State and Main

Go, you Huskies! It's not a lie... it's a gift for fiction. For all of his foibles, Mamet can write dialogue like no one else, and the chance to hear his words in the trappings of a sort of proto-Hail, Caesar! — a film about filmmaking — is too good an opportunity to pass up. This movie is cynical and odd. It contains a bunch of great writing, delivered by horrible people, portrayed by actors you are excited to see; the net effect is a film that you feel slightly more rotten for having seen. And yet: the best deconstructions are also love letters. Mamet names the mayor of this town — which could essentially be Bedford Falls — George Bailey. He also quickly dispenses with the traditional narrative (a large capitalist entity rolling over and squashing small-town people with big hearts) by laboring to show us how strange and urbane and awful the townspeople are, too. Almost everyone is terrific in this, in all senses of the word, and in ways that feel just self-referential enough to…

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