It is tempting to call the 1990s a golden age of neo-noir, but the subgenre has never really gone away. The framework of it – detectives, dames, scandals, murder – is too reliable, an easy way for filmmakers to explore humanity’s darkest impulses without having to resort to the ponderous art-house trappings of, say, Ingmar Bergman. L.A. Confidential and Devil in a Blue Dress are the gold standard of the genre from the last decade of the twentieth century, but there are also several other examples that have been lost to time, or at least to the byzantine rules of video streaming libraries. Now on Amazon Prime, the neo-noir Mulholland Falls, is a period thriller with a stellar cast that explores masculinity through a modern lens. It does not rejuvenate neo-noir like Chinatown, although it does justice to its inspiration, and that is enough.
Instead of a private detective who traverses both sides of the law, director Lee Tamahori and screenwriter Pete Dexter follow cops who dispense karmic justice with impunity. Nick Nolte plays Max Hoover, the leader of a small detective squad in the Los Angeles Police Department that answers to no one and follows its own rules. In the opening scene, Hoover and the others (including Chazz Palminteri as his best friend, Coolidge) interrupt a Chicago gangster (William Petersen) at dinner. Rather than give him a warning or arrest him, the squad drags the gangster from the restaurant, then throws him from a cliff off Mulholland Drive (the drop from which the film gets its title). Dexter, who previously wrote the screenplay to the druggie cop thriller Rush, knows this opening is more about mood than plot. Nolte and his henchmen are gruff, so assured in their sense of right and wrong, that due process gets in the way. When the narrative does begin, it unfolds like a sick joke that is meant to undermine their unquestioned moral authority.
A body turns up at a construction site. The medical examiner identifies the corpse as Allison Pond (Jennifer Connelly), a young woman with whom Hoover was having an affair, something that immediately clouds his judgment. We see Hoover and Pond in flashback, where he woos her by murdering her abuser in front of her (via a lethal drug overdose). We know Hoover is married, and he keeps the secret of his infidelity from his wife (Melanie Griffith) for most of the film. As Hoover and his squad investigate further, they discover that Pond was the lover of General Timms (John Malkovich), the leader of the Atomic Energy Commission, and that her gay best friend, Jimmy Fields (Andrew McCarthy), secretly filmed all her trysts – including her affair with Hoover. Not unlike the homicide central to Chinatown, the murder in Mulholland Falls threatens to undermine all the postwar “progress” made by Los Angeles.
What distinguishes the film is not the plot or the characters’ behavior, but how the characters think. Hoover is not merely a brute or a failure, but a secret intellectual who is more in touch with his feelings than the typical noir hero. Yes, there is an inevitable confrontation between Hoover and his wife, but the scene has a sense of realism to it, depicting two people who genuinely love each other and must make sense of a deep betrayal. Still, it is the supporting characters who most give a 1990s sensibility to the classic noir framework. Fields is more than the Peter Lorre type, a caricature of a gay reprobate whose lascivious desires enable the plot – he’s a defiant man who resents his second-class status and tries to expose deeper hypocrisies.
While McCarthy plays against type from his Brat Pack days, Palminteri’s performance is similar to A Bronx Tale from a few years earlier. Sure, Coolidge is a bruiser of a detective, but he discusses his feelings with aching sincerity, a consequence of seeing a woman psychiatrist (perhaps the film inspired The Sopranos a little). The frequent discussions about his therapy and what it does for him become a kind of running joke and a commentary on noir in general. Who knows what might have been if Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or Jake Gittes had a trained, impartial therapist with whom they could unburden their feelings? Mulholland Falls suggests that a more modern prism of masculinity – sensitive, self-aware, more comfortable with ambiguity – would have helped these hardened, cynical men. But only up to a point.
For all its deconstruction and fine character-driven scenes, Mulholland Falls’ diversion into a more traditional thriller is where it falters. There are chases and shoot-outs, and the improbable climax takes place aboard a military plane. Tamahori handles the action competently, not thrillingly. L.A. Confidential also had its share of violence, but the screenplay (one of the best mainstream literary adaptations ever) had the patience and wisdom to fuse character and action together. In this film, the action is more out of obligation, not excitement, and you can sense that the actors have little passion for it. Throughout Mulholland Falls, the terrific costumes and period production design are an opportunity for the characters to chew the scenery, whether it’s Nolte’s signature snarl or Connelly’s turn as a sultry femme fatale who does not fully understand her command over men. A sense of fun happens below the surface, as if the actors know how lucky they are to appear in such a smart film, at least until the script loses its idiosyncratic, weary point of view.
Maybe if it ended with a group therapy session, not a gunfight, Mulholland Falls would be one of the great neo-noirs. Like Hoover’s attempt to gloss over his indiscretion, it is best not to dwell on the hypotheticals of the past, and to treat the film as a bygone artifact: a modestly budgeted thriller with a great cast that actually has something to say about the genre in which it operates.
The post Rediscover: Mulholland Falls appeared first on Spectrum Culture.