Smoke

smokeA Brooklyn cigar shop is the setting for this drama from director Wayne Wang that interweaves the stories of several characters that have fractured family relationships in common. Harvey Keitel is Auggie Wren, poetic owner of the Brooklyn Cigar Company, a store that he considers the center of the world — a place where all of humanity eventually parades through. One of his regular customers is Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), a writer and a broken shell of a man whose pregnant wife was shot and killed near the store. When Paul’s life is saved one day by a young black man named Rashid, the writer and his rescuer strike up a friendship and begin searching for Rashid’s long-lost father. At the store, Auggie is surprised by the appearance of Ruby, an ex-girlfriend who informs him that her pregnant, drug-addicted daughter Felicity may also be his — and is in dire need of help. Screenwriter Paul Auster based the script for Smoke on a 1990 short story he wrote for The New York Times.

If you are interested in the short story Auster wrote, why not watching the following video clip from youtube


 

While watching the film try to spot some emblematic cues (words pronounced by the actors), Auster is famous for them.

At the 1995 Berlin Film Festival, Smoke was awarded the Silver Bear, the International FIlm Critics Award, and the Audience Award for the Best Film.  The screenpaly also received an Independent Spirit Award in 1996. 

smoke film

Can you think of some of the qualities that make a film so special to win an International Award?  Bear them in mind while watching the film and see whether your  expectations were right.

Paul Auster had never written a short story when he was asked to do so by The New York Times.  He did not know whether he was capable of writing it and was about to give up when he opened a tin of his beloved Schimmelpennincks – the little cigars he liked to smoke – and started thinking about the man who sold them to him in Brooklyn.  That led to some thoughts about the kinds of encounter you have in New York with people you see every day but don’t really know.  And little by little, the story began to take shape inside him.  It really came out of that tin of cigars!

However it is not a typical Christmas story.  Everything gets turned upside down.  What’s stealing? What’s giving? What’s lying? What’s telling the truth? All these questions are reshuffled in rather odd and unorthodox ways.

I will post some more information about the film after you have watched it! Enjoy the viewing on Wednesday.  

If you want to watch the trailer of Smoke, just click on the link below.


 

Last but not least, I suggest you listen to Paul Auster reading "Auggie Wren Christmas Story"

 

 

 

47 Replies to “Smoke”

  1. Well, I must say I’m not very keen on cinema…but after having seen the film, I think that the qualities that make it valid to obtain international awards are the original plot, the different kind of shots, the film director decides to take and the kind of characters playing.

    The plot contains, once again in a Auster’s work, a story within the story and the setting is a common Brooklyn tobacconist’s in which different stories intersect: all the characters are contributing to the general plot with their own stories. The shots are not so particular, in my opinion…but, as I’ve already said, I don’t have any knowledge about it.

    The choice of characters is once again original: they represents different social classes that contribute to crate, in my opinion, a sort of detailed analysis of our society.

    Erica

  2. Erica, do not worry, we do not need to be experts to appreciate a film. As you point out, in “Smoke” different lives come one across the other and when this happens the characters’ lives do not remain the same. There is a strong sense of emotional support and friendship. The characters care for one another and thus help one another become better people.

  3. Guarino Ilaria

    Once again Paul Auster has been able to play in a film what is the randomness of the events that happen in life and the way the lives of people clashes over the life of other people and create a perfect fit through that we understand that we are all connected. In this film first of all come together two people who then become three at which it adds a fourth and so on.The beauty that is in addition to individuals who are truly meets their destinies.I think that this brilliant and originality have led to victory this movie.

    If I have to be honest I found the film Lulu on the bridge more “unexpected”.

    This is not to say that Smoke is trivial but I found some aspects of some events more predictable than the one that i found in Lulu on the bridge.

  4. Guarino Ilaria

    i don t know how can i modified my post so i re-write the 5 line because i write it in the wrong way. The beauty is that in addiction to individuals (physicall people) who really “meets” are their destiny.

    i apologise for the mistake!!!

