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Hi Jane, I certainly agree with you that Ursula was confident in herself as an artist. In the documentary and in her time as a guest speaker, she spoke to the point. While she gave insightful answers, she didn’t talk verbosely, even though her art certainly displayed her genius level abilities. It is a sign of a humble personality to not put herself above her art. This straightfoward approach is displayed through her work ethic, as without this she would not be able to complete her works that are characteristically large-scale and detailed. People who are not artists tend to have a perception that artists are troubled geniuses, who rely on bouts of inspiration and high-minded philosophy to create their great works. In reality, the most integral part of being an artist is consistently fine-tuning your craft in a regular routine.
I agree with you that Matteo provided a very emotional performance, elevating the movie through his acting in a way that “a script could never provide”. I think that the movie would have been better had more focus been given to Matteo’s backstory and to him in general. I think that a better script would have given his character much more depth and would make his performance even better. A great performance needs a great actor and a great script and I think Matteo’s role only possessed the former. His frustration due to being an empath with no one to love speaks to a universal human truth that people need people in order to be happy. If this family had never come along, which would have been extremely likely, he would have died alone. If he reached out to other artists then he could have lived a more fulfilling life. While he couldn’t control his physical health, he could have gotten therapy and reached out to people with similar interests.
@Varin
I find your interpretation of the camcorder as symbolic of Christy’s “non discriminating perspective” as a unique observation. I think many times the physical props themselves are taken for face value. This is probably because in everyday life people do not look at the symbolic value of their items but for the functionality of the items. However, film is art and not reality so each of these items was carefully chosen to represent an element of the story. What other props do you think have a symbolic meaning as opposed to a functional one? For example, I would say that the air conditioner was a function of the story because of the intense NYC summer. On the contrary, Matteo’s paint is symbolic of his transformation through the movie into a person with depth.
Matteo’s acting stood out to me as a performance that could have been more coherent. Matteo’s jump from “crazy artist” to “loving family man” could have used a better segue. Gradual development from these two axes would have created a more fluid transition. Gradual development could be seen by keeping the same axes of Matteo’s development from the beginning and the end. However, this direction might not be taken because of concerns about the length of the film or too much scene changes.
Another way in which Matteo’s character development could have improved is by decreasing the range between Point A (Audience’s first interaction with Matteo) and Point B(Audience’s last interaction with Matteo. If Point A is brought closer to Point B, then Matteo will be softer and not as extreme of a character. This would make Matteo’s interactions with the other characters more seamless, but at the cost of shock value. If Point B is brought closer to Point A, then Matteo will stay as a wild card with a smaller change. If this approach is taken, then the movie will need to reckon with how this changes Matteo’s spiritual connection to the new baby and his $30,000 donation to the family.
A scene where the difference in these two viewpoints would be clearly expressed is the Trick-or-Treating scene. Matteo looking outside the door over and over again appeared highly suspicious in the movie. Matteo gave off the impression that he would harm the children and was looking to see if the parents were following their children. After this scene, him hugging the children is an example poor character development. If this scene was taken with the “Point B oriented” approach his acting in this scene would have been friendlier. This could be expressed by having opened the door much earlier, and the development might be easier if he went from sad to happy, as opposed to angry to happy. If Matteo’s character was closer to the Point A axis, this scene could bring a lot of interest in terms of shock value. Fighting with Johnny or scaring the kids could be a way that his wild side is expressed. Whether the movie choses to take the A or B approach, the original character development does not fit. The children reacting to Matteo as completely non-threatening and laughing at him after the whole movie up to that point diminishes Matteo’s depth as a human being.
In most great movies, character development is logical and fitting to the context of the character and the overall movie. An example of a movie that does this well is Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”. While Jack Torrance is a completely different character at the end of the movie versus the beginning, the scenes in between make his devolvement into an axe murderer perfectly sensical. A similar logical development in Matteo would have greatly improved Matteo’s acting and the film itself.
I like what you said about Corrigan having to battle his personal demeons in order to keep up his solid Christian world view. At times those vices become unbearable for him and reality is changing around him. It goes to show how scary it can be when our realities are being tested by something. The need to adapt to environment and the turmoils through changing what we do have shown as themes of human nature through story telling. The medium of story telling, like Christ, is equally accounted for rooted in being with an incredible sense of morality. It offers the perspective that we are fighting against an “Evil” which being our vices and our interactions with other. The sense of meaning attached to the fight against our emotions is strong.
I find your response fascinating because I wrote about the similarities between the story of Jesus and the story of Corrigan. A common pattern in how we interpret art is through a larger medium than just our eyes and in the experiences. I agree when you described Corrigan as someone full of empathy. I was at first hesitant but after realizing all of the pain he had to go through as a pacifist it makes sense that he does that through an incredible sheer amount of morality. Which connects to the Jesus allegory again.
I didn’t at all think about the Christ allegory until I already analyzed his character progression through his age. It was interesting that I stumbled upon that after hearing the similar stories “reverse engineered”. It goes to show what effect our culture has on our own interpretation of culture itself and how the medium of novels are written.
Hi Liam,
This is a brilliant observation in a way that I hadn’t interpreted “Smoke” before. The act of trying to escape from loneliness with other lonely people reminds me of a Billy Joel lyric from Piano Man – “They are sharing a drink they call “Loneliness” but it’s better than drinking alone.” It’s a pretty big source of irony that New York is one of the largest cities in the world, yet people feel so alone. New Yorkers have become so desensitized to giant swarms of people yet they feel like the only people in the roomHi Chris,
I agree that smoke is a metaphor, however I disagree that the film aged poorly because the film “isn’t even about smoke”. My opinion is partly attributed to that most of my favorite movies have a lot of smoking in them, (Fight Club, Goodfellas) so smoking seemed to filter through my senses as ordinary and commonplace. A similar filtration would occur with someone who watches recent movies where characters are using iPhones. Additionally, I think that the title of the movie is meant to be “not even about smoke”. In my opinion, the screenwriter was aware that naming the film Smoke would throw the audience off balance, as the movie’s essence has nothing to do with smoking.
Javier Jbara
