After Hours

When people find out that I’m “into movies” it doesn’t take long before this question pops up: “okay okay… so what’s your favorite movie of all time? No, no, let me put that in another way; if you could take only three movies with you on a desert island, what would they be?”.

Then I look like I’m thinking really really hard even though I have the answer ready beforehand. I go something like this: “hmmm… that’s really hard to pinpoint only a few movies. There are so many that I like. But if I have to choose only three movie it would be; After Hours and XX and YY”.

I then replace XX and YY with some movies that would please the crowd so to speak, be that anyone of the 9 or 10 stared movies from the movie page.
Then they go something like this: “Wow, man that is so totally rad! I love XX and YY, they’re the best movies EVAR made… but what was that first movie again? ‘After’ what? ‘After Hours’?… Never heard of it.”

It’s the same result every time. Not many know Martin Scorsese‘s master piece After Hours.

I truly think it’s one of the most overlooked film of all time. It’s it without a doubt Scorsese’s most overlooked. It dark and sad and funny and heart wrenching and because of all this, very realistic. And it all takes place in one single night.

I’ve seen many compare the movie as a modern day Wizard of Oz or an urban Alice in Wonderland, where it is Paul that goes through the rabbit hole and enters then land of weird. It’s like a 10-min Groundhog Day that brings one man’s world to its knees, and he sure as hell isn’t in Kansas anymore.

And the “funny” thing about the movie is no matter how absurd it becomes, and it really does become very absurd, you always view the scenes and say “man that could happen to me” or “I know a person just like that”. That’s the brilliance of the story, it so absurd that it in a way becomes very realistic and close to home, because that’s what life is. Absurd.

The trailer below is full of spoilers so don’t watch it you haven’t seen the film already.

The story is basically about about Paul who meets a girl in a coffee shop after work and everything goes does south after that. Wikipedia has a very long and very good summery of the plot (that is also full of spoilers).

There are so many scenes in the movie that are worth showing but this one is really telling of the overall premise of the film:

On YouTube there are also a 2-part documentary about the making of the movie.

Part 1:2

Part 2:2

On researching for this post I found this quote on Wikipedia:

The film was originally to be directed by Tim Burton, but Scorsese read the script at a time when he was unable to get financial backing to complete The Last Temptation of Christ, and Burton gladly stepped aside when Scorsese expressed interest in directing.

Very interesting. I can’t seem to figure if it would have been a different movie if Burton was helming it. Visually and all it most certainly would have, but in my view the story is so strong that I think it would have remained more or less untouched. But that is just thinking about things that never happened and never will.

What remains is my favorite movie of all time. So now you know.