Brian De Palma-The World is Yours
(Some spoilers in the post).
Say Hello to my Little brother
I was one of those hated Scarface when i saw it first. I guess maybe i saw it a time, when i hated anything even remotely 80’s. And the movie was 80’s, right from Giorgio Moroder’s techno music to the over the top acting to the flashy, loud costumes . Add to it the dialogues spoken at a rapid staccato pace, that just went over my head, and Pacino’s thick drawl, trying to be as Cuban as possible. Sure there were some great moments, especially the chain saw ”murder” sequence, the cartoonish campy climax, and of course a certain Michelle Pfeiffer. But the rest of the movie just went by in a blur, and it really did not involve me as much. Repeated viewings off course made me love this movie, and to date remains one of my favorites. No, this was not a “nostalgia” induced, “Oh those days” moment, where everything i hated in the 80’s suddenly becomes cult and cool. There is still a lot of 80’s stuff i hate, Scarface was one of those movies, that i never liked the first time, but just came to grew on me in due time.
Scarface sure has a lot of great moments, the ”chainsaw” scene, Ms.Pfeiffer’s introduction, Pacino’s ”Make way for a bad guy” outburst in the restaurant, the opening introduction scene where Pacino is grilled by the immigration agents. But for me the moment comes in the ending. Now the climax was camp at it’s best. I mean Tony Montana( Al Pacino), has become a junkie, can’t move around properly, and yet he gets the strength, to go around firing at the thugs attacking him in his mansion, hollering out ” Say Hello to my Little brother” and what’s more the bullets he fire find their mark miraclously. It was more like a video game, fun, watching Tony go around firing at the goons, who keep creeping in from everywhere, until it ends, when Tony is hit in the back, making him fall dead in the swimming pool. The credits flash, and then the camera pans away from his dead body, on to a statue, and then focuses on the neon lit words
THE WORLD IS YOURS
That one moment, summed up the entire irony of it all. Tony did have the world at his feet, he had the money, he had the power, the girls, the mansion everything, what all a guy wanted. But now he was nothing, lying totally alone in the pool, floating around. And the irony hits further, when the cash bundles blow around, and the looters run for them, showing the power money has. Tony’s lavish mansion, is in a mess, as looters pillage it, taking off what they can find. We have been witness to Tony’s downfall in the scenes before, but as the movie ends, the ephemeral nature of power and wealth hits us.
Tony Montana, the peniless, Cuban immigrant, arrives in Miami, as a part of the Muriel boatlift, a mass exodus of Cubans to US, between April and October in 1980. Ostensibly done by Fidel Castro, to normalize trade relations with US, many of his critics claim this was a ploy by him to get rid of the convicts in Cuban prisons- small time crooks, murderers, criminals. As the opening documentary footage shows us scenes of Cuban refugees arriving in the US, we get our first glimpse up front of Tony. Brian De Palma sure has a way with opening scenes, be it the girls shower room scene in Carrie or Capone’s introduction in The Untouchables. Like a voyeur, De Palma lets the camera linger in on Tony’s face, nothing said at all here, but from the expression in his eyes, and a man tightly coiled up, ready to explode in a rage. Its not just the camera closeups though, its what follows that shows De Palma’s brilliance at character setup. As we see Tony answer the queries with a mixture of indifference, carelesness, arrogance, we know that this is one guy, who cares only for himself.
Tony Montana: You a communist? Huh? How’d you like it, man? They tell you all the time what to do, what to think, what to feel. Do you wanna be like a sheep? Like all those other people? Baah! Baah!
Immigration Officer: I don’t have to listen to this bullshit!
Tony Montana: You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours? You own nothing, you got nothing! Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you? Watching everything you do? Everything you say, man? Do you know I eat octopus three times a day? I got fucking octopus coming out of my fucking ears. I got the fuckin’ Russian shoes my feet’s comin’ through. How you like that? What, you want me to stay there and do nothing? Hey, I’m no fuckin’ criminal, man. I’m no puta or thief. I’m Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba. And I want my fuckin’ human rights, now!
