"From the start of Darren Aronofsky's new film, "Caught Stealing," it's apparent that it hits the sweet spot of his cinematic artistry-the right scale, the right scope. Set in the summer of 1998, almost entirely in New York City, the movie begins in a Lower East Side bar at 4 A.M., where the bartender, Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), is dealing with a raucous group that's breaking an absurd law-by dancing-and reminds them that Rudolph Giuliani, the zero-tolerance mayor, is indeed enforcing it."
"For Aronofsky, size matters, because one of the constants of his career is the conflict between order and chaos, a struggle for rational solutions to irrational realities. Too big ("Noah") or too small ("The Whale") or just erratic ("Mother!") and that conflict becomes either unbalanced or unengaging. "Caught Stealing," based on a novel by Charlie Huston (who also wrote the screenplay), nearly matches Aronofsky's finest dramas of disorder and control, "Black Swan" and "The Wrestler," especially in the way that it maps private lives onto public spaces."
The film is set in summer 1998 New York City and opens in a Lower East Side bar at 4 A.M., where bartender Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) confronts patrons dancing in violation of a long-standing anti-dancing law. The law is noted as real and was only recently repealed. The film balances intimate, small-scale setting with the city's ambient tension and administrative force, transforming an ordinary night into a neo-noir nightmare. The filmmaker centers a recurring theme of conflict between order and chaos, exploring physical endurance, intimate torment, and how private lives map onto public spaces, recalling earlier works.
Read at The New Yorker
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