David O'ConnellScorsese gem revisited
April 28th 2008 03:00
After Hours, released in 1985, is somewhat of a curiosity amongst Martin Scorsese's body of work, one of his least known and underappreciated films. It's about the late night odyssey of a lone man, played by Griffin Dunne, through the streets of New York; an amusing and confounding series of chance encounters with some very peculiar people of the night, all of which is set into motion after he simply acts upon an impulsive moment with an attractive stranger (Rosanna Arquette) in a diner, arranging to meet her later in the evening.
Everything from that point on that can go wrong seemingly does in a bleakly inevitable comedic fashion and though I laughed and felt pity for him, the most enduring feeling I was left with was the odd sense of displacement of this man, cut off from familiar things, people he knows, and most tellingly, the usual means of extricating himself from this sort of situation all because his last note of money has flown out a taxi window, the girl he hopes to meet turns out to be frustratingly elusive and the city - with the lights turned down, and only the loonies left awake - transforms itself into an alien terrain which he becomes desperate to escape but is thwarted at every turn.
Scorsese’s mostly low-key, unobtrusive direction is perfect and Griffin Dunne has never had a finer moment as an actor – though as a director himself, he helmed another very dark tale, the similarly underappreciated Addicted to Love in 1997.
Howard Shore provided the sparse score, his first collaboration with Scorsese, who has since turned to the Canadian’s talents again in recent years to provide the music for, most notably, The Aviator and The Departed.
Everything from that point on that can go wrong seemingly does in a bleakly inevitable comedic fashion and though I laughed and felt pity for him, the most enduring feeling I was left with was the odd sense of displacement of this man, cut off from familiar things, people he knows, and most tellingly, the usual means of extricating himself from this sort of situation all because his last note of money has flown out a taxi window, the girl he hopes to meet turns out to be frustratingly elusive and the city - with the lights turned down, and only the loonies left awake - transforms itself into an alien terrain which he becomes desperate to escape but is thwarted at every turn.
Howard Shore provided the sparse score, his first collaboration with Scorsese, who has since turned to the Canadian’s talents again in recent years to provide the music for, most notably, The Aviator and The Departed.
Nightmares after dark!
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
After Hours is one of the great comedies of the 80's and one of my favourite Scorsese films. Was so unbalancing when I saw it on the bigscreen, since then on DVD it continues to make me laugh and also relate more and more to the myth of having a bad day/night.
Comment by Cibbuano
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