Glengarry Glen Ross

For this month, I will be reviewing films that star Kevin Spacey. Yes, I know about everything that he has done, but he still has been in amazing films. Let’s take look at 1992 classic, “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

The untidy real estate office in the film may be one of the movie places we will remember, like the war room in “Dr. Strangelove” or Hannibal Lecter’s cell. It has two parts: a glass area where the office manager lives with his precious “leads” – cards with the names of people who might want to buy real estate – and the rest of the office, given over to the desks of the salesmen, who try to sound rich and confident over the phone, but whose eyes are filled with misery.

Throughout the day, they make calls to sell real estate that no one wants to buy. They are making no money. It is worse than that.

They are about to lose their jobs. Blake, played by Alec Baldwin, the professional jerk from downtown, arrives to give them a lesson on the chalkboard and a warning. There is a new sales contest. First prize is a Cadillac.

Second prize, a set of steak knives. Third prize, they’re fired: “Hit the bricks, plan, and beat it, ‘cause you are going OUT!” The movie is based on a play by David Mamet, who once briefly worked in that type of office. He knows the way these people communicate, and turns their language into a version of his own personal language, where the everyday swears and misery of everyday speech are copied into a sad music. Roger Ebert said in his review, “Their struggle takes on a kind of nobility.”

Look at Shelley (the Machine) Levene, for example. Played by Jack Lemmon, he was once a professional salesman, winning the office sweepstakes every month. Now he is not making any sales, and his wife is in the hospital, and it’s sad to hear his lies, about how he would feel wrong, not sharing this “marvelous opportunity.” Lemmon has a scene in this movie that shows the best work he has ever done. He makes a house call on a man who does not want to buy real estate. Ebert said, “The man knows it, we know it, Lemmon knows it – but Lemmon keeps trying, not registering the man’s growing impatience to have him out of his house. There is a fine line in this scene between deception and breakdown, between Lemmon’s false jolity and the possibility that he may collapse right on the man’s rug, surrendering all hope.”

The other salesman are gathered in a well-balanced cast that practiced Mamet’s dialogue for weeks, getting to know the music of the words while working on the characters. Ebert noted, “Kevin Spacey is the office manager, unblinking and cold, playing by the rules.” The salesmen are played by Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Lemmon. They are all in different types of breakdown. There is a part between Harris and Arkin that is one of the best things Mamet has written. They think about the near-famous “good leads” that Spacey has said to have locked in his office. What if someone broke into the office and stole the leads? Harris and Arkin discuss it, neither one really say out loud what they’re thinking.

There are other parts. Lemmon and Spacey have a scene in a car, in the rain, where Lemmon tries to buy the leads from Spacey.

And Pacino and Jonathan Pryce, who plays a possible customer, have an amazing scene in a restaurant booth, where Pacino slightly tries to convince Pryce into buying, by playing on what he feels is hidden gayness.

In “Dead of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller made the salesman into a symbol for the failure of the American dream. In Miller’s play, Willy Loman was out there alone, with a smile and a shoeshine. “Glengarry Glen Ross” is a version for modern times.

Ebert noted, “Produced onstage in the good times of the 1980s, filmed in the hard times of the 1990s, it shows the new kind of American salesmanship, which is organized around offices and corporations. No longer is a salesman self-employed, going door-to-door. Now individual effort has been replaced by teamwork. The shabby Chicago real estate office, huddled under the L tracks, could be any white-collar organization in which middle-aged men find themselves faced with sudden and possibly permanent unemployment.”

Ebert continued, “Having said that, I must not forget to mention the humor in the film. Mamet’s dialogue has a kind of logic, a cadence, that allows people to arrive in triumph at the ends of sentences we could not possibly have imagined. There is great energy in it. You can see the joy with which these actors get their teeth into these great lines, after living through movies in which flat dialogue serves only to advance the story. The film was directed by James Foley (“At Close Range“), whose timing and camera help underline the humor; a line of dialogue will end with a reaction shot that mirrors our own reaction – surprised, blind-sided, maybe a little stunned, but entertained by the zing of anger and ego in the words.” Meanwhile, nobody is buying any real estate, and it is raining, and the L goes by like a mystery train to down below.

What a movie. Anybody who has tried a job in sales could probably be able to relate to this in some way. Spacey’s character is called every swear in the book, which is a joy to watch, especially when Pacino goes off on him. If you haven’t seen this film, you need to see it because it is a classic. You will enjoy the film and seeing these characters interact is the best.

Next week I will be looking at another film that is great to watch in “Kevin Spacey Month.” Sorry for the late response. I got so tired after work that I took a nap.