'Your excuses are your own'
'A man is his job'
Glengarry Glen Ross 9.2
A small real estate sales team, most of which are approaching the end of thier tether, are given an ultimatum - to start closing sales or find other jobs, which forces desperate measures. This film succeeds on many fronts. Mostly for me it is an uncommonly engrossing examination of men under pressure, which is achieved through accomplished filmmaking and writing and acting of the hightest quality.
This film isn't overly story centric, but there are mechanics to drive the plot, although they feel mostly secondary - this isn't a criticism, but testament to the strength of the world building. It all revolves around fresh new promising sales leads; a stack of pretty pink envelopes wrapped in gold ribbon, like an early 1940s bakery cake box. We hear early on that the office manager, played by an on form Kevin Spacey, goes home in the evening for 2 hours, then comes back to the office to see if any sales have been closed and take the resulting contracts to the bank. This he says almost in passing but it has great significance to events later on. Growing desperation among the ranks leads to desperate measures - the crime (details of which I will avoid) happens off camera and bang on half way through, which makes an interesting centerpiece. Everything we see before the event is a negative feeling, noir inspired rainy night, everything that's after - in fine daytime. More on that shortly.
The four salesmen all complain that 'the leads are garbage' and 'you can't whip a dead horse', and it is hard not to sympathise (the audience perspective is solidly with them). The company sees one agent doing very well so has little sympathy, any protestations fall on deaf ears, leaving the sellers to find their own way out of the mess. We get the idea and learn through dialogue that this is nothing new, causing the men to respond with agitation not motivation. Interestingly, some of them act like addicts who haven't had a hit in a while, begging for just one more to get them started. Their jobs are so ingrained in them that it's hard to picture them doing anything else, or not being at work, and at no point do we see that. We hear them use different underhanded techniques to create good impressions over the phone, one calls himself the VP of the company (which happens in Wolf of Wall Street, perhaps as a sly nod to Glengarry), another says he only has a moment to talk etc. Seeing them approach their work differently engages the audience to metaphorically assign themselves to a tactic, or a defense.
The sales environment is captured to a tee. Most people have never worked in high pressure sales, but those that have will most likely relate to alot of this. I have served my time, and see many things in the film that I have been familiar with; meetings around countless acronyms, leads that have been in the system for ages, false customer interest and of course, tension within the sales team and managers. Their middle manager (Spacey) is pacified, disrespected and talked over, mainly because he is young and not a salesman himself- he doesn't understand the plight of the team, this again plants our perspective and empathy with the sellers.
Yet another strength of the film, in fact the star of the show, has to be the wonderful performances from the entire cast. This is one of those films where much of the joy of the experience comes from being in a room with all of this talent. The top level acting helps bring to life the great writing of the supremely well defined and realised characters, so well written in fact that after spending just a relatively short time with the characters, the office dynamics are made very clear, helped by the portrayals. Each member of the main team hits extraordinary acting heights, none more so than the veteran Jack Lemmon playing Shelley 'The Machine' Lavine, whose scene in a customer's house is a masterclass of line delivery. He barges in to what is no better than a cold lead, acts overly confident and tries to not take no for an answer, but we can tell immediately there is no chance. It is at once cringey to behold and very telling of the character, it reminded me of the scene in Swingers of Jon Favreau leaving multiple voivemails. Shelley is an expert at controlling the tone and tempo of his voice, a staple of telesales work, his character often sounds like he is pitching in his sales voice either to customers, colleagues or management. He really shows off his acting skills more in the scene at the end where Spacey has him all ends up, he has dropped himself in it and he realises he's been caught out but can't show that he knows (it reminded me of one of the best moments from one of my top ten films Magnolia, when Tom Cruise is caught out by an interviewer and has to try and keep calm) Once Shelley admits it, the camera position changes from the close ups we have become acustomed to, to a shot of him sat at the other end of the room. All of a sudden he looks small, he shrinks inward and alone in space, a great moment of cinematography. It is significant that we, the audience, are also kept in the dark about the culprit until Spacey finds out.
The rest of the sales force is made up by screen legends Al Pacino, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris. Harris, who is almost always great, and Alan Arkin are perhaps more minor characters but are still given some wonderful dialogue to deliver, especially in the second half after the break in. That is the only time when the team is all together, and it's an absolute triumph. The team dynamics have been simmering away for an hour and there is lots to be said, most of which is. Pacino delivers one of the finest performances of his career playing the slick loudmouth Roma, by far the most successful of the team, and the casting works. As an actor he has had the most effervescent career of the lot, you can see a salesman in him. We don't see alot of Roma to begin with, but see his impressive numbers so we wonder how he is doing it. Then we see him with a customer, and we see he does approach things differently to his colleagues in one major way- he isn't talking about the product! He seems to have no front like the others do.. he is effortless. He comes across more like a philosophical life coach to his client.
The talking brings us to another way in which the film succeeds, the David Mamet written dialogue, from a script based on his own play. The characters are always talking like real people, like real sales people - using terms that can only have come from that world. Admirably there is no effert to simplify the script so that everyone can understand every word, there is no underestimating the audience, it helps make it thoroughly engrossing through just conversations. This really works in engaging an audience's attention, a great example is the late requiem mass dictation scene at the end of the all time 2nd best film I've ever seen, Amadeus.
Directed by James foley who uses lots of close ups on the characters to engage us with them and take us into their world, plus some nice moving camera shots. The backgrounds are rarely given any detail, not just in shot composition, this also goes for the characters. The tone of the film is very interesting (as previously mentioned) the first half is presented almost like a film noir. The first half of the story takes place on a pessimistic feeling, rainy, dark evening (pathetic fallacy symbolising a dire situation, it reminded me of Se7en) with interior shots showing brightly neon lit windows. Plus sleazy noir-ish sounding music (reminded me of the wonderful Chinatown score) during their sales calls. The second half takes place during the next morning, bright and well-lit, with less close ups. It feels much more optimistic, even though the story events are in theory worse than the first half, although perhaps the pressure has been lifted somewhat. I feel like this must be a conscious decision with meaning, reflecting the dichotomy of before and after and representing the release of tension. For a film with no 'action', it is fast-paced (even opening titles shown like they are being viewed through a speeding train) and builds lots of tension, plus the odd gob-smacking moment.
So between all aspects of the production, the acting and the writing especially, it is fair to say that the technical aspects of the film are done to a genius level. At no point is any aspect of the production less than 100% convincing. All in all it is a symphony of wonderful physical and verbal character acting, on a par perhaps with 12 angry men on that basis. The film sells itself perfectly, and I bought it.
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