70. Smoke

Filmmaking is storytelling, there’s no denying that. But Wayne Wang and Paul Auster’s film Smoke is about storytelling. Taking a short story Auster wrote for the New York Times as its inspiration, the film follows a colorful cast of characters in Brooklyn through their sometimes life-altering, sometimes mundane days.

William Hurt plays Paul Benjamin, a writer haunted by the death of his wife and battling his way through his next novel. Harold Perrineau (in one of his first roles) plays a kid looking for a father figure who stumbles into Benjamin's life. Forest Whitaker plays a garage owner with an inner-anger that seems out of proportion to his seemingly wonderful life. And Harvey Keitel’s Auggie Wren provides a home-base of sorts at the Brooklyn Cigar Company, a corner shop that serves as a focal point for many of the film’s characters. There’s even time for numerous subplots featuring an impressive supporting cast: Stockard Channing, Victor Argo, Jared Harris, Ashley Judd. The film occasionally feels a little too writerly, with characters sounding a bit too insightful or prepared, but any time that happens Wang and Auster counter with a scene of simple, emotional clarity, like Wren sitting Benjamin down in his kitchen to look over a photo album consisting of nothing but photos of the cigar shop. The simple act of examining such a seemingly insignificant image in such detail becomes meaningful to Benjamin and takes Smoke into intimate emotional territory.

The film also ends on a powerful note: With Keitel masterfully relating the short story that got Wang and Auster together in the first place. Wang allows Keitel to just sit in a café and tell the story. It’s simple and beautiful. But Wang’s next move is even more memorable: He closes out the film with a black-and-white sequence showing the story Keitel just told, scored with Tom Waits’ “Innocent When You Dream.” It’s a perfectly lyrical ending to a film that knows the value of a good tale. (Gil Jawetz)