Silver City (2004)

May 13, 2004 (Cannes Film Festival), September 17, 2004 (United States), release dates

Directed by John Sayles

Screenplay by John Sayles

Music by Mason Daring

Edited by John Sayles

Cinematography by Haskell Wexler

Danny Huston as Danny O’Brien

Chris Cooper as Richard “Dicky” Pilager

Richard Dreyfuss as Chuck Raven

Kris Kristofferson as Wes Benteen

Maria Bello as Nora Allardyce

Mary Kay Place as Grace Seymour

David Clennon as Morton “Mort” Seymour

Tim Roth as Mitch Paine

Michael Murphy as Senator Judson Pilager

Daryl Hannah as Madeline “Maddy” Pilager

Sal Lopez as Tony Guerra

Luis Saguar as Vince Esparza

Alma Delfina as Lupe Montoya

Miguel Ferrer as Cliff Castleton

Ralph Waite as Casey Lyle

James Gammon as Sheriff Joe Skaggs

Billy Zane as Chandler Tyson

Thora Birch as Karen Cross

Charles Mitchell as Henry

Distributed by Newmarket Films

Produced by Anarchist’s Convention Films

John Sayles’s movies are among my favorites, and the more often I see Silver City, the more I like it. Silver City qualifies as a neo-noir in many ways—not because of the cinematography, however: Very little of the film is filmed at night or in shadowy locations. But it starts with the discovery of a dead body, and before long, Danny O’Brien, a private investigator, is uncovering political corruption, migrant trafficking, and violence. Silver City is a combination political commentary, murder mystery, and neo-noir.

Chuck Raven, the campaign manager for Dicky Pilager (supposedly based on George W. Bush) hires Danny O’Brien to harass anyone who holds a grudge against Pilager because Pilager hooks a dead body in Arapahoe Lake during the filming of a political ad about the environment. O’Brien starts to probe more deeply into the death than Raven would like, and O’Brien eventually invites more trouble—serious trouble—for himself and others because of the information that he uncovers.

(This blog post about Silver City contains spoilers.)

Most of the plot revolves around greed. The Pilagers and Wes Benteen, a Colorado corporate business owner, manipulate everything and everyone for their own economic and political gain. Wes Benteen doesn’t have much screen time, but his ambition and greed are referred to so often by other characters that his presence is almost inescapable. Fear and confusion are predominant emotions because those with economic and political power benefit from others’ fear and confusion, which in turn, of course, creates an atmosphere of angst throughout. The voters and ordinary people (citizens and noncitizens) are betrayed here, although personal betrayal is not a central theme in Silver City.

Danny O’Brien is a victim of fate for most of the film. He is almost completely alone in the world, and he is downtrodden since losing a job as a reporter, an event that happens before the start of Silver City. He has let others and events shape his life from that point on. He slowly comes to realize, however, that he can at least take responsibility where he can and then move forward.

For me, expert—and corrupt—business and political maneuvering wins in Silver City. Although there seems to be a clear distinction between good and evil characters in this film, Danny O’Brien and many of the supporting characters follow a trajectory that shows how they change, either throughout the film or as a result of past events that they reveal in dialogue. One character who seems hostile at first turns out to have the interests of people who can’t defend themselves in mind, and this person protects them as best as is reasonably possible under the circumstances. This character doesn’t change all that much; it is viewers’ perceptions of him that change.

The DVD comes with commentary by John Sayles (writer, director, editor) and Maggie Renzi (producer). Here are a few of what I thought were their most memorable points about Silver City:

• Renzi found reason to be positive about the film’s ending because Pilager was back at Arapahoe Lake filming another political ad, and the cameras are rolling when another disaster strikes. (I found the film’s ending bleak, maybe not on a personal level for some of the main characters but certainly on the grand stage of politics and big business. Renzi’s interpretation doesn’t work for me, but if I hadn’t heard her comments, I would never have considered an optimistic interpretation. And, of course, a bleak ending is more in keeping with noir tradition.)

• Sayles talks about emphasizing colors like brown, green, and blue found in Colorado’s environment. (These details grounded the film in its on-location setting, but they didn’t amount to “noir” for me.)

• Danny O’Brien’s black clothes represented his outsider status and alienation in a city where most people wear athletic gear and Western wear. (O’Brien’s clothes didn’t stand out or mark his character in any way for me, but his downtrodden isolation was evident.)

• Renzi calls Maddy Pilager “a real Raymond Chandler” character because she is the “crazy sister.” (I thought of Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep by Chandler.) In the jail scene, when Danny O’Brien discusses the case with Sheriff Skaggs, the film is “in Raymond Chandler territory again”: The detective doesn’t save everybody, and he is forced to concede that there is only so much he can do with the information he has learned through his investigation. But through his experience in Silver City, Danny regains his sense of outrage, and thus he is back in the game.

If you have the chance to listen to Sayles’s and Renzi’s audio commentary, I recommend it. They offer several opportunities to think about the film on many levels, which makes sense because Silver City works as political commentary, a murder mystery, and a wonderful neo-noir.