If war 'dreams of itself', so too does cinema

Michael Mann directs a panoply of American life through the lens of film noir. Cinematographer Dante Spinotti is almost like a second director and writer; there's hardly a scene in HEAT that couldn't hang in a gallery.

It is as expansive in its dramatic scope as the series that didn't made the cut (L.A. Takedown). 

Heat comprises of picture-perfect shots that meld lighting and camera and filmreel so well that it is literally state-of-the-art; and that's purely from a technical standpoint. 

The movie is filmed with splendid artistry: examine at the segue between the camera panning to thee prozac bottle and Diana Venora's character Justine taking from it in the next shot. Acting, writing, and cinematic affect are compact:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/heat-1995/id1028001760?fbclid=IwAR3yPB72RO7eFtH71a9VKRn6TY8VvTuyKTYUumimaPZv2Me_N_2LbwVggfE

The close-up camerawork portrays the inner-world of Justine; perhaps no other shot in cinema could better adequate the term 'hard-boiled', so synonymous with the genre of film noir and its neo-noir reboots. 

Michael Mann himself said that the action scenes aren't the main focus. Neo-noir simply provides a means to examine a fictitious criminal milieu in which exagerate the dangers and the drama latent within American life.

This uncompromising realism of the genre owes to its gritty origins in the Great Depression, and directors have since rebooted it when they wish to disillusion audiences (or themselves) of the sanguine American Dream, opting instead to relate to the visceral struggles of everyday-America. 

Yet, there is a distinct message of optimism. Gone is the 'jaded' aspect of 'hardboiled', and Mann portrays a distinction between the good and bad throughout. One resonant message is the ability of woman to provide purpose to a man and through a relationship enable him to reassess his self-destructive habits which he may mistake for purpose & direction. It is the drama that the criminal faces through his unique vocation that the late-20th century audience finds relatable, not some common lot which makes the gangster a not-so-anti hero.

Stylistically, the criminals live like Hollywood producers in HEAT, in lavish houses. In fact, one might say that producing a 'job' like a heist and producing the same scene in real life for the movie are akin.The opening heist in 'Heat' demonstrates how similar actual heists are to the process of portraying them. 

The director and criminal mastermind may be, "of imagination compact" by dint of the similarities of their respective lines of work, which include the planning, staging, and executing of extra-ordinary 'spectacles' that disrupt ordinary public life. 

Clauswitz, the great Prussian theorist of war writes, 'war often dreams of itself'.If dreams are thought to be allegories of what is happening in the dreamer's life, then perhaps such scenes are like cinema 'dreaming of itself'. 

Somehow, HEAT makes a viewer feel good about the American life. Perhaps crimes is like a photographic 'negative' of the director's craft. By he same token, through self examination, then perhaps the director reminds us of art's ability to rejuvenate, articulate, and restore.