It’s pointless to try to convince you, because art is subjective. I won’t say A Midnight Clear is the best film ever made in some universal, objective way. Keith Gordon on the set of ‘A Midnight Clear.’ Photo by Arye Gross. And yet, it never meanders from its gripping plot: an exhausted and terrified unit of American soldiers teams up with a unit of even more exhausted and terrified German soldiers in an effort to execute a plan that is both brilliant and insane. Drenched in mood and beauty, the film is far more concerned with the human experience than armed invasions. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s Thin Red Line, a film is so sprawling it hardly leaves room for anything but the existentialism.Ī Midnight Clear manages to land squarely in the center. Even the smallest scenes are in service of the arc, or setups for dramatic character conflicts. Saving Private Ryan is phenomenal in its all-too-raw battle scenes, but the film is so plot-driven, so focused on the narrative, that it leaves no room for existentialism. For me, other World War II films just don’t compare. In many ways, it still does, as I watch it at least ten times a year, sometimes seeking inspiration, sometimes seeking guidance on good storytelling, sometimes just wanting to be in awe of something.
This was the opening sequence to A Midnight Clear, a gorgeous, meditative, horrifying film from 1992 about an exhausted group of soldiers during World War II, adapted from a novel of the same name by William Wharton. Gary ran into the forest and, stark naked, crouched into what must have been a freezing cold stream, and started bathing himself. In a shaky handheld shot, the camera-as-Ethan Hawke followed Gary Sinise as he ran through the snow, stripping off his clothes. Gary Sinise’s scream turned to a whimper and then he pulled the rifle away from Ethan Hawke’s face and climbed out of the foxhole and started running. Gary Sinise pushed him down and pointed the rifle at him, and his friend held his hands up. He stopped screaming and the guy in the foxhole reached up to comfort him. After another cut, the camera was back in front of him. He was standing in a foxhole in the middle of a snowy field. Then there was a cut, and the camera tracked in on him from the side in a strange repeated shot.
He was wearing a helmet and bundled up in fatigues. Not a brave war cry, but screams of terror and madness. In 1999, I was at the University of Illinois in Champaign, flipping around the channels when Gary Sinise’s face filled the screen. Gordon has directed five feature films, as well as some of the most prestigious of prestige television, including but not even remotely limited to “Fargo,” “The Leftovers,” and “Homeland.” Maybe you have seen one of his movies, and not just one he’s starred in. People thought they knew him, but he was always way too embarrassed or humble to say ‘I’m an actor, maybe you’ve seen one of my movies’. “Sometimes I would actually just jump in and say, ‘He’s an actor, you’ve probably just seen him in one of his films.’ …It was just really painful for him. “They would rarely say, ‘Oh my god, you’re the guy in Christine, or you’re the guy in Dressed to Kill or whatever,” Weide said. ” And it was often true, sort of: many people know what he looked like in the mid 1980s, because Gordon had been a very visible, successful actor in teen comedies and thrillers. “ You know what it’s like, when you see him from that time,” recalled Gordon’s wife, Rachel Griffin, a film producer and former actress. Do we know each other?’ They’d say, “Did you go to Brandeis?’ And Keith would say, ‘No, no, no, I didn’t.’ …They’d say, ‘Wait a minute, did you grow up in Sacramento?’” “He has one of those faces where it would be, ‘Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you, but don’t I know you?’ …Keith would always give them the benefit of the doubt and say, ‘Um, I don’t know. “We would walk down the street…and people would recognize him all the time,” said Bob Weide, an executive producer, writer, director and one of Gordon’s oldest friends. “When I first met him the only thing I really remember is that he looked familiar to me,” cinematographer Tom Richmond told me about Keith Gordon, the director and former actor.
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