Manhunter

Saw this about to leave the Criterion Channel and refused to let it go without witnessing a great becoming once more. I don’t know if there is another film around that creates the sense of being lost in the pursuit of others thoughts anywhere close to this. Manhunter is Michael Mann rendering psychosexual dreamscapes that bleed through the subconscious until you’re wearing the mask through the void. The idea that you’d visually commit to explaining what these characters cannot express through words is magic to me. The colors, the architecture, the synth all culminate into one of the most vivid and emotionally intimate expressions of absorption that I previously didn’t even know possible. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced or will going forward, this is one of the few that’s hard for me to even properly articulate the impact this has had on me. While I understand such impressionistic intensity may not resonate as strongly with others but this genuinely moves me to tears every time. Such desire and detachment as you willingly give yourself up to be destroyed, in this films case it’s a longing that can only be explained through images colliding into moods and ultimately being lost forever. The grocery store scene between Will Graham and his son still remains the most maybe the most thoughtful rendering of psychological cracks in the masculine ideology as he tells his young child that he’s not well because he feels compelled to stop this. Desperate to keep those he loves shielded from these urges because he has to keep telling himself that this could be his family in a split second if not for him, it all comes down to his willingness to walk into the fire. The color blue was invented right here for this very film. If there is anything that needs an updated 4k rerelease from Criterion it’s Manhunter, the definitive Hannibal Lector (Lecktor) adaptation and a cold cut diamond masterpiece from 1980’s. You combine this with Miami Vice’s full run from the 80s and you realize that Michael Mann is the single most influential figure on contemporary crime dramas and psychologically oriented procedurals. You can trace everything from the past 40 years back to these stylistic tendencies which have been crudely, and unsuccessfully mimicked more than anyone else. Michael Mann