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Singing, Orpheus like, through a blue-hued landscape that at times seems to have been pulled from the depths of an early Picasso and shone through the light of David Lynch, Police Beat, the second film from Seattle-based Indie auteur Robinson Devor (his first was the oft-called under appreciated The Woman Chaser - a film I must admit to having not seen), lays itself out as if the perfectly concocted blend of cosmopolitan prowess and small town quirk - much like the very city of Seattle itself.
The story is the story of loneliness. The story is the story of a crooked nostalgia. The story is that of a stranger in a strange land. The stranger in this case is Z (Senegalese footballer turned actor, Pape Sidy Niang), a west African transplant, now working as a bicycle cop in Seattle, who fluctuates between by-the-numbers police procedure and absent-minded sexual pining over a girl who may or may not have left him - we are never quite sure. The story is also that of those surrounding Z, such as his partner, who between shakedowns, holes up with a known prostitute, giddily claiming to never wearing a condom when sleeping with her, and his (imaginary ??) girlfriend who he communicates with in a fractured phone-tag sort of way. It is these interactions, along with those of all the perps and victims he encounters on his rounds (even the strangest of which, we are told in the end credits, all pulled from actual Seattle police calls) that make Z ponder life here in America, while simultaneously pining for his life back in Africa.
Although there is an obvious internal conflict roiling around inside Z, the fact that he is portrayed - outwardly at least - in such a tranquil, nearly otherworldly way, lends itself to a potentially explosive mood, underlying each and every frame of the film. A mood not unlike that of David Lynch - especially in the danger-could-come-at-any-moment intensity running through the entirety of Mulholland Dr. - where, even in the most quiet of moments, the characters worlds could shatter into a billion pieces. A mood that is only enhanced by having Z's internal monologue spoken in the characters (and actor's) native language of Wolof and subtitled for all we non-Wolof speaking viewers, while the actor speaks to other characters in broken English.
Reminiscent of...well, reminiscent of nothing really, unless you take the canvases of Picasso's Blue Period as a visual compatriot, Police Beat is a true enigma in the world of modern American filmmaking. It is a wholly original work of art that continuously colours outside the predetermined lines of the typical cinematic structures of conduct. Like free form poetry or Abstract Expressionism or improvisational Jazz, ,i>Police Beat dances in all its chimerical melancholies to (pardon the pun) a different beat altogether.
Never dull - even when the feeling probably should set in - Police Beat, with its quiet illusory sense of being, is what American independent cinema should be. Forget the hoo-hahs and bally-hoos that accompany such "independent" films as those of Soderbergh or Tarantino or Kevin Smith. This is the cinema of Cassavetes. This is the cinema of Hal Hartley. this is the cinema of Shane Carruth. This is the cinema of Robinson Devor.
- May 27, 2006
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