Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I couldn't sleep, so I saw Public Enemies. I think this is more evidence of Depp's complexity and skill as an actor. Dillenger really is hard, that mix of charisma, mischief, sensitivity, intelligence, and capacity for sudden brutal violence could have easily left a fragmented performance, but it didn't. Depp sold it to me, all the way through. The script design was well balanced, giving Purvis, the mafia, and nelson as contrasts. I loved how it captures that sense I always got living back east that police or mob, it's mostly a choice of gang colors a lot of the time. The FBI and the mafia being bookends squeezing out the independents was honestly perfect. Nelson's brutality and lack of care for civilians so like that of the FBI. There were scenes where I was wondering what happened to those innocent people who had been shown just before the violence erupted. Where they okay? I loved Dillenger's self awareness in the face of change.

The details of costuming, set dressing location, etc. really grabbed one. The use of period music really pulled one in. In the first bank scene, I shivered, remembering how cold marble banks and post offices used to be, back when they were civic temples, the chill sinking into the stone no matter what the weather was like. I can't remember when i was last in a bank like that. Odds are, it was 1983. The architecture drew me back east as well, into my childhood, there are so few buildings like that out here. The buttons on a dress, reminded me of my great aunts, the fabric of another of my grandmother. The station reminding me of childhood trips. It was little touches like the heights drawn on the jail wall, that pulled one into the time and place.