  5. Before watching the movie I supposed that a film which receives an award should have an amazing plot, a catching soundtrack, great actors and things like that: well, after watching “Smoke” my expectations were quite disappointed because I could find none of them. It does not mean that I did not like Smoke at all, but for me it does not seem worthy of an international award (but I must confess my cinematic culture is very, very poor); it is not the kind of movie we are used to, and this makes me think that actually these film festivals do always award uncommon movies, which do not have much success at the box-office.

    It was difficult to memorize the cues, I only remember “the world is my oyster” that is strange because oyster is the translation of Auster.

    About the Christmas story, I like it, it’s nice and unordinary, but I think it is deeply sad: Auggie, or what’s the name of the character, does not denounce the thief because in his wallet there are photos of his family, so he must be a desperate, but good, guy. Ok, but why doesn’t he spend the Christmas day with his old grandma? Moreover he uses her house as a stolen cameras depot! It does not seem the typical guy who loves his family… the old lady even pretends not to know that Auggie is not her grandson, because he’s more than nothing! All these three characters lie, but they lie for different reasons: Auggie because of sympathy, the grandma because she fells alone and the thief, which cheats everybody and therefore cannot be forgiven.

    federica zille

  6. I think that the qualities that make a film so special to win an award are:the arrangement of scenes,special effects,the plot,the real story and the interpretation.I think that “smoke” has won an International award because it’s a film different from the others,lives of almost every actor are linked to the one of the other.It’s interesting and not difficult to understand and to follow.This continuous coincidence are made on purpose,to underline the thought of Paul Auster about the the randomnes.It’s evident how Paul Auster is linked to his books and films,to the characters because he always refers to his life using his name or others.I like so much this film,i don’t now exactly why but it captured my attention.Maybe the most interesting thing is that everything in this film is linked to an other and so when something happens,i want immediately know what happens later!I was captured by the title and when i saw the film i immediately think that “smoke” refers to the story told at the very beginning.The writer Paul Benjamin begins to narrate a story about the weight of the smoke,he said that Sir Walter Rawley,in the Elizabethan age,who introduced tobacco,bet with the Queen that he would weigh the smoke.He weigh a whole cigar,then he smoked it making attention to weigh the ash(cenere) and the stump(mozzicone).The difference between the two weights were the weight of smoke.I found this story funny and i linked it to the title but then,you said that to be in a smoke(is it correct?) means to be confuse and this is the possible definition of the title.

    Santarossa Barbara

  7. Well, before watching the film, I expected a plot where many other story intertwine with it, as is usual in Paul Auster. I supposed that there could be strange events, twisted story. Watching it, some of my ideas were rights, but I didn’t expect a carrying on like that. The choice of characters was original because all them represent a different social class. This is not to ignore because Auster wanted to teach us, as all people, of every social state, don’t dwell on the passing of time. Every single day is different from the previous; the same place at the same hour is always different: there are different conditions, there are different people, there is the passing of time. Expression of that idea, is Auggie Wren who every day takes a photo of the same place from the same corner. So I think that this quality, this moral teaching, makes the film so special to win an International Award.

    About some words pronounced by the actors, I agree with Federica’s quotation: the only phrase I remember is “the world is my oyster” (that is the translation of Auster), that is a phrase that we quoted also in class.

    Monica Santi

  8. Personally I like the film. I can say that the message it gives is very good. In this film every character learns something from one another and it makes him change something in his life. It’s beautiful doing something to help someone and it is what the characters have done.

    Every story of the film, is not happy. The characters are in a very difficult period of their life with lots of problems, but they have friends that in every moment help them. In fact at the end,everybody was able to solve his problems and to restart living toghether with the people he love.

    What Auster want to highlight are the relationship we create with people,which are very important in our life to grow up indivudually.

    Canzi Giulia

    Ps: sorry for being later

  9. Firstly i have to point out a thing about Monica’s comment: we didn’t quote that sentence in class, but i have to say that i spent all the 15 minutes it took us to walk until the bus stop, coming back home after watching “Smoke”, repeating to Monica: ‘well, if you haven’t understand every passage of the movie it doesn’t matter…because you can summarize it just with a really catching and smart sentence: “the world is like an oyster!”… Not only because that phrase is strange itself and rather unusual to be heard in our culture. Why should we say the world is like an oyster?maybe because whatever we see in our life is limited and circumscribted to a small reality which could be included in a shell, or because we are so deeply united and attached to our reality, like an oyster is to its rock. But that sentence stroke me also because of the particular use of the world “oyster”, which is precisely the english Translation of “Auster”. So what does Paul Auster want to tell us? that his own work, truly describes the world where we’re living or is it an implied reference/thanks to himself, the author of the plot, who created the character who said that? A film character could really say that the world where he lives is really the world the author and the film dircector have created for him!

