It’s what lends a tragic dimension to all the violence. Noel: I think your point about the sense of camaraderie in the community is key.
Within the course of a single elaborate tracking shot (or a series, as there are a number in the early going), the Hughes brothers map out an entire world, introduce its players, and lay the foundation for the ugliness that will follow. That’s part of what makes the lifestyle so seductive, and why it sucks Caine in. Their lives are not a joyless trudge to the grave they also have sunshine, barbecues, pretty girls, and a world of easy pleasures.
Circumstances might have forced them to grow up quick, but they’re still fundamentally kids. Nathan: Part of what makes the long tracking shot of the party so effective is that it establishes that even though violence and death exist all around these characters, they’re committed to enjoying themselves.
MENACE TO SOCIETY CHEESEBURGER MOVIE
He’s just differentiating between his friends enough that the movie can feel a sense of inevitable, terrible progression as they die off one by one. In Menace II Society, some of the people Caine introduces are never developed-because they’re killed before viewers can get to know them. With Scorsese, most of the people introduced in those early-movie blitzkriegs turn out not to matter much they’re around for the same reason as the “Look at all my stuff!” montage at the beginning of Wolf Of Wall Street, with a protagonist establishing the wallpaper of his daily life. Here, it just feels borrowed, though it is an efficient way to set up the rest of the story. That follow-shot and the here-are-the-players sequence are such Scorsese signature-seen Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf Of Wall Street, just for starters-that it feels like a cliché when Scorsese does it now. Tasha: Even with the introductory narration explaining how Caine was basically born into a society of gangsters, I still didn’t clue into the Scorsese-ness until the sequence where Caine travels through a party with a camera at his back, and comes out on the other side among his peers, whom he introduces in a flurry of names and brief distinguishing characteristics.
It’s inescapable, the basic tenor of everyday life. The impression left most deeply for me is the rage and conflict present in virtually every scene. Though the Hughes brothers are following Caine as he’s trying to avoid his parents’ tragic legacy, they take an almost episodic approach to storytelling, treating the film as a slice of life as much as a straight-ahead crime-and-redemption story. The Scorsese-style voiceover narration could stand to be more vivid, but it does a fine enough job of establishing this milieu as a place of constant violence and retribution, from which no one can find quarter. Seeing it again today, for the first time since 1993, I recognize that I had seen something like it-Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas-and the film is rougher around the edges than it seemed at the time. Scott: My reaction to seeing Menace II Society in theaters was absolute astonishment-it was so stylish, so uncompromising, so relentlessly despairing in its depiction of hood life, and I’d never seen anything like it.
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