Films are historical documents, even when they lie to us. They are a recorded reality first, entirely or partially fabricated stories and characters second. By the nature of film and natural processes the real life context of films evaporate with time, so for example future people may not be aware of Al Pacino's other work or his social life, and that part of him may cease to exist, but as they view the film Heat they will be reminded of the existence and past reality of Al Pacino. For me this is the vital feature of film theory, and it is the vantage point from which I attempt to view film. It's important here because Michael Mann has a prized, well-earned reputation for accuracy in his depictions of violence, crime, and action, but a dual reputation for escalating tension, achieved by focused structuralism, low-key but ubiquitous glitz, and robust dramaturgy. Mann's film style itself is bedizen with harmonious philosophies, and this is a central theme in his film Heat.
The way Neil McCauley, Robert De Niro, holds his rifle is a detail of realistic drama Mann portrays superiorly well because the primary aspects that concern him are McCauley's professionalism and skill, and he expresses the character primarily by exhibiting these characteristics. If someone's a good flute player, it's worth mentioning, and Mann thinks it's worth mentioning multiple times in different ways from alternative perspectives, with long flute playing scenes, and friends who also play instruments. Thus, each scene develops said motifs and contributes thematic continuity to the film's dramatic structure.
Mann replaces typical action movie dramatic nonsense, bridges between action scenes, with idiosyncratic, pop art, advertisement chic inspired nonsense. In Mann's films the action scenes are reality and the characters' lives are fantasy; this sentiment is explored interiorly in the film's major dramatic scene, the conversation between De Niro and Pacino over coffee. Their characters can neither do nor even consider doing anything else; they are to their essence, respectively, a criminal and a cop. Life, everything else, is second.
On a simple level, Mann's auteurism organizes the drama. After the film's centerpiece bank robbery an hour of the film remains, and in order to keep you interested Mann unleashes knock-outs from three major dramatic strands. The love life dramas reach apotheoses, in dramatic synchronization, and the stakes swell to vertiginous heights. Like his action scenes, Mann doesn't leave drama to the imagination. He's precise and articulate.
Criminal behavior is a lingering fascination with filmmakers; perhaps some who are technically minded see clearly that filmmaking and crime share more than dramatic properties. Certain filmmakers excel at identifying with obsessive, autodidactic or well-educated experts in specialized fields because this is what they are themselves. Precision and articulation are cherished features in crime film sequences, as they require a high level of intimate knowledge on the specifics of the subject. Ex-convicts and ex-cops can produce authentic seeming material, as in Edward Bunker's No Beast So Fierce, turned into the film Straight Time, as well as others close to the lives of criminals, such as ex-lawyer George Higgins's The Friends of Eddie Coyle, turned into a film of the same name. Mann is well known to have consulted and made relationships with real life convicts and cops while designing Heat, which is rooted in a real life crime story.
If I accept Heat's dramatic conditions it presents me the opportunity to learn about the personality of the filmmaker, his characters, and their obsessions. He chooses an expressionistic atmosphere to evoke the emotions of his characters, and succeeds in achieving sometimes spectacular reality, sometimes dynamic fabrication. It's difficult for me to categorize my responses to films that conspicuously weld fantasy and reality, entangled as my feelings are by the performance of the film, especially those of total fusion of romance and reality, which is what I think Mann wants to achieve in Heat. In this way the film has a life in my memories and imagination.
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