It's tempting to just give all of the credit (or all of the blame, or both) to David Mamet for this adaptation of his play about a regular businessman in a complete downward spiral in one night, Edmond. And why not? He wrote the screenplay, too, and nearly every scene where characters speak, even the ones that seem perfunctory like with the peep-show hooker, screams the voice of the man. And oddly enough, from what I've heard about the play (not seen or read by me) is that it's actually not one of his best, or not at the maturity that one saw in his best bilious and wordy-ranty work like Glengarry Glen Ross. But one must not also forget that it's a Stuart Gordon film too, and it bears some of his signatures as well, whatever those may be.
Perhaps one of those is a harrowing and truly dark view of people, of not just the main character but the supporting players Edmund meets on his journey into a (self-imposed) Dante circle. At the least, to give Gordon his due, it doesn't always come off like a stage play. That is because of its various locations (think Falling Down meets After Hours set in Mamet and Gordons' home turf of Chicago), and its in-and-out characters, and its fine camera-work, that it's not stagey... for at least most of the time. And another thing Gordon is good at, which one finds out surprisingly enough of all places on the DVD documentary for Re-Animator, is getting really good work from actors via rehearsal. For this material, I think you'd have to, if nothing else to get the beats of Mamet right. For what it's worth, Edmund is a well directed film, never fussy and moving at a brisk pace for 82 minutes.
But then why the gripe? Why then should a movie not totally work when it's got William H. Macy almost outdoing the everyman-going-nuts saga of Michael Douglas in Falling Down- possibly Macy going so deliciously but sadly off the edge that his Jerry from Fargo looks well-composed by comparison- and the great scenes he has with walk-on players Julia Stiles and Joe Montegna and (yes, wow) Mena Suvari? Well, sadly, most of this can be put on Mamet, and his tendency to overwrite scenes or, particularly when Edmund is in jail, to keep talking past the point of something being grounded in reality for the character to leap off into rant-mode about the state of fear and death and human existence. Maybe Gordon could be at fault for not cutting it as well, or being so precious with Mamet's words (albeit they're more than likely good theater friends).
Edmund is precisely bleak and scary and a view of people that doesn't sugar-coat things. There's a moment in the scene between Edmund and the waitress he picks up in the bedroom that is quite amazing where we see that she isn't entirely a sympathetic victim and until a certain point in the conversation the two could get along well as bigoted and jaded viewers of society. Maybe that's the point of Mamet's story and the film, that there's some ills in society and people should (or in some cases should definitely not) take a harder look. If only it all gelled together without the pretension and the weak ending.
Perhaps one of those is a harrowing and truly dark view of people, of not just the main character but the supporting players Edmund meets on his journey into a (self-imposed) Dante circle. At the least, to give Gordon his due, it doesn't always come off like a stage play. That is because of its various locations (think Falling Down meets After Hours set in Mamet and Gordons' home turf of Chicago), and its in-and-out characters, and its fine camera-work, that it's not stagey... for at least most of the time. And another thing Gordon is good at, which one finds out surprisingly enough of all places on the DVD documentary for Re-Animator, is getting really good work from actors via rehearsal. For this material, I think you'd have to, if nothing else to get the beats of Mamet right. For what it's worth, Edmund is a well directed film, never fussy and moving at a brisk pace for 82 minutes.
But then why the gripe? Why then should a movie not totally work when it's got William H. Macy almost outdoing the everyman-going-nuts saga of Michael Douglas in Falling Down- possibly Macy going so deliciously but sadly off the edge that his Jerry from Fargo looks well-composed by comparison- and the great scenes he has with walk-on players Julia Stiles and Joe Montegna and (yes, wow) Mena Suvari? Well, sadly, most of this can be put on Mamet, and his tendency to overwrite scenes or, particularly when Edmund is in jail, to keep talking past the point of something being grounded in reality for the character to leap off into rant-mode about the state of fear and death and human existence. Maybe Gordon could be at fault for not cutting it as well, or being so precious with Mamet's words (albeit they're more than likely good theater friends).
Edmund is precisely bleak and scary and a view of people that doesn't sugar-coat things. There's a moment in the scene between Edmund and the waitress he picks up in the bedroom that is quite amazing where we see that she isn't entirely a sympathetic victim and until a certain point in the conversation the two could get along well as bigoted and jaded viewers of society. Maybe that's the point of Mamet's story and the film, that there's some ills in society and people should (or in some cases should definitely not) take a harder look. If only it all gelled together without the pretension and the weak ending.