Murder by Chainsaw
Comming to the by now iconic chainsaw murder sequence, again what i loved about it, the shock factor here is not in what is shown, but in rather what is not really shown. We just hear the chainsaw sound in the background, Tony’s expression mixed with shock and rage, but what really hit me hard, was the killer Toad’s nonchalant attitude, like another day at office. He steps back and then says “Now the leg, huh?”. For me it was not the gore, or the blood, in fact contrary to what most say, the only time we witness the gory part, is a shot of Angel, drenched in blood, his one arm missing. The shock factor here is the way Toad executes it, like a butcher, who cuts up the animal, drenched in blood, and treats it as a job. Here we have a guy, cutting to pieces another guy, and making no big deal out of it. This was what shocked people, that some one could be so callous, so cruel. Brian De Palma has often been accused of being too gory in his movies, but i feel the violence in his movies is more pyschological, not physical. He assaults the viewer not with the images, but with the feelings, you don’t actually see the violence occur, but you can feel it. Had De Palma actually shown the dismemberment, it would have been more like a cartoon, but by focussing on the shocked expressions of Tony, the noise of the chainsaw whirring and then Toad’s ”another day at work” attitude, he makes us feel the shock more.
While Oliver Stone has received acclaim for the script, especially for the drug related scenes, based on his own cocaine addiction experiences, for me it was the way he sets up Tony Montana’s character, and plots his rise and fall, that is the best part. And we see it here in the above mentioned scene, where one clearly gets an idea about Tony Montana. Again if we take the immigration scene, we see Tony turn back to the officer, and a taunting smirk on his lips. One common criticism levelled against Scarface was about Pacino’s over the top performance. It was meant to be over the top, and for it me it makes no sense to compare it to Pacino’s act in The Godfather. Michael was the cool headed strategist, using his brain, to outhink his opponents. And Michael had Luca Brassi and Willi Cicci, to do the dirty job of killing his opponents. Tony on the other hand was a loner, all by himself, in effect, he was the enforcer and executioner. He was a street smart hustler, who had to think on his feet, and for whom every moment was a matter of survival.
Roger Ebert- DePalma and his writer, Oliver Stone, have created a gallery of specific individuals, and one of the fascinations of the movie is that we aren’t watching crime-movie clichés, we’re watching people who are criminals.
Gary Arnold-A movie that appeared intent on revealing an alarmingly contemporary criminal subculture gradually reverts to underworld cliche.
Now i know critical opinions differ, and every one has their own, but not too often, i have seen such a divergence of opinion, as in the case of Scarface. Why does Ebert feel we are not watching cliches, while Arnold feels its filled with cliches? And it’s not just critics, ordinary movie goers are as polarized. I do agree that unlike The Godfather which had a whole host of memorable characters, including the minor ones, Scarface is Tony Montana centric, to the extent where the other characters are not as well developed, even Tony’s friend Manny, who remains a background presence for most of the movie. This is one of the movie’s major drawbacks in my view. You go out from The Godfather, remembering not just Michael, Sonny and Don Corleone, but even Tom Hagen and Luca Brassi also. In sharp contrast, after watching Scarface, its Tony Montana who dominates your consciousness all the way. For me though, the best comment came from Martin Scorcese, who said to Steven Bauer, the guy who played Manny.
You guys are great – but be prepared, because they’re going to hate it in Hollywood… because it’s about them.
It came out of Marty’s own disillusionment with Hollywood in the 80’s, which moved back to studio friendly blockbusters, rom coms after the creative high of the 70’s. Nothing illustrated it better than Pacino himself. In the 70’s he had touched the heights with the Godfather series, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, And Justice for All movies that made one use their grey cells, movies that astounded with their sheer brilliance, their narration. However come the 80’s, Pacino’s career went in to a free fall, with a host of mediocre movies, that did no justice to his talent, nor were commercially succesful too. Scarface was the only notable success he had in that entire period. Most important, 80’s was the age of Reaganomics, where ”Greed was Good”( something Stone would later address in Wall Street), age of junk bonds, Wall Street Executives, Yuppiedom. It was a conservative backlash, after the liberal ethos of the 70’s, the time when flower power, counter culture had run it’s course.
