Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann approaches director Michael Mann’s work through the lens of transformations in labour practices, technologies of seeing, and strategies of dissent over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Applying extensive textual analysis to each of Mann’s features, this study explores how these transformations are reflected in the filmmaker’s output, formally and thematically. As much as Mann expresses anguish at the pervasive nature of technologically advanced systems which exist to exploit the common man, curtail civil liberties, and prop up corrupt regimes, there always remains space for protest and resistance in his cinema. This aspect of Mann’s art is essential to keep in mind and is too often ignored: the filmmaker being accused of nihilism or anti-humanism.
This book covers all of Mann’s major films, with extensive critical commentaries, while comparing and contrasting the styles, the characters and the themes. An essential read for all fans of Mann’s work, and those interested in the textual and visual history of the very best that cinema can offer.
COVERS THE FILMS:
The Jericho Mile / Thief / The Keep / Manhunter / The Last of the Mohicans / Heat / The Insider / Ali / Collateral / Miami Vice / Public Enemies / Blackhat
276pp. 6×9 format paperback book.
ISBN 978-1-84583-207-0 (pb)
Published July 2022
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES SLAYMAKER
James Slaymaker is a film critic and filmmaker from Dorset, UK. His writing has been published in Senses of Cinema, Little White Lies, MUBI Notebook, Film International, Bright Lights Film Journal, The Interactive Film and Media Journal, Sound on Sight, Vague Visages, Kinoscope, Alternate Takes, Popmatters, Tilt Magazine and McSweeney’s. He has also contributed chapters to recent books on Paul Schrader, experimental cinema, and Howard Hawks. As a filmmaker, his work has been spotlighted by The Film Stage, MUBI, Fandor and Sight and Sound, as well as premiering at the London DIY Film Festival, the Concrete Dream Film Festival, the Slow Film Festival, the InShort Film Festival and The Straight Jacket Film Festival. He is currently a PhD student at The University of Southampton, where his research focuses on the cinematic essay and digital culture. Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann is his first book.
Amy Harris –
In this volume, James Slaymaker adds to existing scholarship on Michael Mann’s impressive oeuvre by providing a discourse on Mann’s reflexive filmmaking. James recognises Mann’s experimentation with digital cinema as one that invites questions about our relationship to digitality both within the hyperreal worlds Mann creates and beyond the screen. Meticulously researched and poetically written, Time is Luck offers a comprehensive overview of Mann’s five-decade long career, paying closer attention to his later releases through extensive close textual analysis of Mann’s films. As always, James writes with a vivacity that celebrates the artistry of the filmmaker and his practice. A delightful read: anyone interested in Mann’s filmmaking will enjoy this book.