Down from the mountain

By Theodore Witcher

Thursday, May 8, 2008 | 4:56 p.m.

“Everything has a force. Embrace it or deflect it. Why oppose it?”

Thus instructs Chiwetel Ejiofor’s jujitsu teacher to an aging, bitter movie star played by Tim Allen in David Mamet’s latest, Redbelt, the celebrated dramatist’s 10th film as director. The line itself is a pointed reference to a snifter of brandy Allen, a functioning alcoholic, has been wielding, spoken as Ejiofor gently slides it away; but it also neatly encapsulates the fundamental concept of his chosen martial art: that of using an attacker’s energy against him, rather than bearing its full brunt. Ejiofor’s character, Mike Terry, eschews competition, claiming it “weakens” the fighter, and prefers to espouse his principles from the safety of his tiny training academy to a select cadre of students/true believers. But soon circumstances (as they always, and thankfully, do) require Terry to apply his rigid ethical code to the real world, where the forces arrayed against him are decidedly less ... theoretical. “One of the toughest things a hero’s gotta do is come down off the mountain,” Mamet recently said in an NPR interview. The film, he says, is about “what happens when you start stepping off the sidewalk.”

Mamet has cited his own study of jujitsu, which the director began upon relocating to California six years ago, as impetus for the story. But Redbelt is merely the most recent in a long line of works that depict the travails of heroes attempting to negotiate the street as opposed to the sidewalk, to maintain the discipline of a personal code of conduct in a hostile and indifferent world. To commit to a discipline—philosophical, physical or otherwise—is a step toward perfecting oneself, a concept rooted in ancient Stoicism, which the director continually cites throughout his published essays. So it is probably closer to the truth to say that Mamet’s fascination with ethical systems and their practical application—what a man’s gotta do, if you will—is what led him, nearing age 60, to martial arts in the first place, not the other way around.

Over his career, Mamet has usually located this theme in the world of traditionally masculine pursuits: cops, real estate salesmen, soldiers, etc. His screenplay for Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables posits an Eliot Ness so squeaky clean that he (deliberately) becomes a bit of a running joke for the audience, especially when coupled with Kevin Costner’s stiff, Dudley Do-Right-esque performance. Early in the film he pleads for advice on how to nail Al Capone from Sean Connery’s wise old cop, but states clearly that he isn’t willing to break the law. Connery’s response? “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way. And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?” Ness isn’t ready at that moment, of course—otherwise there’d be no story—but by the end of the picture, dammit if he isn’t throwing Capone’s enforcer, Frank Nitti, off the roof of the courthouse and, moreover, seemingly satisfied with this tactical shift: “I have broken every law I have sworn to uphold, I have become what I beheld, and I am content that I have done right!”

Though Ness surrenders his beliefs in pursuit of a greater good, things turn out much differently in The Winslow Boy (1999), based on Terence Rattigan’s play. Nigel Hawthorne’s family patriarch in turn-of-the-century England expends his fortune, his daughter’s future and ultimately his own health in a bid to clear the name of his young son. The boy has been expelled from Royal Naval College for stealing a five-shilling postal order, but his father unwaveringly believes in his innocence. Though justice ultimately prevails, taking the principled stand proves almost ruinously costly. In Spartan (2004), Val Kilmer plays a supremely capable Army Ranger sent to recover the president’s abducted daughter. This modern-day samurai is fiercely loyal to the Army and to his mission. “I am here to get the girl back, sir,” he assures his superior, “and there is nothing I will not do.” This is all fine until he eventually recognizes that the government which he serves so religiously is completely corrupt, indistinguishable from the more traditional enemies of the state. He must then decide how much his continuing adherence to the credo is worth. In this case, the sidewalk has become the street, right under his very feet.

Mamet is a master of narrative architecture, but it is unlikely he will ever be the hugely popular filmmaker that he might have been if he were working in the ’40s or ’50s. He doesn’t seem interested in the superfluous pretty bits that we now take for granted in movies. He builds lean machines that run swiftly and efficiently. (Redbelt lasts a mere 99 minutes.) His dialogue is so idiosyncratic and artificial it can border on self-parody; occasionally performances, deliberately designed to be “uninflected,” can come off as wooden and flat; and some of his minor plotting is a bit suspect, relying too much on coincidence and happenstance—what might have worked in a studio film of Hollywood’s Golden Era but which is often unsatisfying to more sophisticated modern audiences. In these instances his work makes him like a protagonist in one of his stories: the artist rigorously dedicated to his own personal vision of cinema, who is tested in a ruthless marketplace of twenty-words-or-less “concept” movies, sitcom-style comedic writing and unfailingly “likable” characters. No surprise, then, that his well-documented disdain for Hollywood—clearly representative of the world’s treacherous morality—figures prominently in his play Speed-the-Plow and movies such as State and Main and Redbelt.

Still, Mamet’s movies aren’t terribly commercial, yet he continues to get them financed, and they appear to be made with little or no interference or compromise. Thus, when the hero—or playwright/director—does come down off the mountain, and is able to maintain his code despite all obstacles, he usually prevails ... even in show business.