    Apart from this special quotation, also the whole movie is very far from being a kind of “normal drama”: there are so many stories that cross one another and fuse together to make a complex plot, that is really hard to understand what is the main story and what are the other ones that develop around it. Although Auggie’s cigarettes store appears to be the centre of the film, there are also Paul Benjamin’s and Rashid’s stories which are fundamental during the whole film. And while Auggie is trying to explain to Paul how the same place, in the same moment of the day, could be so deeply different one day from another, Rashid is showing them how one’s life could change just in a day, and just because of an umpredictable event.

    Then, at the end, comes Auggie’s Christmas short story, which was actually Auster’s starting point , from which all the plot had come out. In that short story everything seems to be upside down, because every action made by either Auggie or the old woman is ruled by lies. And when people pretend to be someone else they could never be, anything go on in a strange way!

  10. It’s wonderful to know that a film like smoke won the silver bear. International prizes are often win because of the special effects, the amazing soundtrack, the brilliant cast; all this qualities are important to a film but not indispensible in fact the plot and the message a film gives are the most important. So what is that makes Smoke able to compete against commercial films? Smoke is a metaphor of the fugacity of life, of the casualty which govern the world. People walk every day not conscious of the others, not conscious that their life can be extremely connected to the one of people they would not expect. An example is the photo Auggie shots of Paul Benjiamin’s wife. The plots are strictly interconnected but interweaved in order to give the film the semblance of the smoke, of the vagueness of life. This qualities are surely enough to prize the movie with an international prize.

    The Christmas Story exemplifies this vision of the life and so it’s poled apart from the others. The plot of a normal Christmas story is turned upside down :the good action born from lies and a theft. That means that truth is not always the only way to make a person glad. I’m not saying that it’s correct to lie ,but sometimes we can do something we did not want to do only to make a person happier. It’s also important to know the background of a man to be able of considering if an action he has done is right or wrong. The final part concerns also the fact that people are also egotists. Auggie stoles the camera wich, always for the randomness of life, will change his view of life by considering each moment as unrepeatable.

    Perin Marco

  11. first of all the first real dialogue in the film is the quotation to sir raleigh ( that appears even in mr. vertigo) that explains the title of the movie. smoke embodies the soul in every man.

    i think even the scene of the 400 photos is relevant. auggie defines them like the work of his like, his task. he says ” the earth turns around the Sun, and this hits the earth everyday in a different angulation”. everyday is a little different to all the others, in an infinite changement.

    the black boy once says: “black is black, white is white, and they cannot unite” and paul benjamin answers: but you’re here in my apartament…

    in the end, i think the christmas story is just wonderful. even if describes not so ordinary events it explains with other words the reals sense of christmas, what is called charity and “christmas spirit” with a bit of randomness, as usual in paul auster’s works 🙂 i really love the moment when auggie tells it….even if the camera stays still on him, i am able to see all the setting, the old woman, the huge and old apartament. in fact, i don’t like the rapresentation of the story in the ending title because for me it is somehow something already seen ( and because i imaginated my version of the scene far different of the house and the old black woman)

    giacomin elena

  12. So, the film was fantastic, I’ve never seen something similar, it’s the first time that I can keep track of the three plot at the same time! I think that what makes the so special is the smoke, that is not treat as a taboo but as a normal thing as it, unfortunately, is. I’ve seen that all the film develops around the cigars and cigarette.

    Another point is the final part of the film: all the film is based on the “legality” and it ends with a new, positive, vision of stealing: it could be something positive if it is little… but I don’t agree with this new vision of the “little good steal”

    MrLory1990

  13. Giulia Raineri

    The film was wonderful, I like it so much. Saying the thruth i didn’t expected it was like it is. I was expected to watch a boring film with a boring story track, but I eas wrong.

