Domino (Brian De Palma, 2019)

[thirtyframesasecond]

re: R0lf,

Does this mean I’m alone (or nearly) in considering Snake Eyes one of De Palma’s masterpieces? But then, the only films of his that are complete failures in my eyes are Wiseguys and Get to Know Your Rabbit. Even Mission to Mars and Bonfire of the Vanities have at least enough technique to keep the viewer engaged. I’m intrigued by the idea of a De Palma/Alcaine collaboration, even if it’s on something of a failed film.

Masterpiece might be a bit too far, but Snake Eyes is great fun and its tracking shots are superb. Cage's OTT acting works well in it too. And the Rashomon set-up fits the movie.

[Reverend Drewcifer]

The José Luis Alcaine of it all is a large source of my frustration with Domino. It was clear on Femme Fatale that De Palma and Alcaine were two peas in a pod, but that film was allowed to go through a responsible post-production process. That film required not only photochemical expertise on the day of shooting, but the time and smarts to dial in on dichromatic shots like Laure's plunge into the river to make the blue/black contrast really kick. There are raw video shots in Domino (I'm thinking of a specific medium shot of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau atop a building toward the end. It's blue and black. No spoilers.) that have not been graded, where the color temperatures are so undifferentiated that my wife and I had to pause and reposition ourselves in the living room just to see who and what was on screen. There was never a masterpiece in this material, but even Alcaine needs the support of an effective color-spotting session to make his footage really sing.

Mission to Mars may be the best work Steve Burum has done, with rich shadows in stark white environments (not just the "face" room, but also everything on board the spaceships) that add true dimensionality even on a DVD of the film. Further, his use of copper reflectors instead of silver for the bounce light on the surface of Mars are muuuuuuuuuuuch more effective than simply using a red gel over the lens (a la Red Planet) and speak to his ingenuity and innovation on that show. He does such a good job with textures that the phoneyness of the CG cast member at the end stands out like a sore thumb. He and De Palma aren't buddies, so goes the rumor mill, but M2M was their last and best collaboration outside of their "usual" style. The log line on that film is that it plays better as a silent movie, which is true for the quality of the dialogue, and the use of Van Halen, but those images are the centerpiece.

It seems to me that younger cinephiles (Gen X and especially millennials, I guess) seem more willing to accept De Palma as he is, as a kind of carnival-ride auteur, rather than have the long fights that older (Boomer) critics seemed to have over his work, debating whether it was shlock or art. Maybe the distance of years, both from De Palma's early films and from the Hitchcock films he so gleefully ripped off/paid homage to, has burnished the former a little bit, made the accusations of plagiarism and such seem a little besides the point.... But personally I have a hard time accepting him as any kind of great director. At best, a maker of great moments.

Gen Xers (like me) got the lion's share of our classic movies from cable and VHS. Like every generation, we were at the mercy of what we were exposed to in those formative years, its broadcast frequency, and who was influencing us. I didn't have a cool video store clerk to point me to Bunuel, Hitchcock, or even Argento. Southeast Ohio was and is not a hotbed of influential film discussion, at least not in the '80s and early '90s. And I didn't have the Internet in 1994. What I did have were beloved-but-slightly-narcissistic Boomer parents who would occupy the first floor for euchre parties, who gave me free reign to watch cable unsupervised upstairs. De Palma was all over that shit in that era. I respect those who got to watch superlative-laden masterpieces first run in a real theater, but that didn't happen for me and more than a lot of others. All of which is another way of saying that I hear you, and your point is well-made, but Raising Cain made me want to make movies (No joke. Flame on, I can take it.), and De Palma got to me before anyone else. Truth be told, E.T. got to me first, and I believe in dancing with them that brung you, but De Palma played with time, tone, and taste in a way that still tickles me. His moments beat a lot of "great directors" ouvres. Yeah, I'm that guy.

[Dylan]

De Palma says Domino "was not recut."

[Reverend Drewcifer]

I’m placing the cover price for the future tell-all book about this project into escrow. Paging Julie Salamon!

[knives]

So this wasn't nearly the disaster I was expecting, but it also is only interesting if you're sold on DePalma's aesthetic full stop. The script is possibly the worst he's ever worked with and the production quality only a level above a high school play. Except for Guy Pearce and the guy playing the partner all the performances are terrible. There's no making up this pig.

Yet, in the camera placement and editing DePalma is able to weave a theme dear to his heart. This is second only to Redacted as his voyeurism film. Us watching the screen and the characters watching other screens is presented in such a uniquely DePalma way that it made me fall in love despite how awful everything else is.

[tenia]

It's still a quite bad film. Script, pace, casting and even some ideas are just all over the place. I dont think there is much to save, especially since I found the finale to be quite awful too.
And while some DePalma fans claim that the result is bad because DePalma couldnt get what he wants done, I wonder if there ever was a good movie somewhere in there that could have happened under different circomstances. I doubt it.
It does probably make for a tremendous drunk watch, though.

[knives]

DePalma is definitely fully to blame for bad and good. There's too much of him here to let him off the hook.