Oliver Stone was one of Hollywood’s eternal rebels, the anti establishment guy, taking on the studios, the media, the stars, and my take is that Scarface, was a veiled attack on the capitalist system itself, on the ”Get rich quick” culture that dominated society. Tony Montana was the bad guy, the foul mouthed gangster, who made his money through drugs, and so he deserved to fall. Not that i have any empathy either for Tony Montana, surely one of the most unlovable characters, yeah you are fascinated by his guts, his recklessness but this guy is otherwise a total loose cannon, he kills his best friend Manny because he happened to be dating his own sister, he seems to shoot than think, he has become a paranoid wreck, insecure of any around him. Movie gangsters of yore had a bit of grey, a sort of sympathetic streak in them, but there seems to be nothing remotely redeemable about Tony. But if we look at a deeper level, Tony’s rags to riches story, is a perversion of the ”American dream” where any one can make it in life, from ground up. How different was Tony from the Wall Street hustlers who made their fortunes with the junk bonds? Or the corporate honchos indulging in fraud?
Guy never fuckin’ tells the truth. It’s the guys like him, the bankers and the politicians who want to keep the coke illegal so’s they can make more money and get the votes to fight the bad guys. They’re the bad guys. They’ll fuck anything for a buck.
The famous ”make way for the bad guy” outburst, in effect seems to be Stone’s critique of the yuppie lifestyle, the individualistic nature of society, the hypocrisy pervading all around.
You need people like me so you can point your fingers and say ‘hey there’s the bad guy!’ So what does that make you? Good guys? Don’t kid yourselves. You’re no better’n me. You just know how to hide — and how to lie. Me I don’t have that problem. I always tell the truth — even when I lie.
Tony’s character basically represent the hollow nature of “success” that was bandied about. You see Tony’s lavish mansion, his plush bedroom, bathroom, straight out of “Architectural Digest”, but you can feel, that this is a castle that won’t stay for long. It is not that Tony had broken the rules, its that by becomming a paranoid and insecure jerk, he has become alienated from every one around.
Anything for Ms.Pfeiffer
And that shows in his relationship with Elvira Hancock( Michelle Pfeiffer), whose introduction by the way, is sure to get pulses racing. Her entry in a low blue slit dress is hot, she manages to raise the temperature up without really making an effort to do so. Actually there is no love at all in the relationship between Tony and Elvira, though Tony is initially attracted by her, falls madly in love with her( can’t blame him, hard to resist Ms. Pfeiffer). Elvira happens to be mistress of Frank Lopez( Robert Loggia), an ageing drug baron, who takes Tony under his wings, and gets him into the underworld. When Tony later gets Frank killed off, after a fallout over a drug deal, he marries Elvira. Again this is another brilliant moment in the movie, Tony asks Elvira to come with him, and as they step out on the balcony, a blimp floats with the slogan “The World is Yours”. Tony now literally has the world at his feet, taking over Frank’s empire, and also the beautiful Elvira, in effect the ”perfect” life. It is in the exploration of how this ”perfect” life falls apart, the shallow nature of ”success”, and the fact that What goes up must come down, that makes this movie, one of the best in the gangster genre. And if not for anything it’s ironic take on ”The World is Yours”.
Tags: Al Pacino, brian de palma, gangster movies, Michelle Pfeiffer, oliver stone, scarface
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“The World is yours”
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My favorite scene is where Tony Montana sitting in a conference hall kind of room and behind you see huge poster of silhouette of coconut trees at the sunset seaside.and synth music.
Shekar, think we had this discussion before too. Yeah the coconut trees, Miami, electronica music.
“Nothing exceeds like excess”- Pure 80’s hedonism.
yes I remember!!
that visuals stuck in my mind!
Incredibilo, fuck….dude that was some dope on palma….
Return of the noir saga…Kaminey’s of Hollywood….Bang on time post….Take a bow bradher….
Re-reading it once again…..
yeah bro, i did
That was a executive bow…I need a palma bow…with the little brother
Ratnakar- bhai yeh 557 kaunsa category hai under which you’ve put up this post?please check
Sethu, i put it under People Category, no clue about this 577 whatsover.
THE BGM was splendid..that was really crucial for me.
