Michael Mann wishes more people would watch The Insider (we agree)
While it was one of the best films of 1999, Michael Mann named The Insider as the one film of his he wishes more people would watch. The post Michael Mann wishes more people would watch The Insider (we agree) appeared first on JoBlo.
Settle in for a Michael Mann film and you know you’re going to be in capable hands for the next couple of — or few — hours. That’s most definitely the case with one of his longest, 1999’s The Insider. Haven’t seen it? Well Michael Mann would really like you to.
Despite being one of the best films of its year (and a stacked one it was) and garnering seven Oscar nominations, Michael Mann doesn’t quite think enough people have seen The Insider, about a whistleblower who tries to take on the U.S. tobacco industry. “For myself, that was very challenging. It’s a tense psychological drama that takes place in two hours and 45 minutes. The ambition of it is the challenge: Can I engage and deliver the intensity that Jeffrey Wigand and Lowell Bergman lived through? In Lowell Bergman’s case, your life’s work may be trashed, and you may be excluded. In Jeffrey Wigand’s case, with the assault upon you and your family, you’re reduced to the edge of suicide. So, it’s a psychological assault by your adversaries, and it’s a mortal threat.” In the film, Wigand is played by Russell Crowe and journalist Bergman by Al Pacino.
Despite real-life figures that Mann wasn’t entirely convinced would be captivating for modern audiences, the director knew The Insider was an environment he could immerse himself in. “Both in the construction of the screenplay that Eric Roth and I wrote, but also directorially and cinematically, how was I going to bring the audience into the intensity of that experience? Naturally, it was a wonderful place to push myself into. Personally, I felt that I pushed myself onto a frontier, and I always feel that those are very healthy places to be.” To date, The Insider is, perhaps surprisingly, the only Mann film to ever receive either Best Picture or Best Director nominations.
If you want to make Michael Mann happy, you can currently stream The Insider on The Criterion Channel as part of a tribute to the director. Other films housed therein include Heat, Collateral, Thief, Manhunter, and more. Come on, give us The Keep!
Are you a fan of Michael Mann’s The Insider? Where would you rank it in his filmography? Let us know below!
The post Michael Mann wishes more people would watch The Insider (we agree) appeared first on JoBlo.
