Smoke

1995's SMOKE is a movie to love. It's a rare bird that manages to capture the joy of cinema and the spoken (and written) word in nearly every frame. It is also a very intimate experience. I can practically guarantee that you will feel at times as if you're breathing the same air as its actors. Most films keep audiences at a sizable distance, going about their business and feeling unreal, of another time, and unattainable. SMOKE pats you on the back and pulls up a chair.  There is a nice Macanudo, too, if you desire.

The Brooklyn Cigar Company on 16th in Brooklyn, New York has been run for over 20 years by a crusty guy named Auggie (Harvey Keitel). He's laid back but won't hesitate to throw you out if you piss him off (or bitch about the hours posted on the door). He's like the gang of barbers who trade mock insults with each other and their customers in the old time shops. They could care less about "the customer is always right." If you like what they do, fine. If you don't, dere's da door.

But Auggie is more thoughtful than you would first imagine. Every day since the mid '70s, he has taken photographs of the corner upon which his shop sits. Every morning at 8 A.M. he stands across the street with his tripod, capturing whatever happens by ("that's why I can never take a vacation"). Pictures of couples hand in hand, kids with ice cream, cops. Slices of life. All are chronologically placed in photo albums. He shares them with pride, and maybe even with a little well in his eye.

Among the characters who frequent Keitel's shop are a local novelist named Paul Benjamin (William Hurt, in perhaps his most likable performance), who, like many filmic writers, is creatively blocked. His life is disrupted by a troubled but highly articulate teen who calls himself Rachid (Harold Perinneau), on the run from some violent lowlifes. Paul takes him in for a few days, perhaps for some inspiration. But Rachid will later learn that his long lost father, Cyrus (Forest Whittaker), lives outside the city, running an independent gas station, and seeks him out. SMOKE follows the pair for awhile, Rachid keeping his identity a secret from Cyrus as he accepts a maintenance job at the station.

Meanwhile, a middle aged woman named Ruby (Stockard Channing), an old girlfriend, shows up one day telling Auggie that he has an adult daughter who's living nearby. Ruby asks for money to help the daughter, who she says is strung out on crack and pregnant. Auggie is skeptical, recalling all the lies Ruby fed him back in the day. They will eventually visit the pathetic young lady named Felicity (Ashley Judd, as you've never quite seen or heard her before or since) in her squalor, getting another lesson in Life.

All of these threads, penned by the great Paul Auster, work like short stories. Concise, economical, clever. Some overlap. All sustain interest and showcase natural performances by a great cast. But what makes SMOKE special to me are the several moments where characters just stop and recount tales. Recollections of joyous and sorrowful things. That special look that passes across their faces as they remember something that moves them.

Director Wayne Wang has always been good with actors, starting with the indie CHAN IS MISSING, but here he somehow breaks the fourth wall without having the actors address the audience directly. The stories are told to another character, but I always felt like I was right there, across the table. Like the storyteller was maintaining eye contact. It was almost theatrical. But also, that unexplainable feeling of captivation when you're engrossed in someone's tale. It happens over and over in SMOKE, something I can't recall in too many other films, save Sam the Lion's big scene in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

The character of Paul is a writer, so you would expect some effortless, off the cuff tales from him. But Cyrus, who sports a prosthetic arm, also has a nice scene where he explains its origin. Auggie tells a climactic Christmas story that will most certainly send you out with a smile. If not, there truly is something wrong with you.

But I wish Wang didn't spend the closing credits visualizing that story, violating the notion he had spent the previous few hours demonstrating. It perfectly illustrates that sometimes you just go with the storyteller, allowing your mind to build the landscape, to form the features of each face. We all perhaps hear the same words, but we all see it diffently. We make it our own. Until the very end of SMOKE, that is true, even in this, a movie, that most visual of mediums.