Spartan, as always

In Mamet's mind, there must be fond association with the word "Spartan", for his taste in dialogues and acting does have a Draconian quality to it.

Watching this movie a second time, I find myself in a more leisured pace, which is hard to do for a Mamet film the first time around: the conversation tends to be less than direct, loaded with slangs, inner-ring references, and surprising analogies or similes that you are not sure if you get them right ("What? 'Ants pissing on cotton'---is that right?"). There is no courtesy from the director to take your hands and show you around the plot development; Mamet is reserved with info to share with the audience, and you are expected to be surprised side by side with the characters---this is one director whose plot is pretty hard to second guess. But you ARE thrown bits and pieces of the jigsaw that you are supposed to piece together. You are invited to a puzzle.

Now that I am more leisured, I have time to summarize what I like about Mamet's movies. Here are a few thoughts:

- There is always an elegiac quality to Mamet's movie, underscored by soundtrack. But there's no clear reference to any bygone time and place, as in Westerns. Here is nostalgia without a home. The film is suffused with a controlled pessimism, emotional isolation, out of cynicism and distrust, and, most remarkably, a curious desolation of spirit. Some may call it paranoid, but it is more complex and layered than one man's paranoid. It is uniquely Mamet-ian.

- Mamet's dialogues have a distinct, deliberate cadence, with which all actors and actresses need to comply, including greats like Hackman. Very reassuring, and promising in an old-friend sort of way, telling you that inspite of the strange landscape, you are in familiar country. However, they do tend to sound less brilliant when you watch the movie a second time.

- Related are the chewy, quizzical lines that I always relish, sentences like: "You wanted to go through the looking glass." OR: "I saw the Sign." --- "Then you are truly blessed." They always make sense when the plot moves on. The trick is the lead time, or "时间差": if delivered a few minutes later, you would have expected it, then it lost the charm. Timing is everything.

I love it when playwrights for the theater turn to direct or write for movies. Harold Pinter is too monochromatic; Sam Shepherd is not eccentric enough, for my taste; Mamet is the Man.

"Then you are truly blessed."