Mamet: The Spanish Prisoner (1997)

One of David Mamet’s most insinuating thrillers, The Spanish Prisoner is about an engineer, played by Campbell Scott, who develops a “process” that stands to make his company a great deal of money. Before he will disclose it, however, he wants to renegotiate the terms of his contract. As might be expected, his company prevaricates, and their prevarication gradually spirals out into a conspiracy designed to divest him of his rights as an employee as much as the process itself. The result is one of those rare films in which a select group of actors feels more and more like an ensemble cast as the story progresses, as Scott comes to realise that everyone in his vicinity has been touched, in some way, by the demands of the company. More than that, everyone has been touched by the language of the company, as Mamet slides his distinctive brand of diction into the screenplay so slyly and sinuously that you sense it more than hear it. Where films like House of Games and Homicide announced Mametspeak as a fully-fledged American dialect, here we’re presented with something more like off-naturalism or near-naturalism, a Mamet hybrid that works especially well for Rebecca Pidgeon and Steve Martin, who put in two of the most alluring performances. At the same time, Mamet reins in his establishing shots as never before – just the opposite of what a playwright might be expected to do when translating his voice to the big screen – imbuing everything with a slight flatness and staginess, even though it’s a great deal of it is clearly shot on location. Insofar as there are any extras who are untouched by this widening ensemble, it’s the Japanese tourists who wield disposable cameras at every conceivable moment, to the point where Mamet’s camera also starts to feel disposable, just as his words and images seem to denude and dispose of the spaces they inhabit, taking a little something away from them each time they testify to their existence. As the con proceeds, realism erodes reality, information erodes information, just as every effort to verify Scott’s process erodes the process itself, or becomes the process. And in the end that’s just business as usual for this new information economy, which means that we never really get any one moment of conspiratorial catharsis, nor anything resembling a climax - just Mamet dismantling his ensemble as invisibly and efficiently as he establishes it.