Friday Night Flicks: After Hours
Today marks the release of Martin Scorsese’s much-anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon, his sixteenth full-length feature to date. If you’ve been paying attention to these weekly transmissions, we needn’t remind you that we love a good revisionist western; we are of the firm belief that blood, oil, and cowboy hats will never make for a boring cinematic experience.
Anyways, we thought now might be a good time to celebrate the occasion by highlighting one of Scorsese’s more overlooked works, one that - at least in our opinion - is as worthy of praise as Raging Bull or Taxi Driver ever were: 1985’s After Hours.
After Hours is, without a doubt, the strangest and most conceptual film Scorsese ever made. It’s his homage to European filmmakers like Bresson, Godard, and Bergman, the three of which perfected the art of maintaining a commercial, box office-feel while simultaneously bordering on absurdism.
The film follows a computer technician named Paul Hackett as a string of misfortunes lead him on a particularly Dantesque descent into the Soho underground - a bizarre, nightmarish underworld where reality tends to fold in itself, and Murphy’s law reigns supreme. It’s unique in being the only of Scorsese films that truly demands attention in every scene; what you see on the surface only just forms the tip of the allegorical iceberg. Click the link below for a deeper dive. —Jackson Todd
