I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Alex Cox is one of the best and most interesting — and also one of the most underappreciated and underrated — film directors currently working. I just saw his 1998 film Three Businessmen, which was quite wonderful (even if not quite reaching the sublime heights of Revengers Tragedy).
Three Businessmen is about two businessmen — a loud and vulgar, obnoxiously extroverted American (Miguel Sandoval) and a dour, depressive, introverted Brit (played by Cox himself) — who wander through (initially) Liverpool one night, looking for (and never quite finding) a meal. (The third businessman doesn’t show up until nearly the end). The movie mostly consists of their conversation (banter, argument, pontification, etc.) on subjects ranging from the virtues of different drinks, to the loyalty of dogs, to how the new electronic media are changing commerce. The cinematography is almost entirely long shots — though occasionally the camera tracks in towards the protagonists. The effect is mostly comic and absurdist, but in an extremely dry, distanced, and understated way. Subtle incongruities abound. At one early point, the protagonists are wandering through what is evidently a depressed, broken-down, impoverished neighborhood, when they suddenly stumble upon a large and brightly-lit Mercedes showroom. They go to a bar and ask about this. The woman behind the bar tells them that it’s for drug dealers. But they prefer to believe a fellow drinker who assures them that the city is being revitalized, thanks to miles and miles of fiber-optic cable, and the Mercedes showroom is due to the new business activity pouring in. As they continue to wander, things become stranger: every time our protagonists take public transportation (a bus, a subway, a ferry, a taxi, etc) they find themselves in a different world city (Rotterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc). Watching the film, it took me a while to realize how something was amiss (i.e. there couldn’t be that large a Japanese restaurant district in Liverpool…).
The film could be seen as an exploration of opposed, American vs. British, character types: a deconstruction of the cliches of both nationalities. But in addition, our protagonists — not corporate management types, but small, independent businessmen (both currently art dealers, but previously involved in real estate and other ventures) — are in fact wandering through the “space of flows” of postmodern, transnational finance capital: something that neither they, nor we the viewers, are entirely able to grasp or understand — it’s a space, as Fredric Jameson wrote, that can’t be “represented” in conventional ways, and needs a new form of “cognitive mapping.” Except that, at the very end of the movie — no, I won’t give this largely plotless film’s one plot twist away. I’ll just say that the film starts with the grandiose, faux-classical architecture of central Liverpool, a heritage from the 19th century, when Britain ruled the world, and the city was one of the world’s major ports and industrial centers — in sharp contrast to its present depressed squalor; and it ends in the deserts of Mexico, with a vague hope of redemption from the infernal cycles of capital…
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Alex Cox is one of the best and most interesting — and also one of the most underappreciated and underrated — film directors currently working. I just saw his 1998 film Three Businessmen, which was quite wonderful (even if not quite reaching the sublime heights of Revengers Tragedy).
Three Businessmen is about two businessmen — a loud and vulgar, obnoxiously extroverted American (Miguel Sandoval) and a dour, depressive, introverted Brit (played by Cox himself) — who wander through (initially) Liverpool one night, looking for (and never quite finding) a meal. (The third businessman doesn’t show up until nearly the end). The movie mostly consists of their conversation (banter, argument, pontification, etc.) on subjects ranging from the virtues of different drinks, to the loyalty of dogs, to how the new electronic media are changing commerce. The cinematography is almost entirely long shots — though occasionally the camera tracks in towards the protagonists. The effect is mostly comic and absurdist, but in an extremely dry, distanced, and understated way. Subtle incongruities abound. At one early point, the protagonists are wandering through what is evidently a depressed, broken-down, impoverished neighborhood, when they suddenly stumble upon a large and brightly-lit Mercedes showroom. They go to a bar and ask about this. The woman behind the bar tells them that it’s for drug dealers. But they prefer to believe a fellow drinker who assures them that the city is being revitalized, thanks to miles and miles of fiber-optic cable, and the Mercedes showroom is due to the new business activity pouring in. As they continue to wander, things become stranger: every time our protagonists take public transportation (a bus, a subway, a ferry, a taxi, etc) they find themselves in a different world city (Rotterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc). Watching the film, it took me a while to realize how something was amiss (i.e. there couldn’t be that large a Japanese restaurant district in Liverpool…).
The film could be seen as an exploration of opposed, American vs. British, character types: a deconstruction of the cliches of both nationalities. But in addition, our protagonists — not corporate management types, but small, independent businessmen (both currently art dealers, but previously involved in real estate and other ventures) — are in fact wandering through the “space of flows” of postmodern, transnational finance capital: something that neither they, nor we the viewers, are entirely able to grasp or understand — it’s a space, as Fredric Jameson wrote, that can’t be “represented” in conventional ways, and needs a new form of “cognitive mapping.” Except that, at the very end of the movie — no, I won’t give this largely plotless film’s one plot twist away. I’ll just say that the film starts with the grandiose, faux-classical architecture of central Liverpool, a heritage from the 19th century, when Britain ruled the world, and the city was one of the world’s major ports and industrial centers — in sharp contrast to its present depressed squalor; and it ends in the deserts of Mexico, with a vague hope of redemption from the infernal cycles of capital…