What's the deal with all those photos Auggie took? - Smoke (1995) Discussion

[–] imarkog 21 years ago

Then again, why not?

If memory serves me right, there were people in the Middle Ages who spent their whole life preraring and doing one single thing. Some monks(?) spend their entire life copying one single book(Guttenberg wasnt around yet, so they had to copy books by hand to make more of them), or writing a book of their own.

Perhaps it tells something about Auggie: his life is simple, and maybe not that fulfilling, he begins to take photograps of his little shop, every morning, at the same time, recording life around his corner on film. When he's done(dies), he has left a masterpiece behind him --> something he can be proud of: "that's my corner".

Maybe its just a hobby, since there isnt much time in the morning before work: some people read the papers, chat with family members. Auggie takes a picture 8.00 am. Its just the same what you do, so why not do what Auggie does.

I bet Paul Auster got idea from real life, somewhere there is a guy or a woman who really does what Auggie did.

I've seen the film a couple of times, last time was a month ago, but it really doesnt leave me in peace, I find myself thinking about it quite often. Like the last scenes where Auggie tells Paul the story. Somehow very disturbing, in a positive way.

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[–] 21 years ago

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[–] B-Bere 21 years ago

I'm a photographer and I can relate to Keitel's almost obsessive attitude towards taking the same picture. He is fascinated with documenting, or freezing time of his little shop. Because no matter how many photographs he takes - they'll all be completely different. Whether it's the light, people/objects in photo, weather, etc.

It is this factor that fascinates.

However it would be cheaper and more consistant if he did it with a digital camera. (but they didn't exist when he started the series, so that's cool that he kept to the same format)

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[–] Loqui-2 20 years ago

Being a photographer, I was surprised to hear you equate digital imaging with photography.

It might be cheaper, and the quality might be consistant using a digital camera, but the photos Auggie has contain soul. Digital images lack that ability, especially when relying on a printer. A developed photo will always be better quality than an image printed via inkjet or laser.

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[–] qouth_the_raven 19 years ago

I agree, photogaphy certainly went downhill when we stopped using daguerreotypes.

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] curtsylocke 18 years ago

And of course, "soul" is something one can only find in remnants of silver...

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] vpalme2 21 years ago

To me, I got a better understanding when Auggie tells William Hurt, if he flips through the album too fast,he'll never get it.
The same corner, the same place, true, but the same picture?

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[–] str1x 21 years ago

They're all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You've got your bright mornings and your dark mornings. You've got your summer light and your autumn light. You've got your weekdays and your weekends. You've got your people in overcoats and galoshes, and you've got your people in shorts and T-shirts. Sometimes the same people, sometimes different ones. And sometimes the different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun, and every day the light from the sun hits the earth at a different angle.

It doesn't matter how many times I see this movie, it always affects me. The writing is so beautiful.

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away

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[–] vpalme2 21 years ago

I agree with you, strlx, the writing of this film is very beautiful. For me, it is definitely a film, that makes me look at all the drabness of ordinary life around me and see all of the wonder and the drama in it. I am willing to bet that everyone of us has some sort of Christmas story as good as Auggie, whether we know it or not.

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[–] 21 years ago

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[–] deemo31 20 years ago

He is tortured over his belief that he may have been in some way responsible for William Hurt's wife's death because she left his store at a certain point in time only to be murdered at that time on that corner. He wants to take a snapshot of that corner at the same time of the murder every day, probably as some kind of pennance for his involvement in her death. "If she only didnt have the right change or if it only took a few seconds longer for her to leave the store, she might not have walked into that bullet."

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[–] Shaheed79 20 years ago

Umm Auggie started to take those pictures before Pauls wife died. Remember she was actually IN some of the pictures he took at 8. But anyway Smoke just came on HBO again and I always liked this movie and the sequel which I forgot the name of. Doing some research to see if the makers of this film and Lulu on the Bridge have anything in common.

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[–] eric-148 19 years ago

The sequel, which isn't exactly a sequel but actually a collection of the outtakes from "Smoke," is called "Blue in the Face."

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[–] tsfrog 20 years ago

Man...

If you didn't get it, then I suppose you didn't get the movie. Watch it again. I think that act is amazing, if you don't care about the space in which you spend your life, is your life really worth living? This is a happy man. even though people would think that it is boring to be the same place at 8:00 am for over a dozen years, you can respect him as a person who cares enough about the "little world" around him that he actually takes the time to examine the details, and wants to point out those deatils to others.

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[–] gbryant-1 19 years ago

Yes! Ironically, this very scene -- with Keitel telling Hurt to "slow sown," then Hurt finding his deceased wife's images in those pages -- is the one I show my English classes to illustrate how literature works. It's a beautiful metaphor for learning to love the ordinary -- to love life, most of which is after all ordinary. If he'd rushed through he might have missed her.