    I was surprised to see that, instead of what happened in the other films full off special effects, Smoke hasn’t got any one. The plot envolved me in, and I can’t stop watching the film because I was curious to discover, to answer all the questions are reshuffled in odd way. The scene I like most is the one when Auggie shows to Paul his albums of photo. These albums are the prove that Auggie has took the photo of time. The meaning if important and makes me reflect on this thoghth, taht my life is like the smoke, I can’t realize taht my time on Earth isn’t material and I cant’ stop it, I can’t chain it and keep it in the air, because smoke, as time, is always on the edge of dissolving.

    The short story of Auggie is beautiful. I don’t know why both he and the old woman pretend to be relatives, maybe because they feel both lonely, but the way in which they pretend is a symbol of the human being: he lies to her but he makes she happy. They don’t care about they aren’t relatives each other, the only things taht cares is that staying together they don’t feel lonely no longer. The randomness of life is the main theme of the film: how that people meet each other and how they change in better or worse the life of each other isn’t enstablished before.

  14. The intricately-plotted story follows the lives of five characters, each with their own singularities, their own quirks, whose lives intersect in strange ways which leave all of them changed in some way (for the better). Events uccur, and they are linked like smoke rings: they are unpredictable, they can change with a waft, they born, curl and evaporate. This is the message that the Auster and Wang wanted to give: smoke is a metaphor for the vaporous and unpredictable process that is life. The plot of the film is harsh but lifelike, realistic: there are no healthy or happy families; it is about being a father or a mother in the modern world, where single parenthood is becoming increasingly familiar, where too many teenagers are pregnant or involved in crime. But the message it gives it is not pessimist, it is a message of hope: even in this money driven, fast living, urban and individualistic society there is a lot of love, friendship and humanity. The all film is in fact a celebration of the simple pleasures of life: good conversation, sharing experiences with friends and, of course, smoking a good cigar.

    Alessandro Piccin

  15. Pierluca..

    So, this author doesn’t really like the fate and the movie is the example of Auster’s love for the Chance. Under the surface of the film there is the feeling that we are too much egoist; we think that other people are “other”: their life separate from ours. A person that we meet every day is no more that an individual with his life. Thinking that, Auster, with his film, wants to find fault with this society.

    Once again Paul Auster shows that the Chance is the captain of our life: the writer crosses the seller’s life by chance and the same thing happens with the young black man.

    The plot is strange, unusual but fluent; a quiet movie with a slow rate that lets time to reflect. The film starts with one character and it ends with three; that is not so strange if we think that the author means to put in evidence the fact that our life is a continuous crash with inexplicable events.

    I think that this special plot together with a hidden reflection could lead this film to win an important film critics award.

  16. Smoke is absolutely not a “normal” movie, because he has not a central plot but some stories that link themselfes each other. However, it gives a particular point of view of the human mind, and also it is not difficult to follow the plots, that are well-linked. It is interesting too the story within the story, that underlines how strange could be the human life.

    Damiano Verardo

  17. “SMOKE”…at the first impact this word can be meaningless but if you reflect on it you can find and discover a profound sense.

    At the beginning of the film there is a long digression in which is narrated the history of smoke, its origins and the various ways to weigh it. It is quite interesting and it gives a more complete idea of the title.

    Personally i consider the film a little bit different from the others, it is particular for lots of elements: the setting, the plot, the characters…..all things which make it so original to win an International Award.

    As in a novel converge all the peculiarities of the autor’s poetic, here in the film come out all Paul Auster’s favourite themes…as randomness, coincidences and also detective elements. The characters are different people who met each others casually, by chance. They have their own life and they contribute together to create a unique story. Everybody is confused and with the help of friendship that begins between the protagonists, they manage somehow to revive…

    …A strange succession of events that make the film really intriguing.

    Marson Chiara

  18. I think that Paul Auster won an International Award because he is great in filming different stories always linked one by the other by a special event always in a organic way, he can suspend a plot and pick up it after having narrate a different one. He can film chaos.

    The only phrase I clearly remember is when Auggie said “today tobacco, tomorrow sex” about prohibitionist law on imported cigars from Cuba. I think it impressed me because with few words he can explain a character.

