Random Film Thoughts - After Hours

Hey, so, I wrote up my thoughts on a film I saw last night. I was stuck while working on chapter 91 this afternoon and I figured I would try to loosen myself up by rambling on about it. I'm not sure if I'm going to make this a habit, but it did help to just talk through my observations, thoughts, and feelings. I mentioned that I'm trying to leave the house way more and the main way is that I'm making an effort to visit this nearby, not-for-profit, historical theater that shows primarily classic films.

I ended up having a lot to say, but rest assured I'm not going to transition into becoming a film reviewer. Just thought I would shake things up a little to get my juices flowing.

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After Hours was an experience I found both delightful and anxiety-inducing.

The plot is very simple to boil down, though reading a summary doesn't convey the insanity of what actually happens. Our protagonist is Paul, who we know very little about other than that he's a very lonely man. He steals glances at an unseen woman at his job, and his apartment is 'modern' in the sense that it's comically barren, so much so that it practically looks like a stock photo.

He meets a girl after going to a café one night. The conversation ends with him pulling her number, and he gives her a call later after he gets home. She invites him over, and it's from this point onwards that everything that could possibly go wrong does. This is not a realistic film. This is Twin Peaks-esque dreamworld where characters speak to each other in painfully stilted dialogue and every word, location, and interaction is meant to make the viewer uncomfortable as possible.

It's a very tense experience, though I don't mean that as if the film is a thriller or anything. It's not, but it does have similar vibes. What I mean is that Paul is stranded in Soho without enough cash to get home after things don't pan out with his new lady friend, and he spends the rest of the film being whisked from one insane encounter to another while trying to find a way home. One of the things I admire most about the film is the way that everything just kept building and building on top of itself. Seemingly insignificant details in one scene become important in the next, and despite Paul hopping all over Soho, it's all connected.

I see myself as a comedy writer just as much as a romance one, and if you've read my writing you surely know that I'm quite fond of dry, uncomfortable humor. With how often I like throwing Oliver into strange places occupied by even stranger people, it shouldn't be a surprise that I liked this film so much. It just amazes me that they actually got enough takes of the actors keeping a straight face. The things these characters say are just so patently insane that I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. A certain Wizard of Oz monologue comes to mind. If you know, you know.

This is the second film I've seen by Martin Scorsese, the first being Taxi Driver which I saw about five days ago. I'm just writing this blog because After Hours is more fresh in my memory, and bring it up because I feel the two movies are strangely similar in subtle ways. I might still write my thoughts on Taxi Driver soon but suffice it to say that it was a masterpiece and I'm never going to forget it so long as I live.

Both films are very dreamlike, though my perception is colored by the fact that my theater showed a clip of some behind-the-scenes stuff before each movie that showed Scorsese explicitly saying that both films were meant to convey different types of dreams. Taxi Driver is a violent haze that skirts the line of waking life and unreality, while After Hours is an anxiety dream. Think being in high school but you're naked for some reason, and you've got the right idea. What I found interesting is that both films share the same sense of rising tension despite their wildly different subject matters.

Everything just keeps building and building on all that came before it while spiraling out of control. In Taxi Driver, that feeling takes the form of impending dread. As you're watching this deeply unwell man unravel, you already know that something bad will happen. Something terrible, and it just keeps getting worse. After Hours made me feel strangely similar, except you're laughing the entire way through it and feeling asbolutely terrible about the things it gets you to laugh at.

I also found that the two films cover the topic of male loneliness in, again, strangely similar ways. Travis and Paul share nothing in common save for a deep and pervasive loneliness. While it seems like what they crave is romantic affection, the way I personally saw both films was that they were driven by a need more for validation then actual romance, hence why Travis doesn't pursue Betsy at the end of the film when it's pretty clear he has another chance to do so. He doesn't need her anymore. The city loves him. He'll snap again, sure, but for now, he has everything he's ever wanted.

By comparison, Paul's initial desires are much more blatantly about lust. The whole thing starts because he makes a connection and wants to get laid, but as the night stretches on and his situation gets worse and worse, he starts to mentally unravel. No one listens to a word he says. No one takes him seriously. No one believes him. It stops being about lust and at certain point he's just trying to make a single connection with someone who will actually hear what he has to say and despite how it was all framed as a black comedy, I felt there was a deep and genuine sadness underneath it all.

It's also worth pointing out how emasculated he gets throughout the film. Just about every uncomfortable situation he finds himself in is because of a woman.

He tries so hard to get through to them that he even overlooks the one person who actually might've helped him- a male prostitute who mistakenly believed Paul to be an interested client. What happens when Paul actually talks to him and goes back to his place, though, is that the man listens to everything he has to say without a shred of judgment. It's just that Paul is so far gone that he leaves of his own accord before the prostitute can actually help him- and it's not even like the guy was being creepy or anything. He was well dressed, well put together, and while there was an amusing joke hinting he was a little let down that Paul wasn't interested, it was extremely understated.
The scene wasn't played for laughs, he only wanted to help, and unless I missed it we don't see the prostitute turning on Paul like the only other friendly face he met up to that point did. I think there's an argument to be made that some of Paul's troubles come from him being so superficial, but that would require me to dive way deeper than I already have.

I will say that he's ultimately saved by an older woman at a bar who he otherwise never would've approached, but even then she still winds up putting him in an emasculating scenario. He's literally objectified, turned into an actual statue and then carried away by burglars before the woman can break him out of it- assuming she intended to. She left the room and we saw a bunch of similar statues earlier in the scene, but I'm not sure if that was the intended implication so much as a conclusion you could draw for yourself.

Whatever the case, Paul is dumped right back at his workplace work and the film ends so abruptly that it's as if it never happened at all. Almost like waking up from a dream.

If it wasn't clear by now, I loved After Hours, and if you like surreal, dreamlike vibes along with dark, uncomfortably awkward humor, you will too. It's definitely it's not something everyone will appreciate. 'Surreal' is kind of underselling it. It's really, really out there at times, and it takes a little while to suck you into the world. Once it does, though, you'll never be able to hear the words  'Surrender, Dorothy!' the same way ever again.