Bagunara sir
Did u post something after a long time or do i get to see only what i like?
Scarface was big flop when it came out. Still makes more money on DVD sales every year than it made from the theaters when it came out.
Al Pacino insisted on having 100% Cuban guys around him to get the accent right. Andy Garcia, a first generation Cuban immigrant said Pacino got the accent better than he could ever.
Scarface quotes have become history. Rumor has it Regan loved the quote : ” I’d kill a communist for fun, for a green card I’m gonna carve him up real good”
Scarface like Godfather has inspired countless biollywood movies :
My favorite – Agneepath – showdown at home with the mother; Company – Chandu objecting to killing the kids in the minister’s car ( oh no RGV again..when will i get over him?) and countless other scenes
See if you can find the 25th anniversary collection DVD. Has an entire DVD on the making of scarface.
Dude what about a post on some other Oliver Stone lesser known classics : U turn, El Salvador ?
Good job keep it going.
Abra ki bhalo aache, ami khoob hoi( forgive my Bengali pls).
No dude, not been writing too regularly of late, its just that recently started this Brian De Palma series. Scarface was not a flop, AFAIK, it did quite well, and to date remains one of BDP’s most succesful movie after Untouchables and MI.
Interesting anecdote about Garca and Pacino, but again i remember many saying that Pacino did not look any inch a Cuban, and his accent was typical New Yorker Italian. But again i guess its a matter of perspective. Honestly for me, i am not too good at deciphering accents.
Agneepath has many other scenes too inspired from Scarface- The sister falling in love with the hero’s friend, Pacino’s “make way for a bad guy” outburst at the restaurant.
Will be going to Oliver Stone soon. I like Stone’s movies, except when he tries to get into historicals( Alexander was yuck).
When I watched this movie, I didn’t like it much and haven’t attempted to watch it again. May be, it takes more than one viewing to appreciate it.
So it seems after Burton related posts now it’s Brian De Palma’s turn. Incidentally BDP was nominated for the razzie award for worst director for Scarface. Haven’t watched much of BDP but the only movie of him I liked is The Untouchables and MI to some extent (though I consider the JJ Abrams version to be the best).
I think every generation has their favourite auteurs. There are few of them who can transcend all the generation and time like FFC, Kubrick or MS but people in late 20s or early 30s may have the liking for Burton or Brian De Palma etc. while we may appreciate Aronofsky and Nolan. It’s other thing that Burton or Nolan may join the league of Kubrick or MS in future.
Jahanpanah, Scarface is not an easy movie to like for sure, it took me some time to really like it. Well this is not a festival or something, just my take on BDP. I feel he has produced an excellent body of work in recent times, and wanted to bring in to focus that. BTW Burton is my other favorite too. Well yeah people like me who grew up watching Burton, BDP might have more liking for that, though currently i am touching the 40’s. For that matter like Nolan, Aronofsky too. Regarding Burton, BDP joining league of Kubrick or MS, i honestly feel every director has their own style, their own level, and it should be seen at that angle, rather than trying to put them together in a league or making comparisons.
what a movie…!!! no matter how many times I watch this one, I still can do one more viewing. I remember the first time, I went to South Beach in Miami, I couldnt end up imagining the sequences from the movie. kudos to pacino and kudos to oliver stone and Brian De palma, this movie is surely one of the very best.
“You tell your guy in Miami — your friend — I kill a Communist for fun, but for a greencard I’m gonna carve’m up real nice” (Tony to Manny)
Bipin, Scarface has some of the best bad ass,kaminey quotes. Tony Montana surely makes one of the most kaminey characters i have seen in movies. And the Miami setting, with all its hedonism, and yeah those sexy bikini babes around, nothing exceeds like excess.
‘The world is yours’ has a nice ring to it. I do not have a fresh memory of SCARFACE, but I guess there are some similarities in the way quick and absolute power comes to these protagonists, in this one and BLOW. Nice Ebert & Scorsese quotes there. Liked your Stone analysis. Never thought of it before. And yes, anything for Miss Pfeiffer.
Tushar, Blow was a pretty good gangster movie, great performance from Johnny Depp. I think both these movies were like kinda making a statement against quick riches, which could prove to be fatal.
