After Hours in a Women's Apartment
Back in college, two friends of mine rented After Hours and convinced me to watch it with them. I had never heard of the movie before but they told me it was directed by Martin Scorsese and it was a comedy - a dark comedy. That's all the information I had and in the end I was thankful that was all they told me. Now-a-days I try going to every movie I see as ignorant as possible.
A Night in the Life After Hours is a night in the New York city life of data entry jockey Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne). We are introduced to his menial life at work where he is training a new co-worker (Bronson Pinchot). Paul ends his day and leaves work in exchange for the more relaxing atmosphere of a coffee shop where he meets Marcy (Rosanna Arquette). After some deliberation, Paul eventually ends up seeing Marcy later that same night at her apartment in Soho and the night's strange events unfold from there.
The Longest Hour and a Half Ever
The run time of After Hours is 96 minutes - the longest 96 minutes any movie has ever captured on film. It is a glorious 96 minutes but you might not want to endure it for another 96 months. I will attempt to explain without spoiling the movie.
I loved After Hours but not until it was over. It had me hoping, fearing, laughing and, above all, squirming through the entire length of the film. I found myself cheering for Paul, I genuinely wanted things to work out for him. I offered him advice, desperate for him to here me yelling, "Just go over there - no don't do that!" I kept repeating to my friends, "I'm gonna love this movie as soon as it's over." During the movie, though, it's quite a ride.
If all movies made me this emotional and fretful for the characters, I'd need a psychiatry session after every movie I saw. The string of events in After Hours are all told from Paul's point of view; he is in every scene and nearly every shot. We have no choice but to cheer for him and we truly want him succeed! This is the mark of a well made movie, to make the audience care about its characters. Through the cast of odd characters he meets in the course of one night, we share in Paul's frustrations and hope the best for him because seeing him out of harm's way would give us some emotional relief as well! Hats off to writer Joseph Minion and Martin Scorsese for bringing it to life.
Afterward
Since seeing The Blair Witch Project, I gave some thought about how After Hours might do today if it were marketed like Blair Witch. If the general public were told After Hours was the first real dark-comedy, they'd watch with certain expectations. This can be worse than knowing the entire plot of a movie! Plot is a collection of facts while expectations tell you that plot it will do to you. Whatever makes me squirm with laughter may bring comfort or tears to someone else. What's important though, is that it can give both of us a great emotional reaction. For my friends and me, After Hours accomplished just that.
A bored, buttoned-up, button-down word processor sets out on a late-night date. He s about to become the punch line of a giant cosmic joke. Because di...More at Buy.com
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