    Francesca Cazorzi

  19. Before watching the film I thought that the movie was centrated around the cigar shop, that is quiet near to the truth. Each story has in common the tobacco shop but there are three different and important stories: Auggie Wren, owner of the Brooklyn Cigar Company, Paul Benjamin, the writer and Rashid, the young black who saved Benjamin’s life. Auggie teaches to Benjamin the importance of time, showing him all the photos he has made every day at the same hour in the same place. Rashid is a young boy that has a full life: his mother is dead, he is searching his dad that ran away years before and he is a witness of a robbery. Each story is linked to the others in a very good way.

    Also the last Christmas story is pretty: both Auggie and the grandmother know that they are playing a role as they were written in a script just to spend Christmas not alone. Thanks to the meeting with the grandmother Auggie steal the photographic machine that he used to make photos from the same place.

    I’m sorry but I don’t have a good memory so I don’t really remember any emblematic cues even if I tried to remember them.

    It was nice that such a “strange” film as “Smoke” is has won an International Award. Maybe it was awarded for the way the film was made, for the way events were narrated or because it is just an original way to make a film.

    Federica Battistin

  20. Before watching the movie I imagined the title was referred to a deeper meaning, but I couldn’t imagine that the plot would have been so complicated. There are three different stories, brought up in the meanwhile, and I think Paul Auster did a great job, because he could weave them clearly (despite the plot is a little bit intricated), so that the movie is easily understandable. Watching the film we discover that smoke is the leitmotif of all the stories, the element which “gives life” to so many friendships… I found this film really different from any other film, because of its deep meaning. This is the clear example that we don’t need so many special effects to make a film incredible… Investigating on human life is much more intersting and realistic. I also think the International Award that Smoke won proves my point of view.

    Giulia Marcassa

  21. The smoke combines three different destinies, a young black, a writer still in mourning for his wife and the owner of a tobacco shop. The smoke is the metaphor of life, volatile and ephemeral. The three characters cross their destinies and share their stories giving important lessons one another with their experiences, investigating the meaning of life.

    The writer, still in mourning is intent to write a new book that expresses his emotions that capture the meaning of death and life in a Christmas context. For the writing of this book is a fundamental aid his meeting with a black boy fleeing from its social problems and family and the owner of tobaccos that proves to be also him an artist.

    The tobacconist shows his work (a series of photographs taken every day in the same place) to make him reflect on the meaning of time: a series of instants apparently all equal, but dissimilar, each one in a different way. Then the life takes on a new meaning, the tobacconist with its work was able to shoot the passing of time.

    Last pearl of the author is the tobacconist’s story of his first and only camera with which he had done his artistic work: a final and touching metaphor of life which concludes a truly remarkable film.

    FRAncescoMARSon

  22. I found in “SMOKE” many deep philosophical themes. The main of these is the passing of the time, and I saw in Auggie a new Horace, who created the theme of “carpe diem”, Auggie expends every five minutes of his life to take a simple picture but at the end of his life, he will collect a series of moment, everyone different each other. That is why the scene I like best is when Auggie takes an other picture of his shop. The message I extrapolated is that the time doesn’t stop and we must look and take the better of any moments. I guess not it my favourite film, but I think is very interesting from some point of view, as the director’s choice in some scenes. An example is the zoom on Auggie’s face when he tells his Christmas story, using the old American cinematographic technique, instead of a flashback. Moreover is interested how Paul Auster has expressed the passed of the time, using different narrations which link each other. Any character shows its limited life, creating a unique and boundless story.

    Nicola Truant

  23. The movie “Smoke” may be difficult to understand because it doesn’t have a single plot, but three different plots, with different characters. To be more precise, this is an interesting movie because, with three different stories, the viewer can seize the multiplicity of points of view, the complexity of reality and our actions, as a result of an intricate tangle of life experiences unique and different from person to another one. Only if we know the story that lies behind each character, we can understand their behaviors (and, for example, we can understand what has prompted Ruby, Auggie ex-girlfriend, to tell a lie, as a result of deepest despair for the conditions of her miserable life). The common thread of all these experiences is the smoke, as a parenthesis in everyday life, which is a sharing moment with others of people’s personal experiences.

    Federica Cozzarin

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.