Dillinger 2.0

I saw Public Enemies today with my dad, at a 3:50 matinee with exactly two other people in the audience. It’s a good movie, with a solid performance by Johnny Depp, playing ‘30s bank robber John Dillinger without even a hint of Captain Jack Sparrow showing through. In contrast, Christian Bale, as the FBI agent pursuing Dillinger, does reprise the brooding mood we more often associate with Bruce Wayne: watching him brandish a machine gun while hanging onto the side of a speeding black police car, you have to wonder if he realizes it isn’t the Batmobile.

The film is exciting and generally well-paced, though it’s woefully inaccurate in some historical details, as Slate points out. (Though it’s apparently correct in its omission of the famous “woman in red,” instead showing her wearing white and orange.) One obvious inaccuracy comes from the casting: Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette didn’t have Marion Cotillard’s French accent, yet somehow this actually works.

Most striking for me, however, was the cinematography. From the early scenes of the film you can see the “shaky camera” technique that sparked so much comment about the Bourne trilogy. In many scenes the viewpoint wobbles slightly, unpredictably, as if we’re a character in the scene watching the action or – not quite the same thing – recording it ourselves on our own personal camera. (To be clear, I think Public Enemies does this more, and more noticeably, than its predecessors. It doesn’t look like it was shot on a camcorder; The Bourne Ultimatum looks like it was shot on a camcorder. Public Enemies often looks like it was shot on a cell phone.)

There’s much to say about whether this “you are there” immediacy helps or hurts thrillers like the Bournes. But the shaky cameras in Public Enemies give it a jarring modern feel. Perhaps it was also the odd lighting (several scenes seemed suffused with a bright yellow light, as if shot inside on my old camera) and/or the digital projection (the theater was a snazzy new outfit called Rave – the Loews in the Square and Boston Common don’t have digital projection, do they?) that made me sometimes feel as though I were watching a home movie on YouTube. That’s not a sense I got from, say, Chicago or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and for good reason: we don’t expect movies about the 1930s to resemble YouTube clips.

Towards the end of the movie Dillinger watches Manhattan Melodrama, a 1934 action flick which presents its thrilling scenes, even a murder at a New York Rangers game, in matter-of-fact, steady, one (camera) shot packages. The contrast with the rest of Public Enemies is strong. The costumes and cars are period pieces, but the filmmaking is not.