MARCH 7, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 5

It seems that lately there have been a slew of moralistic films about the costs and complications resulting from Western hegemony in an increasingly diverse and global society. Films like Crash, The Constant Gardner, and Munich show us characters caught in very real struggles that don't necessarily belong to them, and which they are more or less powerless to resolve. These films operate under the presumption that drama is inherent in the ill-woven social fabric of the post-modern age, the information-technology age, the post-information age, or whatever age we're currently in. The films use their characters and plot as catalysts to reveal these scandals.

Dirty Pretty Things also deals in modern global politics, but whereas other films use these global conditions as substance, this film uses them only for backdrop, crafting a story the substance of which is less globally political than universally human.

The story follows Okwe, a man in the middle of a crisis. Okwe is an illegal African immigrant, now a resident of London, doing his best to live a principled life. Society has rejected him as a scoundrel, like so many others living in Okwe's world. What sets him apart, however, is his moral guidance. Whereas the other immigrants have no problem shirking the system that neglects them, Okwe maintains the attitude that to work hard and live with principle will keep him alive. This is demonstrated right away in the film, when Okwe's taxi dispatcher asks for medicine, and Okwe has to remind him that while he has medical training, he is only a cab driver. "You’re a doctor," says his boss. "I'm a driver," Okwe says. He doesn't want to get involved; he doesn't want to get ahead. We will come to find out that it is this attitude that gets him into most of his troubles.

In more than a few ways this film resembles Casablanca. We have a man in exile both from his native home and from the people in his world. Both are engaged in illegitimate activity, be it gambling or unlicensed immigrant work, and both have a mysterious past. Both are centered around matters of the heart, albeit in different ways: Casablanca’s Rick is forced into the plot when a love interest returns suddenly. In Dirty Pretty Things, Okwe finds a heart stuffed down the toilet in a hotel where he works.

While the brooding feel of the movie starts right at the beginning, the finding of the heart sets a tone of a myth story, which the film exploits for its remainder, building tension and allowing things to happen that in no way would in reality. The immigrant, set up by writer Stephen Knight, is inhabited by such extremes that one could call it Purgatory, or Hell, and director Stephen Frears' directing fleshes this out beautifully, with rich colors and pacing that creeps along like a Transylvanian mist. This is not the London we're used to seeing in movies, with Big Ben and "Underground" logos everywhere. In fact, if I hadn't known going into the film that it was London, I wouldn't have noticed that it was.

All the other immigrants tell him to forget it, that his world is inhabited with strange occurrences, and that he will grow accustomed to it. These fellow men tend to be more of archetypes, further heightening the mystery, the folktale feel. There's the doorman, the chess-playing doctor (the wiseman), the virgin and the whore, and the devil himself, Okwe's boss at the hotel. Of these, the only one given a full character treatment is the virgin, Senay, played by the always beautiful Audrey Tautou. Senay is a Muslim woman and Turkish immigrant whose principles force her to risk her sanctuary by allowing Okwe to sleep at her apartment, which could cost her her visa.

Midway through the film, Okwe finds out why there was a human heart. His boss runs an illegal kidney harvesting business, and one of his patients didn't make it. So he flushed the heart down the toilet, never mind what happened to the rest of the body (what happens to a body in Hell?). The film flows into the next conflict, as Okwe's boss then finds out he is a doctor, and asks him to perform the next harvest. Okwe is torn, because he knows he'd operate more safely than the previous "doctor," and because he has a connection to a hospital through another immigrant, and because his boss offers him a good amount of money and a visa both for him and for Senay. It would betray his principles, however, and he might get caught. What Okwe doesn't know, and what, upon finding out, convinces him to do it, is that the donor is the increasingly desperate Senay.

Up to this point, the film constructs its dramatic tension relatively seamlessly. All the elements feel appropriately delivered. The film begins to stumble a bit here, however, because a smart audience knows he will end up doing the operation, and will get away with it. The film's tactic of storytelling through the slow revelation of elements has fulfilled its purpose, and we're ready for an ending. However, the last revelations, that Okwe had a wife in Africa who died because of his commitment to principled actions, feel haphazardly thrown in, and they rattle our understanding of his character. Why would he remain committed to morals that destroyed his family and forced him into exile? Furthermore, because we get these revelations as they are told to Senay from Okwe's demon boss, we're awkwardly stuck into her point of view, cut off from Okwe's sure-to-come explanation. Sure the new elements work to serve the plot, but whereas all the audience manipulation of the film looks like a magic trick, I felt like I saw the strings there.

The ending, however, was thrilling enough to redeem this hiccup, with a twist loyal to the film's Casablanca roots. We, as an aware audience, know that Okwe and Senay must escape. However, we also know that it is impossible to escape Hell. The only seeming solution would be to make a deal with the devil, Okwe's boss. But this would leave our movie-going hands dirty. Here the manipulation on the part of Frears and Knight is at its apex. We go into the operating room knowing the plan. Okwe asks his boss to have a beer to keep his hands from shaking while he assists Okwe in operating on the already anaesthetized Senay. Suddenly the boss is on the floor, Senay springs up, and we realize that Okwe has tricked the devil.

For all the political elements it uses, it never amounts to any political message. However, to me it never felt like this was the film's intention. Its principle goal was to simply tell a story, and in this it succeeded. The political issues it raises are quite timely, so using them almost as shortcuts to augment the drama is damn fine storytelling. Stephen Knight seems attracted to them, the outsider tale, and to this mode of storytelling. We see both again in his latest film, Eastern Promises. I would suggest that Dirty Pretty Things is actually Knight's neater script, though it doesn't necessarily add up to a better film. This script feels more self-aware. It introduces a lot of elements into the story like Okwe's back story, a whole cast of minor players, and multiple plot lines, but uses them economically. Okwe's not a doctor for the sake of being a doctor; he's a doctor because it puts him in an uncomfortable situation. Knight is aware of the mystical dynamic he's set up, and he toys with it a bit, adding some humor to an otherwise bleak story. Some might call it too convenient, too neat, but it's part of a fairy-tale tradition that adheres strictly to this structure. All in all, it's a good example of a movie just being a movie.