“Mikey and Nicky” Review: Comedy in the Chaotic Chemistry
A first time viewing of Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky offers a hilarious and emotional look into a slice of two criminal’s eventful reunion.
Nicky, low level thug on the periphery of powerful crime forces, is a victim of his own naïve confidence and belligerent attitude. Captured in handheld camera, the sweat coruscates off John Cassavetes’ chiseled jaw, weathered skin of leather wrinkles around eyebrows as he crushes a newspaper in hand. The claustrophobic frame highlights words that contextualize Nicky’s paranoia: a low-level bookie was murdered, and based on Nicky’s reaction, the two were close, but the killers are closer. Cornered, trapped by leading lines and asymmetrical framing that visualizes Nicky’s increasing sense of entrapment, the pitiful criminal calls upon “his only friend,” Mikey. Over the phone, one wouldn’t get a feeling of friendship, but rather, of history. Their dialogue is aggressive and fast -paced, comprehensible and tolerable only to one another - just barely. The hallmark of a true friendship: a language developed and understood only by one another.
Enter Peter Falk, shuffling onto the rain soaked, neon lit city streets below Nicky’s bird’s nest, where the crook tosses bottles carelessly through the window to signal to the comically lost Mikey that, “hey, I’m over here!” From a handheld high angle that generates an authentic atmosphere laced with paranoia, the angle doubly frames the minuscule Mikey in comical blocking. As one will quickly see, this simultaneity is indicative of the film’s consistent duality and ambiguity.
Initially, Nicky is resistant, and the hesitance is confusing. Nicky called Mikey in a state of complete desperation, and now he doesn’t trust the only soul that crossed his mind when searching for the word “help.” A reconciliation of sorts follows, one unique to friendships textured by age. Cassavetes and Falk bleed into their characters, their chemistry dynamically injecting the already engaging scene with a comedic energy that is paralleled by genuine emotion, as displayed in the care found between the two’s insults and violence. Mikey shoves a pill down Nicky’s throat - only a friend of three decades would know that the other suffers from a chronic ulcer. This utterance of their past is relayed quickly - only coherent to the attentive viewer who, at this point, is undoubtedly every member of the audience, utterly engaged in the scene’s disorienting construction matched by the character’s irrational behavior. This fanaticism, while primarily found in Nicky’s unpredictable antics, is also displayed in Mikey when he robs a local diner of its cream to soothe Nicky’s stomach with explosive fashion, showcasing the masculine insecurity that defines both men’s arcs, and frames the two’s dynamic in a permanent state of confusing, contradictory friendly competition. Despite the lunacy and hilarity of the act, Mikey’s aggression indicates his dedication to a man who cares about nothing but himself, one of the thematic avenues the film uses to pilot heart and emotion into a story about two friends learning just exactly where they are in each other’s lives.
The reason for analyzing the opening scene in such detail is due to the fact it so purely represents the remainder of the film, and the era in which it belonged. While initially forgotten among its release, Mikey and Nicky has found a second life as an encapsulation of New Hollywood for how strongly it incorporates the technical elements, narrative conventions, and thematic through-lines of the time with grit unique to the streets of 70s America.
Peter Falk and John Cassavetes absolutely shine as the leading duo, their chemistry so effective that a lifelong friendship is believably constructed in a matter of seconds upon their meeting, which demonstrates the irreverent humor the film often indulges in. Much of the comedy comes from the sheer unpredictability of the plot, its characters, and the slightly more rational one’s reactions. The script is tight, but the duo’s journey is anything but as Nicky leads them down a spiraling path to nowhere, all while Mikey is secretly assisting hitman Kinny to take out Nicky. It’s a betrayal that is at once crushing and understandable - Nicky struggles to feel any sense of sympathy that could outweigh his insecurity in the face of Mikey’s more stable life. Meanwhile, Nicky is only slightly more capable in the world of crime than his “partner,” who burns at Nicky’s rash behavior that Mikey reads as attacks on his character. It’s in this complicated dynamic where the film ironically finds its footing - never a seen be boring as long as Falk and Cassavetes are the one’s in front of the camera.
The hatred and love the two feel for one another is completely convincing from the performances and hilarious script, but the cinematography and editing does just as much work at conveying thematic information and constructing a wholly unique atmosphere. As previously stated, Mikey and Nicky “broke the rules” in a number of ways, following an attitude that defined the more personal filmmaking of New Hollywood. There was a desire to experiment and personalize one’s films, and as such, Mikey and Nicky does away with conventional narrative choices, instead withholding information from the viewer and having entire sequences enacted by character’s decisions made on a whim rather than cause and effect. A more conventional movie would have opened on Nicky on the run in the middle of an exciting gun fight, not hopelessly losing his mind minutes after what would be the climax of a pre-New Hollywood film. Rather, Mikey and Nicky opts for intimacy over action, while still having a narrative that runs loose and fast, which is fit for the subversive subject matter. Instead of focusing on the complex dynamics and excitement of explosive crime, we track the little people, the guys who know a guy who know a guy that are only on the edge of truly lucrative crime. The cinematography follows the subversive, “rule breaking” narrative in its authenticity. The camera is often handheld, oscillating between tight over the shoulder shots that evoke paranoia, and wides of barren city wastelands that make America a never-ending desert of concrete. Lighting is natural indoors, and brilliantly glistens off wet cement outside the dingy bars Mikey and Nicky venture to. All in all, the camerawork immerses the viewers not just in the world of the film, but the character’s internal conflicting emotions towards one another, and ever present sense of paranoia.
The editing continues to disorient as much as the cinematography and dialogue. In fact, it’s common to misunderstand this confusing narrative, where scenes seemingly enter and exit at a whim, and character’s dialogue is at times confusingly and sloppily laced over the footage. This is the only area where the film’s “authentic” nature feels closer to technological mishaps, but if that is the only criticism I can apply to a film that is purposefully disorienting, then I believe Mikey and Nicky succeeds in creating an atmosphere where one feels apart of the story not because they wholly understand it, but because they are lost in the same world of the characters. It is difficult to note specific, minute points of specifically subversive edits, but the film’s approach to cutting its scenes undeniably adds to the effective disorientation that Mikey and Nicky find themselves in.
And it is in this collective ambiguity that Mikey and Nicky proves its thematic resonance. I can see myself returning to this film over and over for different readings of the two’s ever-changing dynamic. The movie completely flips if one happens to miss the split-second edit that indicates Mikey is assisting Kinney in his violent plot. I even enjoyed an interpretation of Mikey and Nicky being dueling sides of the same mind, interpreting Nicky as representative of absurdism’s failure to provide meaning to one’s directionless life. For as seemingly shallow as a comedy about two low-level crooks on the run could be, Mikey and Nicky becomes genuinely emotional and thought provoking by its end, where the relationship that defines the film reaches its most nuanced and confounding state. It is with an abrupt cut to black that director Elaine May once again breaks conventional storytelling rules to cap off a truly personal, and personally affecting, film.