Neo-Noir

Over at About Last Night, Our Girl in Chicago posts an interesting follow-up critique of the film The Ice Harvest, drawing on the review of Erasmus at Praise of Folly. In the post, called "Black Ice Continued," OGIC quotes Erasmus: "The problem with this film is that it fundamentally mischaracterizes the question at the heart of film noir, which is "what does the decent man do in an immoral milieu?" While I don't have much time to pursue this idea right now, I wonder if my uneasiness with the work of David Mamet is contained in this mischaracterized question. It seems to me that Mamet, in both his plays and his films, writes of a noir world, but like the filmmakers that Erasmus discusses, he gets to enamored of the Bad Guys and skips the Good Guys. I don't know. Maybe it is just that the Good Guys, when they appear in his work, always get squashed like a bug. Which would be another matter entirely... Anyway, I recommend reading this post for its clarity and insight.