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 Let's
face it, on paper 8 Mile did not sound like it was going
to amount to anything much. A rap movie (famously limited auds)
starring controversial rapper Eminem, basically covering the hoary
old "you're-going-out-there-a-kid-but-you've-got-to-come-back-a-star"
backstage genre, written by Scott Silver (Mod Squad), produced
by Brian Grazer (some great movies, but not exactly your cutting-edge
kind of guy), and co-starring Kim Basinger as Eminem's mother.
The end result is a film that is gripping with a central performance
that is charismatic and magnetic. Go figure.
Set in Detroit's seamy side, the setting shows us a town for
which the words "gritty" and "grim" are woefully
inadequate. It's here in a grimy club on a Friday night that we
first meet Jimmy 'Rabbit' Smith (Eminem) puking down a grimy toilet
in nervous anticipation of a rap battle. The skinny, glow-in-the-dark
kid goes out in front of the hollering audience and chokes. The
rest of the film follows Rabbit during the ensuing week, leading
inexorably towards the following Friday and another attempt at
battle.
Rabbit is a kid who seems to have no future at all. To make things
worse, he's just split up with his girlfriend and moved back into
a small trailer with his mother, baby sister Lily, and the almost
continuously present Luke (a wonderfully loathesome Michael Shannon),
his mother's loser boyfriend. He has a dismal job at a stamping
shop, and knows he's lucky to have that. He dreams of success,
furiously writing rhymes on scraps of paper, but is beginning
to feel that maybe it's not going to happen.
His realism is contrasted with the dreams of those around him,
his friends Sol (Omar Benson Miller), Cheddar Bob (Evan Jones)
and DJ Iz (De'Angelo Wilson) are all convinced that he is going
to make it and yammer on endlessly about what they're going to
do when they're rich. Even his most down-to-earth companion, Future
(an engaging Mekhi Phifer), the host of the Friday night battles,
is convinced that Rabbit has something special. His new g.f. Alex
(Brittany Murphy) dreams of a modeling career in NYC, while his
mother, grimly aware that she is rapidly losing what little remains
of the charms that attracted men to her, is pinning her hopes
on an insurance settlement that Luke has coming.
These are people with almost no control in their lives, everything
is abdicated to someone else or to a hazily envisioned dream.
Rabbit himself is pinning his hopes on neighborhood hustler Wink
(Eugene Bird) who is perpetually hyping his "connections"
and talking up the big break he can provide. No-one really believes
him, but they can't quite bring themselves to give up on the idea
that this time he might just deliver. At the same time, they are
a bunch of friends who drive around in the worst looking cars
you have ever seen in your life looking for fun and finding it.
As the week unfolds and we come to know Rabbit and his world,
the dream seems less and less attainable. Yet we begin to hope
for it as much as any of the characters (ironically, almost every
character refers to every other character at some point as a "loser").
The reason for this can largely be laid at the door of Eminem,
who turns in a riveting performance as the quiet, yet seething
Rabbit. While Eminem's anger is all too familiar, in 8 Mile
he creates a character who is afraid, hopeful, shy and fearless.
The hollow eyes in the pale face are almost hypnotic and pull
us into a world of barely voiced ambition, disappointment and
fury.
Much of the credit for that performance and the world of 8
Mile has to go to director Curtis Hanson, who has created
Rabbit's universe with the same deft eye for detail which he brought
to L.A. Confidential and Wonderboys. Location shooting
in Detroit allows him to take us into the worst side of a shell-shocked
city in a way that no stand-in locale ever could. The result is
that the city in 8 Mile is as much a character as Rabbit
or Future, and it looms over their lives, imbuing them with its
own contagious decay.
The ancient Greeks felt that drama should adhere to the three
unities: time, place and idea. And while their concept of "time"
was that the action should all take place in a single day (even
ancient Greek playwrights had problems with that one), they were
right in the sense that plays or movies which impose that discipline
on themselves often have a power and narrative strength that remains
elusive for wider ranging tales. In 8 Mile, we are told
a story within those constraints: the time is a week, the place
is Detroit and the idea is the turning point in Rabbit's life.
For unlike many other similarly-themed films of recent years (Brittney,
Mariah...are you paying attention?) this one doesn't take us along
to stardom and the problems that it brings (leave that to The
E! True Hollywood Story) but simply to the moment that changes
Rabbit's life forever.
Is 8 Mile groundbreaking cinema? No -- it's story is conventional
and familiar. But perhaps that is what was needed when examining
a genre of music that is less than accessible to vast numbers
of movie goers worldwide. And, let's face it, Hollywood is all
about vast numbers. Instead, we have an engaging story, well told,
featuring a career defining performance.
Not bad for a first outing.
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