'The Leander Street Party'

It was the 5^th of July, afternoon. The atmosphere at no. 174 was tense; ordinarily confident young men worriedly drank beer and tried to distract themselves from their rapidly approaching public appearance.  They valiantly made conversation, feigning interest in the anti-spectacles that are the Tour de France and Formula One, but it was clear that their minds were elsewhere (about 150 yards down the road). I could endure only a few minutes more before I took my leave and stepped out onto the road on its biggest day of the year.

“The Leander Road Street Party”, the signs read. As I made my way down it’s gentle slope past houses 170… 168… 166… I couldn’t help but feel a surge of anticipation. The party was to play host to the debut performance of ‘Fever Family’, a band made up by my good friends and which I ostensibly manage. Admittedly I’d had little to do with arranging this particular gig, or even heard them play before, but I was confident of an excellent show nonetheless. 

But as I passed sign after sign, my excitement was displaced by a general feeling of anxiety. Worry for my friends on their big day? No, I’d take just as much pleasure from a shambolic show as an accomplished one – my fandom knows no bounds. It was something else. “The Leander Road Street Party”…“The Leander Road Street Party.”

This clunky, tautologous piece of nomenclature contained a totally redundant instance of the word ‘Street’, the use of which genuinely threatened to derail my enjoyment of the entire event, but a glance back up the road a few minutes later quickly helped me forget the organisers’ syntactic overindulgence. In the distance, strolling past the bin that straddles no. 128 and 126, I could make out six figures.

Like a low-budget Village People disco tribute act, they came: A woodsman, a sailor, Arnold Schwarzenegger as a boy scout, cat-lady meets Human Traffic, an Irishman on holiday and an artist’s impression of a young man from London.

By the time the group took to the stage they had drawn a not-unenthusiastic crowd of more than thirty despite an impending deluge, no doubt intrigued as to what kind of noises this motley crew of ‘serious people’ would make, and in what order. As the heavens opened, Fever Family started to play.

Truth be told I remember few specifics of the performance itself. On a more general level, I don’t know what kind of music they played.

Michael Mann’s ‘The Insider’ (1999)

Mann’s brilliant corporate thriller ratchets up the pressure on both protagonist and audience, who are treated to a story told with extraordinary restraint by a director who is equally adept at framing the drama in his characters' heads as in court or a newsroom. 

In a slick opening sequence we are introduced to Lowell Bergman (Pacino), producer of the prestigious '60 Minutes' news programme, as he negotiates an interview with a senior Hezzbollah Sheikh. Once an agreement is reached and he's left alone, Bergman pulls off his blindfold, walks to the window and surveys the Lebanese cityscape beneath him - Mann's camera stunningly capturing the bustling urban setting. 

A short time later, Bergman meets with a skittish Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) in a hotel room boasting a comparable view, this time of the metallic hues of downtown Louisville. Former head of research at Brown & Williamson Tobacco, Wigand agrees to the consultation work Bergman has for him but warns him that according to the terms of his severance package that's as far their discussions can go. It's a detail that he needn't have disclosed, and for that reason it piques Bergman's interest.  

On the face of it, Wigand hardly seems like a man likely to risk his family’s well-being for the sake of blowing the whistle on his behemothic former employers. His daughter requires the medical insurance as yet still entitled to his family and such obligations trump all. Supporting one's family even if it means leaving-be the affairs of Tobacco executives who have perjured themselves in front of Congress, "what could be wrong with that?" Wigand asks Bergman when they meet again. Nothing, they agree. 

But when Michael Gambon's CEO insists he sign a supplement to his confidentiality agreement ("the work we did here was confidential, not for public scrutiny, any more than are one's family matters") the implicit threat helps to illuminate another obligation running somewhere in parallel. As the unsettling threats escalate Wigand increasingly feels "compelled" to speak to '60 Minutes' despite the obvious strain on his family. 

It is in its handling such complicated and at times intangible moral quandaries - the exact nature of which it commendably leaves largely unsaid -  that The Insider succeeds so wonderfully. It is a film buoyed by the lofty ideals and compulsions of its characters, and yet still grounded by a dogged faithfulness to the intricacies of the story which often involve complex legal, bureaucratic and personal notions.  

