Chinatown

I watched Chinatown again last night. It’s good. It’s very good but I don’t think that it’s the perfect movie from the perfect script that most everyone seems to think it is. It’s confusing, slow in places and certainly doesn’t have a satisfying ending. What makes it a good film is the terrific acting and direction. Great stuff there.

Let me list my complaints and try to get my mind around this movie.

Confusing - OK, it's a mystery, film noir. There’s supposed to be some things that we don’t get right away otherwise there’s no story at all. But an audience can only digest so much stupefaction before it gives up and sez “I don’t know what’s going on but doesn’t Jack look good in that hat.” Robert Towne, the writer of the script seemed to also share in the confusion because he often resorted to lucky coincidences that allows Jake to continue his investigations.

1. The walls of the water company are plastered with photos of Noah Cross.

2. Noah loses his glasses in the pond but doesn’t think to get them out either at the time of the murder or days later. Nor does the meticulous gardener spot them in the pond but Jake does right off the bat.

3. Jake just decides, out of the blue, to go to the hall of records to look for property transfers in exactly the right places. Why? I didn’t see any motivation. Murders are usually crimes of passion, not money. There’s PLENTY of possible passion to be investigated at this point of the story. At most you might send a flunky down to the hall of records after all of the other leads have dried up. Jake’s intuitive leap here, I just don’t see it. Could be I’ve just missed it but that’s a flaw too. The audience (including me) should be able to grasp what’s going on in Jake’s thought process.

4. Jake gets beaten unconscious by a guy with a crutch in the orange groves and the farmer “Calls your employer.” The farmer wouldn’t call a doctor if he’s worried about Jake’s health? Or call the local police to get this trespassing gumshoe off the property? Or, if all has been forgiven as it seems to be in the next scene, you could call Jake’s detective agency who might have some experience in these kinds of situations. No, he calls the widow (‘cause grieving widows are always a good source of support) of the guy that’s been trying to ruin you. Handy way of getting Evelyn into the next scene.

5. Speaking of handy, didn’t it work out nicely that Jake would stay unconscious the exact amount of time that it took Evelyn to drive up to get him? She must have been waiting by the phone. She didn’t have anything else to do. Nope, no funerals to plan, nothing. And she’d go herself, alone. She wouldn’t send her servant or call Jake’s associates.

6. Now, Jake’s had the tar beaten out of him and been unconscious for quite a while but he’s raring to go. So they do, to the first rest home that they happen across. And would you believe it? Every single person that they’re looking for resides right there. Lucky that. And Noah’s goons can get there in 10 minutes. Traffic was light.

There’s plenty of other coincidences but you get the idea. And sure, you have to have a coincidence to do a movie. Something unusual has to get things rolling. I mean, what’s the chances of getting bitten by a radioactive spider? But after the initial coincidence, the rest of whatever world that the movie takes place in has to be consistent.

If Mr. Towne had tightened up the script just a little, these niggling bits of awkward wouldn’t appear to be coincidences and we, as the audience, wouldn’t have this feeling of floating through the story. We’d be driving it forward along with Jake.

Slow - I’ve certainly sat through slower films but the “perfect” film shouldn’t have any slow spots. Should it? It’s a little while before we get to the inciting incident but since we’re watching Nicholson do some of his best work, we don’t mind too much. But my complaint is with the 3rd act. I started looking at the clock, thinking about fast forwarding, that sort of thing.

A big advantage of a movie being mysterious/confusing is that you don’t have all of that pipe laying (exposition) that you get in regular movies. That’s cool. But suddenly in the middle of the 3rd act a big old slug of exposition is plopped in our lap while Jake and Evelyn are emoting in a dark car. They could of at least had some camels screwing in the background or something to keep us entertained while we got all of this belated information. It’s information that we need but wasn’t done in the most entertaining way.

And the sex scene? It may have been hot and steamy back in the day but watching it last nite - meh. What did it do to move the story along? Maybe I’m forgetting something but was it even necessary?

Chinatown - The title and all of the references to “Chinatown” just seemed to be tacked on. It doesn’t seem to have any cohesion with the rest of the story. Sure Jake used to work there and it’s bad luck and all but really? It could have been it been any rough section of town. Or more importantly, it didn’t need to be mentioned at all. Take all references of Chinatown out of the script and what have you lost? Nothing. Maybe it has some kind of spooky connotations for people who live in L.A. but not for me. It did give us the memorable non-sequitur “Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.” You’re just suppose to ignore death, crime and immorality because it’s Chinatown? I don’t think that that’ll even fly in downtown Bagdad, much less a part of California.

Here’s a thought that just popped into my head. Maybe Polanski should have told the court “Forget it Judge, it was Chinatown.”

Ending - Alright, I get it. It’s a tragedy. And it's film noir, moral ambiguity, I’m OK with that. But it all just lurches forward without any motivation. Jake gets himself taken prisoner by the evil doer Noah. D’oh! Jake makes no contingency for this? Jake knows at this point that Noah is a murderer and is absolutely ruthless but just stands there chatting about the damning evidence that he holds in his hand. Some hotshot shamus he turned out to be.

Now we all go down to Chinatown and everyone’s invited. Fine. The next scene in the actual script works a little better than the movie but the movie’s just about as good/bad. So, Evelyn has to die? Why? Is that the most entertaining thing that can happen? Is there a moral or lesson that I’m missing? A half a dozen other scenarios play out in my mind that would have worked better. Did Towne just flip a coin? I don’t get it.

Now the method of Evelyn’s death. No struggle for the gun? No retaliation for shooting Noah? No sacrifice her own life to save her daughter? Just a deus ex machina, low level cop plugs her thru the eye. Again, why? Because it’s Chinatown? Because wild and wacky things happen there? You’re going to have to do better than that.

Really, it’s a good movie and script. I don’t want to come off like I hated the thing. And there’s not a movie out there that couldn’t be improved somewhere along the line. But as for slipping this baby up on a pedestal and worshiping it as the end all, be all - nah.