After Hours 1985

I watched Martin Scorsese's inscrutable journey into the New York underbelly a few days ago and have not been able to shed it from my mind since.

For me it was quite unlike anything else I have seen of his, his closest work in feel may be Bringing out the dead, but actually they're not alike atall. Among other things it was characterful, mysterious, serious and tense, all while subverting my expectations. I have talked about it before, how some films feel like the director threw the book away, swang from the hip and did what they wanted without being constrained by audience comfort or logic. Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia gives me thus vibe in spades, and After Hours gives me some of the same satisfaction. It felt, to use the far overworked term, 'dream-like'. A quality I very much admire in filmmaking. There are different types of it though, there is the type delivered by creative visuals such as in the inimitable La Haine, the type delivered by unexplainable goings on like in mulholland drive.

This was more aling thenlines of things like The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice, where eccentric, often stereotypical characters inexplicably crop up to add to the other-worldly feel and drive the plot forward. Interestingly, and to the film's credit, you don't necessarily expect that all the characters and events will lead to a final destination. If feels like a journey, and in many ways, that is all it is. I loved it, and it deserves to be talked about much more.