Director of photography Spinotti crafts moments that beautifully communicate abstract concepts, his cinematography seamlessly aligning itself with plot. In one glorious scene we watch Wigand make his decision; casting his gaze around the scores of police waiting to escort him to the crucial disposition, and then out to sea. So well defined are the film's themes that, following a transfixing sequence of imagery and sound, when he eventually realises "the criteria by which to decide", we realise it too. 

Such moments are played up to just the right degree by Crowe, Pacino and Christopher Plummer, one of a number of supporting characters whose circumstances leave them unable or unwilling to follow the two men as far as they need to go. "I'm running out of heroes, man." says Bergman to Wigand, worried for his friend's deteriorating state of mind. As the stakes rise, others fall away and compromise for money, reputation, safety - as people do. The alluring ideals of the newsman and the wife are often too vulnerable to harsh, real-world considerations, and Plummer's performance as the face of Bergman's show depicts a reality complicated by all manner of internal worries and pressures.  

Mann is a highly proficient filmmaker but The Insider is surely his best work. Ostensibly a bureaucratic thriller, it balances the procedural with the sublime, evoking moments of startling clarity in a messy, caustic world -  helping us see through the smoke and the haze.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: Parts from a Whole

Last Sunday news arrived of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s tragic death from a heroin overdose.  He was an actor whose talent drew universal respect from in and outside the industry, and the news prompted shock and profound regret from all who knew and worked with him. Regrettably, the following days also brought thinly-veiled media conjecture of the inner demons they suspected beset the father of three, helpfully accompanied by images of his grieving relatives and a body-bag being carted into an ambulance. 

The continued and self-serving newspaper analysis would strike us as more of an ethically suspect practice if it weren't for the fact that we have gotten so used to it, and that many in fact have developed rather a taste for it. After all, it really is only the next logical step for us to paw over the minutiae of the hours and days leading up to a man's untimely death when we already think nothing of buying a gossip magazine for an update on the painful divorce of two television personalities. In fact, last week’s event represented something of a perfect storm for reactionary columnists around the globe – the death of a film star, attributed to a hidden drug problem.

At its root, the press' examination of the circumstances surrounding Hoffman's death is at once insulting and depressing. It is insulting that their perception of the public is one of a celeb-obsessed mob, insatiably baying for the nauseating specifics of the case; just how many bags of heroin were found, exactly why wasn't he living with his family, where was he and what was he wearing when was he found?

It is depressing because that perception is probably just about right. Unhealthy fixations with drink and drug abuse and ‘mournography’ have crept into the psyche of ordinary members of the public. To what extent this appetite has been cultivated by the media is up for debate, but a morbid interest undoubtedly exists. Any normal level of curiosity can surely be satisfied by the bare facts, and the intimate details surrounding the man’s death shouldn’t be up for grabs no matter how many hits they generate.

In any case, those who believe these details offer any great insight into what happened to Philip Seymour Hoffman are mistaken. Describe the physical circumstances as fully as you please, and you will gain nothing more than superficial understanding. There is a vast explanatory gap between a description of the event and knowledge of the event itself.

One’s own underlying motives, dispositions and weaknesses are elusive enough even given our uniquely privileged position to introspect. Our thoughts are immediately available to us for self-analysis, yet we struggle to fully interpret and understand our own temporal identity. Several times removed through the filter of the tabloid press, we stand no chance with Hoffman’s. And still this deeply unflattering exercise in futility persists.

The reduction of what must have been an unrelenting internal struggle to a trivial, bite-size news story is utterly unhelpful to anyone looking for an answer to any important question. To look at his work would be to understand a little better. In a startlingly poignant scene from ‘Before the Devil Knows Your Dead’, Hoffman lies in a narcotic haze, spread-eagled on the couch of his apathetic dealer and confesses that his life makes no sense to him. While his accountancy work deals in the tangible, his life’s equation involves no such absolutes. Increasingly he is aware of a terrifying disconnect between expectation and reality; all the things he has acquired fail to neatly cohere and resemble something whole.

Most of us cannot begin to understand the position that Philip Seymour Hoffman found himself in, and neither should we try to by piecing together the wreckage he left behind. It is meaningless to perceive a life by its composite parts, they are not the same thing.