RFI: Classical Music in Scorsese's "After Hours"

Watched this again last night, and read Ebert's Great Movies writeup afterward. Is it just me, or does Ebert totally misread this scene?

Another device was to offhandedly suggest alarming possibilities about characters, as when Kiki describes burns, and Paul finds a graphic medical textbook about burn victims in the bedroom of Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), the girl he has gone to meet at Kiki's apartment. Are the burns accidental or deliberate? The possibility is there, because Kiki is into sadomasochism. Trying to find a shared conversational topic, Paul tells Marcy the story of the time he was a little boy in the hospital and was left for a time in the burn unit, but blindfolded and warned not to remove the blindfold. He did, and what he saw horrified him. Strange, that entering the lives of two women obsessed with burns, he would have his own burn story, but coincidence and synchronicity are the engines of the plot.

I always thought the whole reason he broke it off with Marcy (using the bad pot as an excuse) was that he thought she had major burn injuries and he was still traumatized by the childhood experience (which we never get to hear in full)- he thought she was who Kiki was referring to with the "some women I know are covered with scars" line, was increasingly freaked out by the tube of 2nd-degree burn cream, the medical textbook, Marcy's refusal to wear anything that didn't fully cover her, her shutting the door and turning off the lights, etc. We don't even know about Kiki's S&M thing until later in the movie, when Paul brings the sculpture back to her loft. In Ebert's reading, I don't see how one of the bleakest jokes in the movie even works (where Paul starts gingerly pulling the covers off of Marcy's body to look for burn wounds and becomes hysterical when he doesn't find any).

― a black white asian pine ghost who is fake (Telephone thing), Sunday, 28 February 2010 21:19 (3 years ago) Permalink

Didn't know that was Bad Brains in the club scene.

― can it compete with the wagon wheel (Eazy), Sunday, 28 February 2010 21:32 (3 years ago) Permalink

Ebert is a dirty old man. I

― Alex in NYC, Monday, 1 March 2010 00:38 (3 years ago) Permalink

Speaking of Scorsese soundtracks, even if I don't get around to seeing Shutter Island, I'm going to pick up the Robbie Robertson-curated soundtrack:

CD 1
1. Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes
2. Krysztof Penderecki - Symphony No. 3 - IV. Passacaglia - Allegro moderato
3. John Cage - Music for Marcel Duchamp
4. Nam June Paik - Hommage a John Cage
5. György Ligeti - Lontano
6. Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel 2
7. Johnnie Ray - Cry
8. Max Richter - On the Nature of Daylight
9. Giacinto Scelsi - Uaxuctum - III. (untitled)
10. Gustav Mahler - Quartet in A minor for piano and strings

CD 2
1. John Adams - Christian Zeal and Activity
2. Lou Harrison - Suite for Symphonic Strings - IX. Nocturne
3. Brian Eno - Lizard Point
4. Alfred Schnittke - Four Hymns - II. For Cello and Double Bass
5. John Cage - Root of an Unfocus
6. Ingram Marshal - Alctraz - I. Prelude: The Bay
7. Kay Starr - Wheel of Fortune
8. Lonnie Johnson - Tomorrow Night
9. Max Richter/Dinah Washington - On the Nature of Daylight/This Bitter Earth

― Hideous Lump, Monday, 1 March 2010 01:14 (3 years ago) Permalink

love this fucking movie so much

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 18 May 2012 08:32 (1 year ago) Permalink

i know this is kind of challopsy, but sometimes i think this + king of comedy are scorsese's best films. he was really firing on all cylinders.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 18 May 2012 08:33 (1 year ago) Permalink