, an active homosexual, a compulsive gambler or serial killer. My maternal uncle was an affectionate, if eccentric husband/father, a disorganized businessman and secretly an intelligence agent in South America.
In the small world of my own large extended family, over 40 marriages, almost all emulate (not my uncle, but) my father: respectable achievement in the arena but primacy given to family. This makes for stable families, happy wives and thriving children. There is another type of man, not necessarily better or worse, who loves family but is drawn strongly to some engagement in the world. This can be business, sports, politics, crime, scholarship, medicine, ministry or mission. On the positive side, these are great men of history, heroes, martyrs, often generous souls. But this is difficult, if not impossible, for the bride or wife. This can occur, more rarely, with women: read the heart-rending biography of Dorothy Day (Beauty Will Save the World) by her granddaughter Kate Hennessey. Such men will most probably fail in romance or marriage. Exceptional successes include when the wife has herself abundant personal/communal resources or herself shares in the man's purpose. The women in Heat were not so fortunate.
Female Roles in Heat
Generally, most gangster/crime movies are straight-up guy things: the women marginal as sexual/romantic interests or wives, suffering/saintly/victimized. Heat is exceptional. Four romances: each rich with mutual tenderness, reverence, longing, and finally tragedy. The women (including Ashley Judd and Amy Brenneman) are interesting characters, radiant with feminine warmth, charm, intelligence, strength, appeal and character. All four are doomed from the start: the males are entirely committed to the life of crime or police work. This is especially clear with the Pacino character: he is ruining his third marriage when his wife sadly tells him: "I get the leftovers; your heart goes always first to your work." He agrees. He cannot help himself. At a climatic, nerve wracking moment towards the end, De Niro is driving, with lots of money and his beautiful girlfriend who is crazy about him, away from his life of crime to paradise in the Pacific; but you know he simply cannot keep himself from settling a final score.
(Aside: this is some of the Catholic wisdom in requiring celibacy of our priests. Their work is so important that it must be the priority; the wife and children would have to be secondary. The sacrament of orders and matrimony are each so demanding that they cannot tolerate each other. This suggests a fundamental self-contradiction in the permanent married diaconate. And so, the Catholic husband always knows that his first and final loyalty is to his wife: not his mission, or profession, or cause, or mother, or even children! The Catholic husband who feeds the hungry, or kills the bad guys, or wins the war, but neglects wife and children will be ill prepared for final judgment (i.e. retribution 😃).
Male Loneliness and Intimacy
The co-protagonists are deeply lonely men. They are so evenly matched that neither can be demoted to antagonist. I found myself rooting more for the "bad guy" De Niro. Possibly because he is always a favorite of mine. Possibly because Pacino is agitated, restless, frenzied (as in Scarface and Devils'Advocate) while De Niro is quiet, calm, brooding, and profoundly sad in a striking virility. In their contrasting ways, each is constitutionally incapable of permanence in union with a woman.
Their real love is for each other, strangely, that they engage, defeat, and thus somehow psychically incorporate the other. The entire movie is moving inexorably to the final combat. We know blood and death are inevitable. We don't know exactly how. The ending may be the best ever in any movie: unexpected, surprising, but it makes complete sense. No spoiler here. I will just say that the ending, in a tiny gesture, epitomizes the toughness and tenderness of masculinity.
A subordinate theme, especially for the De Niro character, is the fraternal loyalty among the criminal buddies. John Voigt and Val Kilmer, partners and prison buddies of De Niro, give performances that would have stolen the movie if the main actors were anyone other than these two. As often in such mob movies, there is stirring code of loyalty here. These men would and do die for each other.
This is, finally, a love story. Primarily, between the co-protagonists who are inexorably drawn to engage each other in mortal combat. Secondly, among the friends in crime whose loyalty to each other is eventually stronger than their longing for the love of a woman and family. And finally, the futile and tragic craving of man and woman for each other in a world afire with masculine agon.
Another Aside: The Catholic priesthood is inversely mirrored in the quasi-celibacy of the detective and criminals. Their wholehearted devotion to crime-fighting or crime mirrors the priests devotion to the work of Christ. The fraternity which they share with each other, but not with a woman, is likewise a mirror of priestly brotherhood. The difference: the celibate, masculine priesthood is a participation in the masculinity of Christ, which is heroic even as it is spousal in its love for the bridal Church. At its best, Catholic priesthood is both uber-masculine and fully/fruitfully spousal and paternal
Final Aside: The reflection here may shed some light on the strange, troubling, entirely camouflaged loneliness of President Donald Trump. He is deeply alone and isolated. He has no close friends. His relationship with Melania seems to be cold and distant. On the other hand, he has a bizarre infatuation with Putin. He is remembered by high school classmates as the guy who always had a "trophy girlfriend." This "trophy" phenomenon suggests a desperate attempt to secure male approval (affection) along with an indifference or even aversion to the woman herself. This sheds light on their marriage. But also on his emotive idealization of the vile Putin. Masculine in his physicality, Trump seems to harbor homosexual cravings, not corporal, but emotional.
No comments:
Post a Comment