A notable feature of Universal’s “Public Enemies” (2009) is the way in which it simultaneously employs two currently incompatible modes of realism.
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A number of the reviews of “Public Enemies” (2009) note its digital aspects, particularly the way in which it is “shot in digital” in a way that emphasizes that the film was shot on video rather than film. In his review for The Village Voice, Scott Foundas puts the point this way: “where digital methods have gradually become the industry standard by simulating the dense, luxuriant textures of film, [director Michael] Mann embraces video precisely for the ways in which it is unlike film: for the hyper-real clarity of its images, for the way the lightweight cameras move through space.” Later in his review, Foundas specifies how Mann employs these lightweight digital video cameras: he “shoot[s] the entire movie with a battery of high-definition video cameras—most of them handheld—that record the action in violent jolts and swooshes.” As Joe Morgenstern notes in his review of “Public Enemies” for The Wall Street Journal, another aspect of the digital cameras Mann takes advantage of is their capacity to function in low-light situations: “Mann and his masterful cinematographer, Dante Spinotti, chose high-definition digital equipment, which shines in low-light situations, instead of using film, which needs more light but yields greater nuance.”
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The composite effect of Mann’s use of high-definition digital video equipment—his emphasis of the hyper-clear, flattened and, hence non-filmic quality of the digital image, his displaying the capacity of digital video equipment to work in low light situations, his use of handheld cameras in a way that emphasizes that they are handheld, and so on—is to produce the effect that “Public Enemies” consists of footage of actions and events that were recorded as they occurred on portable digital video equipment. That is, Mann’s choice to consistently emphasize both the identity of the digital video equipment he uses (that is, its identity as digital video equipment rather than film equipment) and the presence of this equipment and its operators at the scenes it was used to record imparts a documentary quality to “Public Enemies.” And insofar as this is the case, the way in which “Public Enemies” is filmed is recognizable as a version of a mode of realism that contemporary American cinema currently employs to simulate the actual recording of the present.
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Of course, most films that employ versions of this mode of realism are set in some version of the present-day, recent-past, or near-future. And these films also usually incorporate their documentary look into their plot. A film like Paramount’s “Cloverfield” (2008), for example, employs a version of this mode of simulating the actual capturing of the present (non-filmic video images, low-light situations, shaky hand-held camera work, and so on) to produce the effect that the film consists of footage of a contemporary event (an alien attacking New York City) that was recorded by a group of amateurs using consumer-grade digital video equipment. And this simulation of the actual recording of the present is incorporated into the plot of “Cloverfield” insofar as the film is presented as if it is footage transferred from a DV-tape the U.S. Government retrieved from what used to be Central Park.
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In contrast to “Cloverfield,” “Public Enemies” does not look as if it consists of footage recorded by amateurs on consumer-grade digital video equipment; rather, “Public Enemies” looks like it consists of footage recorded on high-definition digital video equipment by embedded crews of professionals. Of course, no such embedded crews figure in the plot of “Public Enemies.” Not only is the film set in the 1930s, but it is presented as a period gangster movie (its 1930s setting is established through the recreation of this period through costumes, sets, properties, and so on). That is, in order to establish itself as a film that takes place in the 1930s “Public Enemies” employs a mode of accurately representing the past, a mode that sets off the period in which it is set as definitively past (as bygone, expired, superseded or otherwise discontinuous with the contemporary moment).
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A notable feature of “Public Enemies” is, then, that it employs a mode of representing the actual recording of the present at the same time that it employs a mode of accurately representing the past (a mode that locates the period represented as utterly discontinuous with the present). Accordingly, this simultaneous employment of two currently incompatible modes of realism generates a set of competing and not entirely coherent responses.
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The least incoherent of these responses is the sense that “there is something off with the digital video, the lighting, and so on.” That is, there is a way in which the audience’s immersion in the film is continually interrupted by their registration of the presence of the cameras and their operators and, hence, the presence of the actors, props, sets, and so on. It is as if the audience is intermittently made to register that they are not watching a period gangster movie but video footage of the making of a period gangster movie (a gangster movie directed by Michael Mann, starring Johnny Depp. . . .). The other notable (and notably less coherent) response generated by “Public Enemies” employment of two incompatible modes of realism is sourced in the audience being made to consider that the digital video equipment used to film “Public Enemies” and the 1930s setting of the film are, in some way, contemporaneous. That is, the audience is made to consider either that the digital video equipment used to record the film was somehow available in the 1930s or that the 1930s are located somewhere in the present.
* The first response—that there is something wrong with the filming of the movie— registers how, currently, the way in which “Public Enemies” is filmed (that is, as a simulation of the actual recording of the present on contemporary digital video equipment) automatically implies that the events which are recorded take place in the present. Given that these events feature well-known actors dressed in 1930s clothes, driving 1930s cars, using 1930s guns, and so on, it can be said that “Public Enemies” forces its audience to register that what they are watching on screen is a contemporary reenactment of events from a past (“the 1930s”) that is utterly discontinuous with the present.
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The other above noted response—that digital video equipment and the 1930s are in some way contemporaneous—renders the past and present incoherently continuous. Scott Foundas’ version of this response is to note that “[‘Public Enemies’] looks the way things might look if [John] Dillinger were still robbing banks today, his exploits captured by camera phones and broadcast over YouTube.” No doubt, this and other counterfactual scenarios (that contemporary digital equipment was available in the 1930s, that the 1930s are located somewhere in our present, and so on) are generated by the film’s simultaneous employment of two competing modes of realism. However, what needs to be noted is that “Public Enemies” makes no effort to ground the mode in which it is shot (the actual recording of the present) in the media culture of the 1930s. That is, the film makes no effort to imply that the equipment, programs, and practices that compose the media culture of the 1930s are in any way commensurable or even continuous with those that compose contemporary media culture. That is, “Public Enemies” does nothing to imply that the mode it is filmed in is appropriate to the era it represents; and it does so by doing nothing to imply either that there are 1930s equivalents of contemporary media or that the equipment, programs, and practices that compose the media culture of the 1930s are continuous with (or even precursors of) the contemporary equipment, programs, and practices that perform the same basic functions (recording, broadcasting, and so on).
