One middle school summer, I had to write a few book reports. After thoroughly enjoying My Name Is Asher Lev, my mother encouraged me to read Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. My Uncle Mike, a poet and English professor, pushed for it further. I expected to be shocked with some legendary writing. Something that would fertilize my brain in the long, spaced out days of summer. What I did not expect was to be bored. Completely, utterly bored. Every line felt simple to a fault. It seemed to plod along, like a small boat bobbing in the calmest of waters, no land or fish in sight.
It wasn’t until a couple years later in my 9th grade Honors English class that I’d have to face this tedium again. As my eyes scanned the syllabus, there it was. That dreadful Hemingway fish book! Oh, joy! But what I didn’t account for is how much a difference a different perspective can make. This time, we would be led by my delightfully wacky English teacher, an older, energetic man who would often tell us on Fridays that if he wasn’t back at work on Monday, he was probably in jail for nonviolent protesting (this did happen). Slowly and surely, he fed us the meta meat of the novel. At the time of writing it, Hemingway couldn’t drown out the critical voices. Many wondered if he was past his prime, if he’d never write a book as good as his previous classics. He spent many a day drunk and beside himself, struggling to wrestle a story into shape. When you know this, it all clicks in place. Hemingway is the old man. The book is the fish. The struggle is exhausting and depressing and uncertain. All the sudden, a book I felt devoid of life was rushing with all the colors of vitality. It became – and still is – one of my favorite books ever.
I thought about this a lot after watching Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film After Hours. I don’t remember what compelled me to seek it out beyond hearing Catherine O’Hara – who my wife and I had been so lovingly enjoying in Schitt’s Creek – had a part in it. I felt compelled and thus a library hold was made.
But by the end of the 97 minute run time, we sat aback on the couch, completely baffled. What the hell had we just seen? There was no doubt of the filmmaking skill involved – the combination of Scorsese and Michael Ballhaus’ swift-moving camera and Schoonmaker’s rhythmic editing. All the actor’s brought their best game, as they always do with Scorsese. But…it didn’t quite add up to more than one dude having a really bad, never-ending night. So before we could dismiss it as something terrible, I offered that maybe the problem wasn’t the film, but rather that we weren’t quite seeing what it was going for. That there had to be some kind of meta-textual component running through it if Scorsese, already a legend with Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Raging Bull (among many others), would indulge his time and efforts in this script written by a film student.
I didn’t have my fabulous 9th grade English professor to set the table. So I looked online. And of course I’d find what I needed in a 2009 essay review from Roger Ebert. There, he gave some valuable context (some of which I’ve just mentioned). But the most poignant is the one that feels the most like a parallel to Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea. A great way to look at – if not the way to look at it, according to Ebert – is as an allegory for Scorsese’s frustrations with making The Last Temptation of Christ, a movie that wouldn’t be released until three years later.
Executives kept reassuring him that all was going well with that film, backers said they had the money, Paramount green-lighted it, agents promised it was a “go,” everything was in place, and then time after time an unexpected development would threaten everything. In “After Hours,” each new person Paul meets promises that they will take care of him, make him happy, lend him money, give him a place to stay, let him use the phone, trust him with their keys, drive him home – and every offer of mercy turns into an unanticipated danger.
By the time a demoralized Scorses took a look at Joseph Minion’s script, the man just wanted to play. He wanted to get back in the gym and show everyone he could stay make any shot. Lead actor Griffin Dunne – so excellent throughout – is our Scorsese doppelgänger, a man who means well but just cannot, cannot find his way home.
From there, it all snapped into place. After Hours, like The Old Man and the Sea before it, belongs on that shelf of Art Electrified by the Metastory. It’s as skillful as anything Scorsese’s done, and just goes to show you how much a man exorcising his demons can do when he’s just given a chance.
