Just like Cassavetes' very own films, the improvisational performance given by the astonishing leading actors make Mikey and Nicky rock. Although the film was directed by Elaine May, already known as a brilliant comedian for her sketch comedy by the time she became a filmmaker, it seems to contain more of a John Cassavetes-like style. May used Cassavetes, the man himself and his real-life friend Peter Falk- as her protagonists, adding another layer of intimacy into the picture. Peter Falk, Hell Yeah! The man with a "lazy" eye. Cassavetes had used Falk's fake eye in an interesting way in many his earlier works. In the movie Woman under the Influence, Falk couldn't quite focus his vision. His wife in the film, played by the AMAZING Gina Rowlands, is a bit crazy and Falk's eye is never emphasised. However when he looks into the distance, he seems unfocused- like the dead eye actually sees the thing that will help him with his crazy wife and their screwed family. The quirky fake eye of Peter Falk's in Mikey and Nicky seems to have a way more huge impact than another famous example in the history of cinema that has used dead eyes to make a point- Fredrick Wiseman's unfairly infamous Titicut Follies. In Titicut, there is a scene when a guard is preparing for the funeral and stuffing the dead eyes of an inmate with cotton. Noted that this very inmate is the same guy being forced fed of liquid food with a four feet long tube inserted into his nose, in the previous scene. What qualifies Peter Falk's fake eyes with a more bizarre fashion than the ones in Titicut is the definition and function of an eye. Falk's fake eye never spins but actually speaks in Mikey and Nicky. It almost declares an independence or a revolution from his mind. If people say eyes are windows of one's soul, then, in the films, Falk appeared to have a very troubled soul. The "window" here is broken that can no longer prevent the soul from suffering the freezing gale fiercely blowing outside. However odd it appears to be, the quantity of the impact generated by the fake eye is way outnumbered by the fake friendship between Mikey and Nicky. The first hour of the film is not unnecessary at all. The intimacy shared by Nicky and his best friend at that time, Mikey, could only be vividly illustrated in the crummy hotel, the desperate African American pub, the lousy NYC streets, the "smoking free" bus, and the dark, gate-locked cemetery, where Nicky would have, for the only time, shown his civilized silhouette- saying "Excuse me" to the graves he steps onto by accident. All the intimate moments, interrupted by the frequently occurred disagreements and the childish fight, have accumulated until reach the climax- the touching and brutal ending. We have shown the shot of a door earlier in the film, but the one at the end, together with Cassavetes' helpless scream, has the most influential impact on the audience. In no other film (except perhaps Nuit et Brouillard) do we stare at images of a door so imploringly. In the absence of a voice of objection in the film (there is no soundtrack and sound effects) we want the door, as the idiom goes, to speak. The film discomforts us for all that it doesn't do, the privacy it doesn't breach and the secret it doesn't reveal. We turn to the inanimate objects in the film in order to help formulate our own responsibility as witnesses to the events, the ritual subjection, that we see. We want somebody, something, to react because we have no stand in. The door of Mikey's house, in this unperturbed and sober movie, become as implacable as the screen we are watching, but in the process also become as charged and animated by phantoms. 1/29/2015 #HFA "FURIOUS CINEMA '70-'77"。

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