Review of Smoke

I didn't know what to think when this movie ended. There's certainly no sense of closure for many of the principal characters, with plot threads left dangling and expected reconciliations left to the viewer's own imagination. But then I thought about the title, and how the various stories had an ethereal quality, allowing the viewer to drift in and out of them much in the way smoke will gradually dissipate when exposed to it's surrounding elements. I thought more would come of Auggie's (Harvey Keitel) daily photos on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue, though they did serve as a plot device to get Paul Benjamin to slow down and contemplate each picture as an ongoing narrative in the life of the city. For his part, four thousand straight days of taking those pictures would have amounted to eleven years of doing penance for stealing a blind old woman's camera, a self imposed sentence Auggie eventually found some comfort and solace in. The two main questions I have coming out of the picture would be what Ruby (Stockard Channing) really did with the five grand, and if Rashid/Thomas was able to reconcile with his Dad (Forest Whitaker). I have my own ideas and you probably will to. Which is why a movie experience like this can be somewhat refreshing when the film makers leave things up for you to decide instead of relying on their own perspective. Viewed on a different day in a different frame of mind I might have thoroughly dismissed the picture as a pretentious flight of fancy, but as things stand, I found myself empathizing with the characters and wishing them well.