User:TPoole/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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Other aspects of the cinematic style repeatedly remind us that ''Beyond the Law'' is a “fantasy.” Music is used more prodigiously than in ''Wild 90'', punctuating important moments of action, such as when a cop pushes a crook down a hallway and threatens him with a police baton. And then there are numerous different wipe transitions, ranging from one that looks like a splash of paint to another that resembles a car’s windshield wiper. Once again, it is as if fiction and non-fiction wrestle in a cinematic competition.

If ''Wild 90'' is little more than a record of three men trapped in a room, ''Beyond the Law'' attempts to convey a clear theme. All of the horrible things that crooks do are matched, at least to a degree, by all of the horrible things that the police do. “There is no police brutality in this precinct,” one cop ironically tells a criminal while roughing him up. The mayor (George Plimpton) calls Pope “sadistic,” and Pope himself announces that it is “time to become

corrupt” when he meets a woman at a restaurant who has earlier been arrested for taking part in an S&M party.

''Beyond the Law'' ends with Lieutenant Pope, Mickey Burke, and Rocco Gibraltar staring into the camera. Like ''Wild 90'', the taboo is violated, but here it is more pronounced. Three characters acknowledge us, the audience who has been staring at them.

For Mailer, the complicated interplay between documentary film aesthetics and fictional film narratives culminated in his third film, ''Maidstone''. Much as Oliver Stone’s work with fact and fiction (as in his use of mixed media and what he termed “vertical editing”) moved from ''JFK'' (1991) through ''Natural Born Killers'' (1994) to ''Nixon'' (1995), so too did Mailer’s interest in filming “fiction in documentary form” move from experimentation to mastery.

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 Other aspects of the cinematic style repeatedly remind us that ''Beyond the Law'' is a “fantasy.” Music is used more prodigiously than in ''Wild 90'', punctuating important moments of action, such as when a cop pushes a crook down a hallway and threatens him with a police baton. And then there are numerous different wipe transitions, ranging from one that looks like a splash of paint to another that resembles a car’s windshield wiper. Once again, it is as if fiction and non-fiction wrestle in a cinematic competition.
+If ''Wild 90'' is little more than a record of three men trapped in a room, ''Beyond the Law'' attempts to convey a clear theme. All of the horrible things that crooks do are matched, at least to a degree, by all of the horrible things that the police do. “There is no police brutality in this precinct,” one cop ironically tells a criminal while roughing him up. The mayor (George Plimpton) calls Pope “sadistic,” and Pope himself announces that it is “time to become
+corrupt” when he meets a woman at a restaurant who has earlier been arrested for taking part in an S&M party.
+''Beyond the Law'' ends with Lieutenant Pope, Mickey Burke, and Rocco Gibraltar staring into the camera. Like ''Wild 90'', the taboo is violated, but here it is more pronounced. Three characters acknowledge us, the audience who has been staring at them.
+For Mailer, the complicated interplay between documentary film aesthetics and fictional film narratives culminated in his third film, ''Maidstone''. Much as Oliver Stone’s work with fact and fiction (as in his use of mixed media and what he termed “vertical editing”) moved from ''JFK'' (1991) through ''Natural Born Killers'' (1994) to ''Nixon'' (1995), so too did Mailer’s interest in filming “fiction in documentary form” move from experimentation to mastery.