Sal wanted to go to Wyoming

Image Source: rogerebert.com

In a time honored tradition among the Bujwasis, we all congregated at Satish's house last night (20 mins past the agreed time) and debated which movie to watch. Satish had just bought a new projector because the last one had developed a creeping corruption of dead pixels. Anyways we wanted to start this one on a good note and we settled on Dog Day Afternoon. 

This is the story of a guy, Sonny Wortzik (played by Al Pacino) whose life's sound track could've been The Animals' 'Don't let me be misunderstood'. He is out there with his friend Sal, trying to rob a bank in Brooklyn to fund his lover's sex change operation and having a serious case of Murphy's Law. Even though Interstellar tried to change our view about the said law - 

Murphy's law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever *can* happen, will happen.

some impressions are just difficult to shake off. 

Anyways, the movie is this beautiful, fast-paced, tight narrative where we see the day and its strange event unfold from a point of view that is largely informed by Sonny's. He is the man trying to run the show, he is kind, he is desperate, and shit is being thrown at him fast and loose. There is a very beautiful scene where he is talking to his lover, Leon on the phone, he is in the bank with Sal and all the hostages, Leon is in the barber shop across the street surrounded by cops and they break up because Leon doesn't want to be 'accessory' to the whole thing. That is such a personal moment played out in such a public setting, it broke  my heart. 

Image Source: wikipedia.org

The one complaint I had with the movie was that we get almost nothing from Sal (played by John Cazale). We get some hints about how he is a devout catholic and believes that the body is the temple of the lord, he has a problem with being called a homosexual (he is not but his fervent denial smacks of homophobia) but doesn't seem to have a problem with his friend Sonny's homosexuality. He has never been on an airplane before but has been to prison. With the bank robbery turning into a negotiation, he is faced with the prospect of either going back to prison or having to fly to some far away country and never come back - none of them look attractive to him. Also he doesn't know where to go; he thought Wyoming would be a good country to go to but he ends up dead at the end of the day. That is all very know about him. We don't know why he went to prison and why he hated it, who are is family and why he doesn't have anyone to call when he is leaving forever. 

By contrast we watch Sonny make calls to people he loves; we meet his parents, his wife, his lover; we watch them argue; we even watch him dictate his own will. Sal is just there in the background, speaking very little, all wound up tight like a ticking time bomb spring, and we were all waiting for him to explode. But the bang in the end is the sound of Sal getting a bullet in the head.

Ok, that was a really long point there. 

Another thing I found really interesting was the underlying politics in the film. There was the rage over recent Attica Prison Riots where the prisoners demanded more political rights and better living conditions but the end result was a forceful retaliation. There was the voyeuristic media and everyone's tendency of performing for the camera. There was also extreme peevishness over use of foul language one news channel. And then there were the polarized reactions to Sonny's homosexuality. Watching all of this I have a vague sense of Déjà vu - more things change, the more they remain same. I really like it when the tiniest of references add nuance to a story and this movie certainly had that going for it.