Plot
A Brooklyn smoke shop is the center of neighborhood activity, and the stories of its customers.
Release Year: 1995
Rating: 7.5/10 (17,907 voted)
Critic's Score: 70/100
Director:
Wayne Wang
Stars: Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Giancarlo Esposito
Storyline The plot of this movie, like smoke itself, drifts and swirls ethereally. Characters and subplots are deftly woven into a tapestry of stories and pictures which only slowly emerges to our view. This film tries to convince us that reality doesn't matter so much as aesthetic satisfaction. In Auggie's New York smoke shop, day by day passes, seemingly unchanging until he teaches us to notice the little details of life. Paul Benjamin, a disheartened and broken writer, has a brush with death that is pivotal and sets up an unlikely series of events that afford him a novel glimpse into the life on the street which he saw, but did not truly perceive, every day. Finally, it's Auggie's turn to spin a tale....
Cast: Giancarlo Esposito
-
OTB Man #1, Tommy
José Zúñiga
-
OTB Man #2, Jerry
Stephen Gevedon
-
OTB Man #3, Dennis
(as Steve Gevedon)
Harvey Keitel
-
Augustus 'Auggie' Wren
Jared Harris
-
Jimmy Rose
William Hurt
-
Paul Benjamin
Daniel Auster
-
Book Thief
Harold Perrineau
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Thomas 'Rashid' Cole
(as Harold Perrineau Jr.)
Deirdre O'Connell
-
Sue the Waitress
Victor Argo
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Vinnie
Michelle Hurst
-
Aunt Em
Forest Whitaker
-
Cyrus Cole
Stockard Channing
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Ruby McNutt
Vincenzo Amelia
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Irate Customer
Erica Gimpel
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Doreen Cole
Taglines:
The most precious things are lighter than the air
Trivia: Harold Perrineau is only two years younger than Forest Whitaker who plays his father.
Goofs:
Audio/visual unsynchronized:
Mention is made of opening up a bottle of Mateus, when it is clearly a bottle of Chianti, not the distinctive Mateus shape.
Quotes:
[first lines]
OTB Man #1, Tommy:
I'm gonna tell you why they aren't going anywhere. OTB Man #3, Dennis:
Why aren't they going anywhere? OTB Man #1, Tommy:
Management. OTB Man #3, Dennis:
Aw jeez. OTB Man #1, Tommy:
Those guys are walkin' around with the head up their asses. OTB Man #3, Dennis:
Right, yeah. Well ya know, they made some good trades too ya know. Carter and Manis. Without them two there never woulda been a World Series.
User Review
A beautiful depiction of humanity
Rating: 10/10
"It's such a sad old feeling, the fields are soft and green, it's
memories that I'm stealing, but you're innocent when you dream, when
you dream, you're innocent when you dream" ---Tom Waits
Smoke is a very difficult film to describe because it does not unfold
with a coherent narrative, but rather with slice-of-life vignettes
about chance, communication, and inter-connectedness. Author Paul
Auster and director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) worked on the story
for years before it reached the screen and the collaboration produces a
highly literate, novelistic cinema that is divided into separate
chapters, each elaborating a different character. I have seen this
small masterpiece many times, but I keep watching it because I love its
celebration of the simple pleasures of life: friendships, good
conversation, and, of course, smoking a good cigar. Smoke is not a
complex or experimental film, just a beautiful and simple delineation
of humanity.
Harvey Keitel plays Auggie Wren, the owner of a small cigar store in
Brooklyn. An amateur photographer as well as a raconteur of tall tales,
Auggie has taken one photograph a day from the street corner outside
his store every day for the past 14 years. "People say you have to
travel to see the world,'' Auggie says. "Sometimes I think that if you
just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see
just about all that you can handle.'' When a friend comments that all
the snapshots look alike, Auggie points out the differences: the light,
the season, and the look on people's faces. It's all a matter of
slowing down, Auggie says, being in present time, and observing what is
in front of you.
One of the store's regular customers is writer Paul Benjamin (William
Hurt) who hasn't published a novel since his wife died a few years ago
in an incident of street violence. When a young Black man, Rashid Cole,
(Harold Perrineau Jr.) saves Paul's life by pulling him away from on an
oncoming car, Paul offers him a place to sleep. The lives of the two
become intertwined in the young man's encounter with some robbers and
in his search for his father, brilliantly played by Forrest Whitaker.
When Auggie's former lover, Ruby (Stockard Channing), shows up, she
tells Auggie he has a pregnant daughter (Ashley Judd) that now needs
his help. These incidents come together in a powerful, fully realized
conclusion.
Although Smoke has its moments of high drama, it is mostly a low-key,
slice-of-life type of film that depicts events in life as happening for
a purpose, not as random or chance occurrences. The characters are not
"movie colorful", but ordinary down-to-earth people brought to
realization by a flawless ensemble cast. The film reaches a sublime
conclusion in a tender Christmas story narrated by Keitel and supported
by Tom Waits' haunting song "Innocent When You Dream". Everyone ends up
in a better place than when they started, including myself as viewer.
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