MovieChat Forums > Smoke (1995) Discussion > The Point of the Movie, In One Word

The Point of the Movie, In One Word


With a lot of my favorite movies I try to boil down the "point" of each one in a single word. I have trouble doing so with Smoke.
What would you guys say the "point" of Smoke is?

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[deleted]

one word to describe the movie could be: transcendence. another could be:fatherhood. this film was like if you combined a yasujiro ozu film with a wim wenders film pulled off without a hitch. when wim wenders alks about transcendental filmmaking of ozu, ray, or others, this is exactly what he's talking about.

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Optimism

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To make a profit. So the staff don't have to "get a real job," same ol' story. Some guy's brain tumor is another guy's deep piece; Keitel and the others ain't got nothin' better, and this ain't exactly hard to make.

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Axeyard wrote

To make a profit. So the staff don't have to "get a real job," same ol' story. Some guy's brain tumor is another guy's deep piece; Keitel and the others ain't got nothin' better, and this ain't exactly hard to make.


Hmmmmm....according to imdb, the flick cost $7 mil to make; it grossed only $8,349,430. That's hardly the sort of can't-miss, surefire moneymaker it would had to have seemed like if "profit" was the main motive.

Also, when I think of "profit movies," the genres that leap into my mind don't typically include quiet, poetic, character-driven films like Smoke....they do to you..? Wayne Wang and Paul Auster are artists. Even the main actors in Smoke (Whittaker, Keitel, Hurt) are not known primarily for their celebrity/"star power"...they're known as "actor's actors"; the kind of actors viewed by other actors as being at the top of their craft.

And I'd submit that to do "this" (the kind of layered, poetic, character-driven film that Smoke is) well, certainly IS hard to make (there'd be a heck of lot more of them if they were, if it were so easy to do). On the contrary, I think it's a genre that's easy to do poorly. Smoke was well-done, I'd like to hear reasons why anyone would say it wasn't. Fine if that type of cinema isn't one's cup of tea, but to say it's easy to make, or poorly-done, you're going to need to back that up.

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Chance

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Dick!

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Isn't dick the one word point of existence? :)

___________
Look upon me! I'll show you the life of the mind!

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Live.

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Family

Mr. Teal
G.A.M.B.I.T head of security
Crowd Control
#11

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[deleted]

The single word point of this movie is in the title for you: "Smoke".

What you put in that word is a whole another matter....





















The new design of the IMDb site sucks big time. Bring back the old design, now!

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i'd agree with smoke. blowing smoke up someone's butt. in each vignette, someone was telling a tale of some kind.

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Brooklyn

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