The Spanish Prisoner

 Stichomythia, I remind you, is a method of writing theatrical dialogue using short half-lines, full lines of verse, or, even, sometimes, couplets; stichomythic verse employs these staccato utterances as spoken by alternating characters.  The Spanish Prisoner (1997), written and directed by David Mamet employs stichomythia in its dialogue, characters vying with one another in competitive ejaculations.  (Mamet's verse also involves strange patterns of repetition, odd elisions, and the use of proverbial impressions:  "I'm loyal and true blue," a female character insists although she is anything but...)  The effect of Mamet's theatrical verse style is to insist upon a sort of headlong acceleration in dialogue scenes and to create the impression that everyone is severely paranoic.  The language conceals more than it reveals, as if the characters were afraid of anything approaching intimacy or true revelation of motives or intentions.  No one seems trustworthy.  Similarly, everyone seems to be playing a role and, in fact, not performing that part too successfully -- the stilted stichomythic exchanges are self-consciously theatrical, ring false, and, in fact, the enhance the film's tenor that no one can be trusted and that everyone is lying.  Mamet's unique and highly artificial dialogue, accordingly, enhances the themes of his movies about con men and long cons --for instance, House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner.

The plot of The Spanish Prisoner is too elaborate and intricate to reveal.  And, in any event, a thoroughgoing description of the story would confound the viewer with too many spoilers as to the twists and turns that the story takes.  The general premise is that a young man, a mathematician, has figured out some highly lucrative "process" that is worth a fortune to its possessor.  The process is, somewhat quaintly, written down in a red notebook in longhand.  With his corporate bosses, the young man pitches the process (he refers to it as "making widgets") to investors.  The movie is coy about this "process" and the wealth to be derived from it -- numbers of dollars projected are written down on a white board turned away from us.  This is because the details of the process are immaterial to the story that involves an extremely elaborate confidence trick designed to wrest the "process" out of the hands of its owners so that it can be sold to the Japanese for a king's ransom.  There are probably holes big enough to drive a semi-truck through in the movie's scenario but the exuberance of the rat-a-tat dialogue and the curious oratorio-style of the diction and presentation -- there's a distinct Brechtian "alienation effect" at work in this movie -- inspire interest in the viewer and, even, pleasure with respect to this highly stylized film.  There are lots of empty corridors, vacant streets, and the climax occurs on a strangely empty ferry crossing Boston harbor.  The film's paranoic subtext is so strong that everyone seems to be under surveillance -- mere extras in some scenes, for instance, people loitering around the Central Park carousel take on a sinister appearance:  are these just random onlookers or some kind of spies.  

The film is entertaining because of its excellent cast.  Ben Gazzara plays an unscrupulous corporate mogul.  Ricky Jay, part of Mamet's repertoire company, is an equally sinister corporate lawyer.  (People are constantly threatening litigation against their adversaries and the plot turns on the question of who really owns the so-called "process", some sort of airy combination of technology and pure mathematics, invented by the young man, Joe Ross (the earnest Campbell Scott).  Steve Martin is conspicuously oily as an oligarch with a mysterious sister who is a tennis pro and who baits one of the many hooks dangling down into the murky waters in the film.  Rebecca Pigeon (then, Mamet's wife) plays a naive secretary who tries to seduce the rather dour hero, Joe.  There are other assorted rogues and scoundrels in the film.  Everyone is excellent and, if this sort of thing is to your taste, the formula here on display can't really be bettered -- except, perhaps, by House of Games, a similar Mamet picture, that has a more dream-like and abstract mise-en-scene.   Jean Doumanian and Letty Aronson (nee Koenigsberg) produced; both Doumanian and Aronson are associated with about a dozen or more Woody Allen films, picture that share a similarly cool and ironic style.  (Aronson is Allen's sister.)