reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/03/85)
"After Hours" is a uniquely dark and hilarious comedy. Tak-
ing its basic theme from "The Wizard of Oz" (an innocent lost in
a weird, hostile environment, with the one desire to go home),
adding director Martin Scorsese's usual New York street grit,
throwing in a touch of French farce in the form of escalating
misfortune, and finishing off with a set of bizarre characters
who have the odd ring of reality, "After Hours" is the funniest
and most original film of the year.
Paul is a word processor who has the misfortune to run into
a rather attractive young woman. In his understandable desire to
get to know her better, Paul finds himself trapped late at night
in New York's Soho district. He loses all his money early on,
and soon starts getting into trouble, and then gets into worse
trouble, which in turn deepens into an incredible nightmarish
crisis. Paul, who soon decides that there's no place like home,
is forced to appeal for assistance to increasingly weird people,
most of whom have no reason to want to help him or even an active
desire to harm him. The fun comes from the piling of misfortune
on misfortune, each piece of ill luck being an escalation of the
desperation and laughter.
Scorsese, not at all known for comedy, does a splendid job
of building up the farcical possibilities of the script. His
direction is witty in and of itself, and includes a very fine
variety of shots displaying Scorsese's undoubted talents as a
director. Considering that the whole film cost less than $4 mil-
lion, less than the special effects budget for many films nowa-
days, the fine crafting evident in "After Hours" is truly amaz-
ing. Scorsese never settles for doing things the simple way, but
tries to find a new twist or presentation. A few times this
doesn't work, and we're left hanging with what is obviously just
a bad idea, but the great majority of what Scorsese tries work.
"After Hours" is also blessed with a superb cast, largely
composed of well known performers who seem to have taken small
(but good) parts out of friendship with Scorsese. The central
role of Paul, the heavily beset hero, is played by Griffin Dunne,
who also is co-producer of the film. Dunne has a difficult role,
as much of it consists of reaction, not action. Dunne is con-
tinually presented with impossible situations allowing him no al-
ternative but to stare in amazement and wonder at his incredibly
poor luck. But Dunne is well up to the challenge, going quickly
beyond the mere confusion and fright of someone caught in a
strange situation on to the outright panic of a man lost in a
funhouse gone homicidally mad. His attempts to deal on a ration-
al level with troubles exceeding all bounds of rationality are
hilarious.
Rosanna Arquette plays the troubled siren who lures him into
danger, a woman with odd friends and, seemingly, an ugly secret.
John Heard is a sympathetic bartender, Teri Garr a strange
waitress emotionally tied to the 1960s, Cheech and Chong a pair
of burglars who have the Soho district in a vigilante fever, Ver-
na Bloom a wallflower in a punk rock club, and Dick Miller a
waiter in an all night diner. These are just the better known
names in a large and able cast. Each has some fine moments.
Some comedies rely on the central performance of a great
comedian, and these can get away with a weak script. Since
"After Hours" isn't a vehicle for such a comedian, the script is
the foundation, the element which determines if "After Hours"
will die from the start or have the possibility of working.
Joseph Minion's script is very fine, a clever buildup of steadily
increasing troubles, sort of French farce goes to New York. He
has a particularly good feel for odd characters. "After Hours"
is filled with peculiar people, but the wonderful thing is that
each is strange in his own unique way. The care taken with the
characters extends even to minor parts, such as the boyfriend of
Arquette's roommate, or the bouncer at a punk rock club. While
each character is truly weird, they are each of them plausible, a
person one can believe walks around and lives a life outside the
script. Minion also provides some very clever lines, and has a
familiarity with how one behaves in a deteriorating situation
which can only be gained through firsthand experience. Paul does
some fairly stupid things during his night in Soho, but they are
just the sort of things a really desperate person does.
Technically, "After Hours" looks much better than one would
expect a $4 million film to look. The photography, by Michael
Ballhaus, is sort of Scorsese-standard - gritty, clear, full of
harsh shadows suggesting hidden, dirty secrets. The score
highlights the film nicely without being intrusive. The editing
is crisp and the production design a fine evocation of a seedy
artist community.
"After Hours" is not totally without flaws. As mentioned,
some of Scorsese's ideas for staging of scenes don't really work.
More importantly, one of the major plot twists relies on some-
thing terrible happening to one of the characters. While it is
vital that Paul believes this has happened, it is not absolutely
necessary that it actually does happen. Scorsese and Minion
might have done better to show that Paul's belief in this event
was mistaken in the end. Finally, "After Hours" lacks a real
topper, a snappy ending to match what has come before. With a
neat twist or gag to end the film, the impact of "After Hours"
would have been even greater. As it is, the film somewhat resem-
bles a shaggy dog story.
Above all, "After Hours" is fun, the fun that can only come
with seeing an ordinary person dealing with troubles far beyond
what he deserves, expects, or even is capable of handling. As is
usual in Scorsese's world, there really isn't any justice. Paul
doesn't deserve as hard a time as he gets, and those who might
deserve some of his troubles escape scot free. From "Mean
Streets" on, Scorsese has always pictured a world in which things
inevitably go wrong, in which good men fail and evil flourishes,
in which no one is safe and the insane rule. "After Hours" shows
us the same world that we saw in "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull",
but from a different perspective. Instead of outrage and anger,
Scorsese delivers humor. Those who have had a hard time appreci-
ating him before should give "After Hours" a try.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
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