Smoke is a hyperlink film released at the start of the 1990s hyperlink fad—which is to say one year after Pulp Fiction. But unlike less successful movies like Playing By Heart, Grand Canyon, Crash (the Paul Haggis movie, not the Cronenberg one), and even the highly-regarded Short Cuts, Smoke doesn’t ever feel like it’s trying to weave multiple stories and characters together. Its craft is not how cannily it ties the “unrelated” stories into a bow at the end (such as how Anthony Edwards turns out to be the priest at the finale of Playing By Heart—man, I hated that), but instead how the characters’ compassionate actions affect one another. Grace, like love, multiplies the more it’s given. There is always enough to go around.
Smoke is also a Christmas movie, by the way.
The movie’s locus is a Brooklyn smoke shop run by Auggie, played by Harvey Keitel. He’s a salt-of-the earth guy, with a rough exterior masking a genuine interest in people. Auggie is also an amateur photographer. He sets up his camera on the corner outside his shop every day at the same time. He snaps one picture and places it in an album. He doesn’t do this for fame or art. He just does it.
Friend and customer Paul (William Hurt) sees his recently deceased wife in one of these photos and breaks down. This leads him to almost walk into the path of a bus, but he’s saved by a young man named Rashid, played by Harold Perrineau in his first key film role. (Interestingly, the same thing happened to Kevin Kline in Grand Canyon, which was based on an actual near-death experience of writer-director Lawrence Kasdan. The ‘90s must have been a very distracted era.) Events conspire to drive Paul to get Rashid a job at Auggie’s store, clash with thieves the young man ripped off, and reunite him with his estranged father Cyrus (Forest Whitaker).
The way all these threads intertwine is effortless and organic. Wayne Wang, who made the compelling Chan is Missing and The Joy Luck Club, knows how to work with actors. Minor characters get respect and sometimes drive the action in amazing ways. Case in point: when Auggie, Paul, Rashid, and Cyrus meet near the film’s climax, we know an emotional earthquake is coming. It erupts but is unexpectedly resolved by an unnamed character who nevertheless reacts first with force, then stern compassion. Erica Gimpel is the actor’s name, and I call her out because I love this character and how her intervention saves the day. Writer Paul Auster also deserves credit for this spark, and the shot composition, with her at the center of the frame, highlights her Christlikeness at the vanishing point of this Last Supper.
I mentioned Smoke is a Christmas movie. At the end, a seemingly unconnected segment has Auggie tell professional writer Paul a story. In it, he chases a thief who drops his wallet. When he goes to the address on the thief’s ID, he’s welcomed by the man’s blind grandmother, who thinks/pretends Auggie is her grandson joining her for Christmas dinner. The shopkeeper plays along, providing a lonely woman with joy. When Auggie leaves, he takes a camera from the grandson’s stash of stolen goods—the camera he now uses to take his photos. This brings the stories full circle, but it also highlights what Smoke is. It’s a movie about storytelling, yes—Paul is a professional novelist, Auggie is an amateur bard, and Rashid is spinner of cons. But Smoke also underscores that stories are there to tell us about people—it’s the characters that count, not the storyteller. Only stories that connect us and make us understand one another can soothe sadness and make us whole. And in doing so, these connections make their way to back to us, delivering grace we never expect.
One other device that acts as a metaphor for grace is the money Rashid stole. This money makes its way through many hands, resulting in a broken arm for Paul (a nice mirror to Cyrus’s prosthetic arm) and healing for Auggie’s ex-lover and possible daughter (played by Stockard Channing and Ashley Judd, respectively). Unlike movies like Twenty Bucks or Gun, the $5,000 is not a clever device but a secular means of grace, a physical manifestation of concern for others. Again, the way it passes from one party to another is unforced and natural. And it provides some character background for the enigmatic but kind Auggie.
I mentioned in my intro to this series that the 1990s were a great time for indie cinema. I saw Smoke in a crowded independent theatre in Durham, North Carolina, with six friends. We milled around on the street afterwards praising the cast, Auster’s writing, and Wang’s ability to convey pathos to a group of cynical twenty-somethings. That’s the beauty of indie films, at least the good kind—you know, the kind that tells stories about people with compassion and heart. I’d like to see that beauty return. Not just for me, but for all of us. It would be a magical gift for this post-lockdown, smartphone-enervated, self-obsessed world. We can always use a little grace.
Merry Christmas.
