SMOKE
Miramax Home Entertainment, $19.99 Imagine a scaled-down Robert Altman movie, with trademark dovetailing storylines and eclectic ensemble cast, but with the heart of William Saroyan, and you have something akin to Smoke. Brooklyn cigar storeowner Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel) spends his days contending with petty shoplifters, a creatively blocked writer (William Hurt), a one-eyed ex-girlfriend (Stockard Channing), and enough oddball narrative twists to fill the “O” in O. Henry. Filmed on an impossibly tight two-week shooting schedule and minuscule budget, director Wayne Wang (Maid in Manhattan, the Joy Luck Club) returns to his minimalist roots, prodded by a poignant and insightful script by playwright and co-director Paul Auster (Lulu on the Bridge). The performances are classier than a cache of Cuban cigars, the layers rising and mingling like the amorphous vapors of the film’s namesake. Hurt, especially, transcends his usual aloofness as a depressed novelist slowly reconnecting with his humanity, and Channing is quirky and affecting as Auggie’s feisty ex, Ruby. But it’s Keitel who provides the movie’s amiable soul. Auggie is a compassionate, streetwise survivor, a disheveled sage with a hint of the rogue, a good listener who has a few stories of his own. Every morning at 8am, as he’s done for years, he positions himself with an old camera on the street corner outside his shop to take a single snapshot, capturing the changes in seasons and the comings and goings of his clientele. “They’re all the same picture,” observes Hurt, thumbing through one of Auggie’s photo albums, stopping short when he glimpses a ghostly image of his late wife passing fleetingly past the lens. Small, ethereal moments like this make Smoke linger long after the closing credits. Generous DVD extras include audio commentary by Wang and Keitel, a B-roll montage, “making of” featurette, an extended sequence of Wang directing Channing, two interesting-but-expendable deleted sequences, and Auster’s original short story, “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story.”This article appears in May 16 • 2003.