Reviews

Heat is of the best films I have ever seen, and I consider it one of the greatest ever made. Must a great movie be slick, artificially lit and laboriously plotted?

Heat is an honest and hilarious portrayal of dysfunction, ugliness and despair with comedic innocence at its core. It is a visionary look into the souls of the much-less-than-beautiful people in a sun-bleached setting where poverty and suicide lurk just around the corner to glamor (glamor that is only parodied by the impoverishment of the production). At the height of their improbability, the characters are more real, more vivid and enigmatic than 99.9% of Hollywood factory fare. In the moments of their most wooden acting, the fascinations of the real person - whether it be the gapingly numb Joe Dallesandro, the ogrishly preening Pat Ast or the gonzo mystery of Andrea Feldmen, emerges with overexposed brilliance.

Sylvia Miles plays her role with subtlety and iconic ugliness. She is not trying to look "marketable," as so many do, but to play a part as naturally as a spirited animal defecating in a forest. There is rarely an ending so original in a film, too - the impotence of further tragedy in an already so tragic film. Burning through the most awkward of 70s fashion and through its slick rivals with fashion-model actors, Heat is raw psychological meat on an open flame.

I think Fando and Lis is a masterpiece, and one of the least pretentious films I've seen. As it's 2 am and I've just watched it, I am not in a position to be articulate, but I'll sum up my reasons in the following, then come back in a few days and further the commentary.

1. I was never once bored. 2. How the hell did the director get this made, and have all the actors and extras participate in what to them must have seemed embarrassing and weird sacrilege? 3. It was epic poetic fantasy, using creative theatrical games, fresh play of props and brilliant mise en scene - tapping into all kinds of primal emotions, fears and desires. 4. He makes good the limits of the medium. Even the high contrast black-and- white served its purpose; when Fando tries to convince Lis there are flowers, the surrounding many stones and bric-a-brac suggest flowers to the viewer. Where faded acoustics must have reigned given the budget and desert landscape, he fills the soundtrack with compelling auditory images. 5. It's a combination of Fellini's 81/2 (the bewildered director as lover) and La Strada, but even more personal; with more guts; rawer, fresher. 6. Who could deny the plaintively lovely Lis? The forlorn fawning seductress? And wasn't Fando a charming and silly chap, full of fondness for living when he wasn't cast in the role of the brute? And wasn't their chemistry palpable?

Above all, I was moved. I recognized it both as a simple love story toting the truism that love has no road map, and a cry from the wilderness. It was authentic scream of a soul to FEEL the experience of living, good and bad. Watch this film when you're lost - when your heart aches with unfulfilled desires - you want your dead parents back or the lover you mistreated. Watch it then. You'll know what the hell it's about.