Date: Fri 15-Sep-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-10

Quick Words:

Smoke-Keitel-Hurt-Channing

Full Text:

Now Playing-

"Smoke" Spins An Intricate Yarn

By Trey Paul Alexander III

Early in Smoke , a dialogue-heavy drama starring Harvey Keitel and William

Hurt, there is a key scene in which one character examines an album of

countless black-and-white photos. While he peruses the book, Paul Benjamin

(Hurt), a rumpled writer, admits his confusion as he notes that all the

pictures, which capture the same street corner in front of his friend Auggie's

cigar store, are the same.

"You'll never get it if you don't slow down, my friend," answers Auggie

(Keitel), who recommends that Paul bridle his pace. Auggie has been taking

photographs from the same spot at 8 am every morning for the last 14 years.

His words to Paul on how best to comprehend the worth of his endeavor also

prove to be essential advice for moviegoers who are taking in this often

lingering, but superbly acted, film.

Smoke , which will begin playing at the Edmond Town Hall Theatre on September

15, is not the typical movie that comes to the neighborhood venue. For that

matter, Smoke is not your usual American film. It has the narrative texture

and leisurely pace of a foreign film, but without the abstractness.

Wayne Wang ( The Joy Luck Club ) directed the film, which was written by Paul

Auster and spun off from a short story by Auster called Auggie Wren's

Christmas Story . The complex screenplay tells the story of five different

characters, but their tales all somehow revolve around Auggie's corner store.

Ultimately, the overlap of stories and the underlying theme of the

interconnectedness of peoples is quite reminiscent of the structure of Six

Degrees of Separation .

The opening scene of Smoke is indicative of all that is to follow. Paul drops

in on Auggie's store, where the casual conversation of the day jumps around

from the botched moves of the New York Mets organization to the love of a good

smoke. The scene is capped off by Paul's telling of a marvelous tale in which

Sir Walter Raleigh wagers he could measure the weight of smoke.

The plot of the film unfurls just as slowly as the smoke that curls and wafts

across the screen from the endless number of cigars and cigarettes lit up by

the characters. The proceedings begin with Paul, a distressed writer who has

never been the same after his wife was felled by the stray bullets of a

daytime shoot-out during a bank robbery. While walking the streets of

Brooklyn, a distracted Paul nearly walks right into the path of an oncoming

vehicle, but is saved by a black teenager, Rashid Cole (Harold Perrineau).

Rashid's introduction to the story ushers in the next set of dynamics of the

yarn. Paul, looking to repay the wandering youngster for his deed, lets Rashid

stay at his apartment for a few days, where he discovers his new acquaintance

is quite a storyteller himself. Rashid is also on a journey, one that will

eventually drop him into the life of a tortured gas station owner (Forrest

Whitaker) in a suburb of New York City.

Meanwhile, back at Auggie's store, another pivotal character is initiated into

the flow of the narrative. Ruby (Stockard Channing), a former love of

Auggie's, returns to his digs for the first time in nearly 20 years to tell

him that they have an 18-year old daughter, Felicity (Ashley Judd in a brief,

but memorably intense performance), who is four months pregnant and a crack

addict.

Smoke is filled with great performances that inject life into this

intricately-woven screenplay. Wang and Auster have teamed to create a

wonderfully earthy motion picture whose narrative is revealed in delayed

increments that give patient viewers a chance to slow down and "get it."

Smoke is rated R for strong language and profanity.