Manhunter (1986)
Directed by Michael Mann
Written by Michael Mann
Starring William Peterson, Dennis Farina, Brian Cox, Kim Greist, Joan Allen
Release Date August 15th, 1986
Published July 16th, 2024
The visual simplicity of the opening images of Michael Mann's Manhunter are sublime. We open on a flashlight falling upon a flight of stairs. It's pitch black other than the flashlight. This could be a home invader or an investigator at this point. Toys are strewn across the stairs in the haphazard way that young children carelessly like to play. The visual signs of life in a typical American home are all present. As the person with the flashlight climbs the stairs, it's light falling on more signifiers of life, we arrive at the top of the stairs. The flashlight pans into what appears to a be a child's room, seemingly empty.
A few steps further and we arrive in a bedroom where we see our first evidence of people. A woman and a man are in bed and for a moment, it's not clear if they are alive or dead. The flashlight begins to hold steady on the woman who finally moves to signify that she's alive. The flashlight, now unmoving, continues to hold on the woman as it becomes clear that she's waking up. The fog of sleep still in her mind she finally begins to rise and just as she might be about to react to the sight of a stranger with a flashlight, we cut to the opening title of the film, Manhunter.
The clear indication is that this person with a flashlight is about to commit a horrific murder. That Michael Mann uses a signifier as simple as a flashlight to toy with us, to give us hope that perhaps we are arriving at an investigation and not an invasion is part of the building tension, the rising suspense. The way the flashlight falls on the woman in bed and holds on her becomes the unsettling implication of a terrible crime about to be committed. Mann's direction is simple, the visual storytelling is electrifying and yet it's still just a person with a flashlight and visual context. That's pure film language.
Over the years, Michael Mann will come to be associated with a style that is more bombastic and far less subtle. No less skilled or polished, but somehow more modern and garish for having a bigger budget, bigger stars, and bigger ambition. I'm not the biggest fan of Michael Mann's blockbuster era. I don't love the kinetic, overwrought style of Heat. I genuinely believe his movie Blackhat is one of the worst blockbusters of the last 10 years, but I still respect Michael Mann. I know that at any moment, Mann can still do what he did in Manhunter and blow my mind with his simple, straight-forward grasp of the language of film.
