Classic Movie Review : L.A Confidential (1997)
In theory, everyone loves film noir. They are a stylish, accessible and relatively contemporary form of expressionism. What’s not fun about alcoholic detectives, scamming femmes fatales and a little after hours mayhem? This is why film noir about mid-century America are still being made today. What is so enticing about a world that doesn’t exist anymore? Curtis Hanson’s iconic adaptation of James Ellroy’s L.A Confidential has answers to provide.
L.A Confidential tells the story of three policemen: political reptile Edmund Exley (an exquisite Guy Pearce), morally bankrupted Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and brooding thug Bud White (Russell Crowe) who have the shittiest Christmas ever. Their evening is crowned by a massacre at a nearby diner, which is quickly solved by a shooting with three suspects. Except nothing about the case makes sense and our three protagonists are hurled into a spiral of corruption.
Lawlessness in the Land of the Victorious
The overarching theme of almost every James Ellroy novel is the ideological struggle of America not knowing what to do with itself after winning World War II. It certainly is the overarching theme of his L.A Quartet, which L.A Confidential is a part of. The American way of life had triumphed on a Global scale and postwar America was supposed to represent the happily ever after (and it kind of did in the official history), except that everyone wanted a piece of it.
The way L.A Confidential illustrates this (the movie, not the novel) is by not ENTIRELY playing mid-century America… just some of the time. There is the American Dream and there’s real mid-century Los Angeles. The former is illustrated by Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn) and his lavish lifestyle and those on the outside, which I thought was subtly and brilliantly illustrated by the grandfatherly kitchen of Captain Dudley Smith (played to perfection by James Cromwell).
That kitchen is bare, ageless and devoid of any design flair. It also belongs to someone who works to defend a system that only benefits a select few. If you’re familiar with James Ellroy’s L.A Quartet, you know Dudley Smith is the connective tissue of all this: a man who pretends to work for the people and yet secretly works to consolidate power for himself. Part of what makes L.A Confidential so riveting is that Smith built the entire police department to his image.
James Ellroy and Curtis Hanson’s postwar Los Angeles is a shiny, lawless wasteland ran by truant cops. Hanson makes a full use of L.A’s schizophrenic landscape in order to illustrate the difference between what postwar America claimed to be and what it truly was, at least to James Ellroy’s eyes. The author actually lived in L.A in the 1950s and spends most of his time still immersed in that time and place, so he probably knows better than us how it was.
The ideological triangle
A great aspect from the novel brought to life by Curtis Hanson is the ideological battle embodied by the three protagonists of L.A Confidential. Russell Crowe's Bud White is the self-reliant conservative who constantly puts his body on the line to upkeep what he perceives to be a moral order. He is sacrificing himself to a losing battle and he knows it. Guy Pearce’s Ed Exley is the “face of the new world”. Moral and fair on the surface, but self-interested like all the others.
Kevin Spacey’s Jack Vincennes is the nihilistic libertarian who is looking to exert the most benefit out of every situation. He is a smart, but soulless schemer who thinks everybody is dishonest for not being openly dishonest like him. This ideological triangle is very present today also, which makes L.A Confidential not only pertinent, but a deceptively contemporary viewing. Mid-century America is the canvas of the story, but its themes are very much actual.
What makes James Ellroy’s writing (and by consequence Curtis Hanson’s filmmaking) shine is how not judgemental it is of this problem. Everyone is portrayed as equally human and equally crooked, which all three lead actors understand well. L.A Confidential is an expressionist portrait of a world we built, not an indictment or a condemnation. It just revels maliciously in flaws that are present in every human beings. It is not good nor evil, it is the world we have.
*
Curtis Hanson’s L.A Confidential is a very accurate adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel, which is quite a feat. L.A Confidential is the third novel of the L.A Quartet and there’s a world of innuendo you won’t get if you haven’t read it all. But it doesn’t matter. Hanson created a movie that is very much enjoyable on its own rights and that understands (and to a certain point celebrates) the values of James Ellroy’s work. It’s a true classic. One that gets better with age and viewings.