I am a GTA Vice City fan and heard that it was based on Scarface, Carlito’s way and other such Gangster movies. After watching Scarface after having played Vice city i was completely blown over especially by Al Pacino’s performance. The Chainsaw, the Hawaiin shirt, the suit, ganglords, the Cuban accented American English, the Mansion aahh i just love it. Even in the earlier legendary game GTA 3 there is a Columbian pedestrian dialogue(the gangster who uses the chainsaw in Scarface is a Columbian druglord) which goes this way “You want the Chainsaw Gringo”
Way to go Ratnakar- the single man-army blogathon loneliness of the long distance runner.. full house standing ovation… untouchables, scarface.. i’d really like you to do REDACTED.. it’s one of my favorite films from the recent years.. shows De Palma very clearly to be what we suspected all along– the master of the medium.
Sid, im honored sir, coming from u thats something. Have not watched Redacted yet, though did hear highly of it. But would try doing something on Casualties of War, BDP’s excellent take on Vietnam, i don’t know why it did not get the attention it deserved. Sean Penn and Michael J Fox were superb in it.
it’ll be good if you could compare casualties of war with redacted.. he captures the shift in the medium.. what is a war film.. thats the question
and don’t fuckin ’sir’ me man.. i’ll grow a beard or something
Tottenkophf, well have to check out Redacted soon, and yeah try to compare COW with this. From what i hear, its one of the best on the Iraq War.
Sure Sir Tottenkophf, hows that.
Let’s do REDACTED again man, to scare the beejuzes out of horror genre.
Hmm would wish to do so, just trying to figure out where to find it. It aint gonna be released in a theater in India for sure, too controversial. So have to check out Torrent or Netflix.
i’m sure these will thrill you:- http://elusivelucidity.blogspot.com/2006/06/de-palma-image-of-day.html, http://elusivelucidity.blogspot.com/2006/07/de-palma-image-of-day.html and now my favorite http://filmbo.blogspot.com/2009/02/and-winner-of-brian-de-palma-look-alike.html
Tottenkophf, link 1 does not work. Loved image at Link 2, but my favorite is the first shot in Carrie, in the shower, when she discovers her period.
I see we are having some conversation here.
Ya man, that pic and link is good…Sissy Spacek me Carrie Quotient.
Sid and Tushar, Check out this montage of shower clip scenes from Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double.
http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2008/01/shower-scenes-of-brian-de-palma.html
Baap re! This is like a Thesis on Showers. Shower Shaashtra. I am going Shower Shower reading it. Main Shower to nahi…
what the frack
Oh ratna!!
what a post.
I wish you can add more lines on the ‘brother-sister’ angle between Tony and his sister – Did i smell something freudian there?
Mary Elizabeth Mast… I cant complete that part of her name without prompting.. ;-) her performance was special too. the whole deal between Tony, his sister and their mother was another very interesting layer to the violent story.
I love the parallel you drew between the movie and the Reaganomics. Realistic cinema is often a progressive or regressive reflection of reality. It is a good insight. But then again, (and don’t kill me over this) I still don’t feel the connect with this movie as realistic or good cinema. In fact I felt exactly the same after watching the movie the way you described in first few paragraphs. And unlike you, I still feel the same. I just cannot not stand the ‘over the top’ness of the movie. It was, as you rightly pointed out, very Reaganomicy where ‘more’ was good. Though there is no doubt in my mind about the acting chops of Pacino, and he was fantastic. But the movie itself is not innovative as you/many other people made it out to be. Scarface is at its best what we call as a ‘masala’ movie. Awesome on entertainment scale and escapism value but other than that, I don’t know. I would take a Dog Day Afternoon any day than Scarface. But great write up though!!
Tulika, i still feel its realistic, considering the period, as also the fact that its dealing with the Cuban community, who generally tend to be loud and flashy( maybe a gross generalization from my part). I believe the OTT approach was very much needed for this flick, considering Tony Montana’s “from the gutters” background. Well i would not consider it innovative, my viewpoint was on how De Palma came up with an ironic take on “The World is Yours” funda.