Manhunter

“Fear is not what you owe me.” Really can’t be overstated how much Michael Mann’s serene, nightly sensibilities lend themselves to Thomas Harris’ horror fiction. Although I don’t think anybody can argue that Jonathan Demme hasn’t basically defined the Lecter series with his film, I don’t think he can quite take away the marvel of what Mann accomplished with Manhunter. The obsessive, dizzyingly intimate approach of the novel is consummate material for the themes that Mann so frequently draws back upon. Although I always remembered loving the film, there was a part of me that had started to wonder if William Petersen wasn’t perhaps a bit too pretty to be Will Graham, a character I have always envisioned (to be as clear a descriptor as I can) to have a Mark Ruffalo or Gary Oldman sort of quality. Upon rewatch, Petersen comes goddamned closed to the ideal realization of Graham. As archetypal a Mann protagonist as Neil McCauley or Enzo Ferrari: a man who is only really his truest self in his work, out there with the ghouls and the monsters in the dark, with sharp eyes and an almost fetishized fixation on understanding his target. Found myself particularly struck by the way in which Dante Spinotti (his first of five Mann films) shoots all of it. There’s an ethereal, otherworldly quality to his compositions. FBI labs feel alien and glistening, the woods feel vast and cold and twisting, the ocean feels vast and the sky falls gargantuan. There’s also a potent sense of bursting color and shading that lends so much of the film’s visual style it’s typical flair. Spinotti’s first collaboration with Mann is indicative of so much of the staples of their work together: namely that shaking, erratic handheld camerawork that throws you into the lap of whatever is happening. The foremost example of this comes during the film’s climax when Graham’s police cruiser screams through the woods towards Dolarhyde’s home, whipping and drifting so hard that the camera seems to soar with it before jolting tightly back into place. Marry that to the droning, veering score by Michael Rubini and the Reds (who aren’t Tangerine Dream, but goddamn do they have that same heat) and you’ve got some cinematic juice that feels like steroids. Mann’s films often feel like a pressure cooker: simmering and simmering until the top is about to blow. You can see Manhunter constantly tightening and tightening like it’s on the verge of a cold, clear snap. And when it does, it’s fascinating watching such a tactical and programatic game of cat and mouse explode into something so abrasive and dizzying. Very few images in cinema get my heart thundering like the sight of Will Graham leaping through that window into the lair of the Tooth Fairy while that Iron Butterfly guitar solo shreds the sound system. Although it doesn’t really double down on the emotional complexity of works like Heat or Thief, I’m not sure Michael Mann’s ever made a film so dangerous or dark. Captivatingly sinister, an all-timer nighttime odyssey.