This is only one of many, many extremely powerful yet very quiet episodes in this film.

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[–] karenmcmahon 19 years ago

Does Auggie love the ordinary or, is he able to pick the extraordinary out of the every day? Look at the BEAUTIFUL quote above from str1x Aug. 21, 2003. Auggie's focus is on that which is different. It was Paul that was seeing sameness.

The cliche is that, "One cannot see the forrest for the trees"; but perhapse the problem most of us have is that we cannot see the trees for the forrest.

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] lioninoil 20 years ago

why bother to spend a lifetime on this?

Why bother to spend a lifetime on anything? Answer: because it has meaning. Those photo-albums meant something to Auggie: he described them as his "life's work". Most people don't have anything to show for their life's work, me included; so to Auggie it was well worth the five minutes a day he said it took him to setup and get those photos.

--NxE--

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[–] 20 years ago

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[–] redrum_x 20 years ago

I think alot of people miss the point of this movie, i did too the first time i saw it when i was younger. But i saw it again and the whole movie all the sudden clicked. It's about the duality of man, and the paradox that follows. Why do we act one way when we know deep down inside that it's the complete opposite? Every character's story is drenched in this concept. When Auggie sees his daughter, she knows she's killing herself, she knows her parents are right, why does she lash out at them in such hatred when deep down she knows they just did it our of love. When the kid tells his father who he truly was, why did his father become so angry when deep down he knew the real truth. The beautiful story at the end also illustrates this, how the grandma, knowing deep down inside the truth of the matter, could lie to herself and play along with the unspoken game. In essence its about our human ability to lie to ourselves when we know the truth, this is the duality of humans.

The title of the movie says it all. SMOKE. We know it kills us, but it gives us pleasure, so we can put the truth aside and smoke, KNOWING it's killing us, but we do it anyways. Therefore the writer's attempt to add some sort of sanity to this whole concept is that we live with our pleasures one day at a time. We're simply living in the moment, this is why the grandma played along, this is why their daughter won't change her life, this is why we smoke.
And this is why Auggie's photo album is essential to the story, because it illustrates this fact. Everyday is a different day, everyday is an opportunity to change just as the weather changes, people change etc. This is a beautiful movie, its a shame it's so underappreciated.

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[–] sth7 20 years ago

Thanks redrum x, you really opened this great picture for me. I had always loved the beautiful writing, and the way each character's tales gently reveal themselves like the sea. But I had struggled to find the central theme.

Now fully enlightened, I have inserted the video tape into the player ready to really understand this film at last. I may even have a cigarette!

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[–] miguel_escamilla 19 years ago

I can not thank you enough for sharing your perspective with all of us. I was trying really hard to find a meaningful connection beteween the film and the title and you have very wisely found it. It's a profund film, which also presents black and white characters in relationships which are not hollywood stereotypes, but this another topic...
Miguel in San Francisco, Ca

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[–] sjones-6 18 years ago

Redrum -- you make some good points, but I would put it differently. Since time immemorial, the "duality of man" has been a reference to good and evil, light and darkness, not "acting the opposite of what we know deep down." The anger in the daughter and in Cyrus to which you refer is the anger of dealing with "stolen memories" (reference the Tom Waits song at the end ("You're Innocent When You Dream")-- they don't know what to believe about the realities that they have constructed for themselves -- which may have included lies/stories/dreams/distortions -- from what they have been told by others, as well as what they have told themselves. And, by the way, we don't know that there really WAS a grandma, because we don't know if Augie's story was literally true. We only know that, factually, he related it to Paul (the fact that the visual grandma story in the credits was presented in black-and-white is an indication that it may be taken as a "dream" sequence).

Other than mischaracterizing the "duality of humans", I agree with much of what you say. My other nitpick would be your interpretation of "smoke." I would aver it has nothing to do with vices or health issues of smoking. It has to do with Paul's relation of the Walter Raleigh story: how much does "smoke" weigh? It it possible to weigh "smoke"? "Smoke" represents "Truth" in the movie. The point of the title of the movie is that Truth, like Smoke, is often very elusive -- and difficult to weigh. It's not that we're "living in the moment" -- in fact, we're living in a distorted "present" and "future" because of lies in the past. We live lives where reality has been distorted for us and by us, by our dreams/lies/rationalizations and the subsequently distorted realities created when what would have been "real memories" are "stolen" from us and replaced by the distortions (cf. Ayn Rand on lies being "distortions of reality"). Check out the Tom Waits song, and check out my answer to the poster who didn't understand the ending of the movie.

I agree, it's a giant of a movie, and deeply profound.

yukon

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