Once Upon a Time in America and More

The following is part of an email conversation I had recently with my father, poet Rowell Hoff, who now lives in China with his wife, Carol.

Dad:

We watched, on recommendation of a friend, "Once Upon a Time in America", Sergio Leone's long movie about -- about what?? Me, I didn't like it at all. What should one think of a movie about four people, in reality only two; one of them (Max, the character played by Woods) a stone sociopath, another (Di Niro's character) in a sense worse, for he has some human sensibility and tenderness, which he invariably puts behind him in favor of criminality and nastiness in general, and ends up smiling on opium. And the directing: Feh, as you say. The perhaps comic in intention sequence about the police captain and his baby--not funny, just stupid. The scene in the empty-but-for-Niro-and-the-girl restaurant, a hundred waiters, an orchestra for Heaven's sake. The story of Max (the stone sociopath) who fakes his own death, takes the money and disappears for 30 years, during which time he becomes a U.S. cabinet member. Come on! And so on. Nobody in the story was worth a counterfeit Confederate dollar as a human being, except "Fat Moe". What was the message? Was there a message? Why did our friend like it? Why did Ebert like it? Leone should have stuck to spaghetti westerns. "Fistful of Dollars" was better (not good, but better than "Once Upon...", and mercifully shorter), and Eastwood's character, besides cleverly arranging for the massacre of most of the inhabitants of the town, who indeed were pretty bad persons, did at least one kind and self-sacrificing thing.

Me:

I saw Once Upon a Time in America shortly after it came out. When it was first released in the US, the studio re-arranged the narrative so it was told linearly and cut it down by (if I remember correctly) almost half its original length. I saw it when it came to cable and they showed both the theatrical release and the original cut. I remember being fairly in awe of the scope of the thing (I watched both versions and was appalled by the studio cut) and of what I remember as the very effective non-linear story telling. I love studying different ways of structuring a story, different ways to reveal the various threads in a story. (To see a really innovative narrative, and a really dark but quite good movie, see Momento. I warn you, it is very dark. It's sort of told backward, but only sort of. It had an odd, lingering effect on me. After leaving the theater, it was literally several hours before actual reality seemed to be real.) However, I also remember having had some problems with the story itself in Once Upon a Time. It's been a long time and I really don't remember much about the specifics - the points you bring up seem valid but none of them ring a bell - but I do have a vague recollection of being a little annoyed at the depiction of Jewish people in it.

As for why so many people liked it, first of all Americans have a strange love for gangsters and the "romance" of the gangster life. Second, it was beautifully filmed and acted, which I have said before can almost make up for any other flaw. Again, from memory because it has been so long since I've seen it, I think a lot of the absurd story elements you point out are actually impressionistic rather than stark realism - they are the musings in he mind of De Niro. Isn't it a lot about his looking back on his dark life? Also, a lot of films that have utterly reprehensible and unrepentant and unredeemable characters have had a lot of critical acclaim - take Raging Bull, a movie I really didn't like, but that I could see a lot of wonderful film making in. No one in that film has any saving grace at all. They're all complete a** holes from beginning to end, and the critics loved it.

Dad:

I am also happy with "non-linear" flicks, generally speaking. (What a good name for them!) Remember "Rashomon"? Although the technique was different, for a different purpose, really, and of course it grew out of the story by Akutagawa. (It is curious that the book of stories it came from had a story called "Rashomon" in it, but that was not the story that became the movie. I forget what the name of it was...) Zhang Yimou, in his "Hero", may have been thinking of "Rashomon" a little.

The most interesting and technically and artistically fascinating non-linear film lately -- that we have seen, anyway -- is Syriana.

Me:

Believe it or not, I've never seen Rashomon! I know a lot about it and it is ALWAYS referenced when someone is talking about a story told from different perspectives. It is one I've always wanted to see, mainly because of the story telling technique. I often don't like Akira Kurosawa and that's one reason I've not yet seen it even though it has so heavily influenced so many other things. My main problem with Kurosawa is that his movies are visually stunning but seem somehow soulless and emotionally empty. (I find that with a lot of Japanese art, actually. Odd, probably, given my birth in Tokyo.) That's probably a little unfair, I haven't seen more than a few of his movies, but there you have it.

As for non-linear films, the first one I saw actually radically changed the way I wrote. There is a movie made in the sixties with Julie Christie and George C. Scott called Petulia. I can't remember exactly when I saw it (probably when I was in high school, but it may have been even earlier), but it jumps around in time rather frenetically and it stunned me. You don't really completely know what is going on until the very last scene. I tried for many years to see it again (this is way before video - and I'm not even sure it's available on video in any case) without any success. Finally, several years ago now, I convinced an art house movie theater in LA to run it. I was thrilled. And very disappointed. It wasn't nearly as good as I had remembered. Of course, how could it be? I had credited it with changing how I approached storytelling and I consider myself a story teller, so it was like some sort of religious or transformational experience in my mind - a walk to the peak, a flight to heaven. What could live up to that? I'd actually like to see it again, now, with the perspective of a little maturity and not as great an expectation.

I have not yet seen Syriana - it is top on my list. I had wanted to see it before it left the movie theaters, but alas, I think I've missed it there. Ah well. I want to see it for any number of reasons; the movie making is supposed to be superb, the emotional impact is supposed to be extreme and I have come to really respect George Clooney. (Who knew! That guy who goofed his way through ER on TV is actually an amazing man. - Speaking of Clooney, see Good Night and Good Luck.)

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".