Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Michael Mann's Masterpiece
From the first image, the viewer is immediately thrust into a situation with no explanation and no dialogue. It takes a few seconds before it is revealed to be a blindfolded man who is being driven through a busy, noisy Middle Eastern city. What's going on here? Who is he? The rush of noises and images is an assault on the senses. The blindfolded man, Lowell Bergman (Pacino), is here to set up an interview with the Sheik for 60 Minutes. Michael Mann introduces Bergman in this fashion to grab the audience's attention with a single detail and then gradually expands out to the bigger picture, which symbolizes the film's structure and its style. The events in the picture are created from a single event and everything grows from that one incident.This scene establishes the no-nonsense tone of the movie and the professionalism of the characters. Lowell Bergman is a worldly man who is not afraid to speak his mind. He is willing to go, literally, blind into a potentially dangerous situation to get what he wants. He is a consummate professional who knows how to handle things: the quintessential Mann protagonist. In a way, the professional nature of Mann's characters is reminiscent of the no-nonsense characters that populate the films of Howard Hawks and Don Siegel.Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe)'s introduction is also important in how it establishes his character. He is shown in the foreground of the scene but is out of focus. There is a party going on in the background that is in focus but we cannot hear it. Wigand is almost obscured by the party goers who are oblivious to him. Wigand is all alone in his office which establishes right away that he is an isolated protagonist. This is reinforced by the shot of him in his office: it is dark, he is alone, very quiet.While the family life scenes in Heat felt weak and under-developed, they are much stronger and are more crucial to the narrative in The Insider. It doesn't hurt that he's got an excellent cast here: Lindsay Crouse, Diane Venora, Christopher Plummer, Philip Baker Hall, et al.One of Mann's strengths is how he conveys expositional dialogue. This is very difficult without boring an audience conditioned to tune out during long, talky scenes. However, a scene between Bergman and his co-workers over lunch works because of how Mann shoots and edits the scene. They are sitting around talking and brainstorming about Wigand and the danger of interviewing him. There is a lot of exposition and facts about tobacco being thrown around but Mann uses multiple camera set-ups and has such talented actors speaking the dialogue that it keeps everything interesting. There are a lot of different camera angles in this scene but the editing is not done in a rapid-fire haphazard fashion like in a Michael Bay film where no shot lasts for more than thirty seconds. There is the feeling that Mann knows what an edit means and that they are not intrusive but rather allow the scene to flow organically.The scene between Bergman and Wigand in the Japanese restaurant is the centerpiece of the film; much in the same way that the Lecktor/Graham conversation in Manhunter and the Hanna/McCauley restaurant scene in Heat are important because they all represent the meeting of the driving forces of their respective films. The characters meet, verbally spar with each other, convey, either implicitly or explicitly, their worldview and most important sort things out between each other. The dialogue in this scene really crackles and pops with intensity.The DVD is a bit of a disappointment. While the transfer is top notch and the audio is fantastic, the lack of extras is a missed opportunity to be sure. This film deserves the deluxe Criterion Collection treatment. Mann has been revisiting some of his films lately, with a new edition of Manhunter with an audio commentary and new 2-DVD special editions of Heat and Ali on the horizon. Who knows?