You want to be making moves on the street? Have no attachments
Macauley echoes Hanna’s struggle. His code of conduct highlights the impossibility of his relationship with Eady, and by extension, anyone that enters his life:
Neil Macauley: “You want to be making moves on the street? Have no attachments. Allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.”
In Macauley’s condominium, we see this code manifest. Though containing a stunning vista, the place is bereft of humanity.
In comparison, while Hanna may live in a “post-modernist, bullshit apartment” with all of the luxuries of the late twentieth century, in his mind, it is as empty as Macauley’s condominium.
They may differ in their focus: Macauley on seeing the “irridescent algae” of Fuji, and Hanna on arresting “his whole fucking crew”, but the consequences are the same. Deep down these men know that even if they achieve their aim, the same emptiness will return. Therefore, they have only one course of action that they can take.
What is that course of action?
Words alone cannot describe it, so again, we return to the work of Alexander Colville to understand.
Beyond the direct reproduction of Colville’s Pacific, there is an echoing of the artist’s style throughout Heat, most notably in the lighting and cinematography. Beyond the visual means, there is also a thematic echoing of Colville’s other works, specifically ‘Horse and Train’.
This painting, (a clear influence on Michael Mann), was inspired by the poem “A Dark Horse against an Armoured Train”.
By reading the poem, we can peer into the minds of Hanna and Macauley. This enables us to understand their unspoken, troubled thoughts, and see why they are driven towards such destructive ends:
“I scorn the goose-step of their massed attack
And fight with my guitar slung on my back,
Against a regiment I oppose a brain,
And a dark horse against an armoured train.”
- Roy Campbell: A Dark Horse against an Armoured Train
With the poem and the film in mind, we can see the thoughts of Hanna and Macauley manifest:
Horse and Train 1954
In Colville’s painting, nature, man and machine combine to create a paradoxical world in which the familiar is unnatural. While the composition seems simple on the surface, again, it is what lies beneath which creates meaning, especially when observing through the prism of Heat. The horse could change direction at any time, or the engineer could apply the brakes, yet both carry on, bearing down on the other with an air of inevitability.
Poem and painting combine to capture what burns inside these men: an act of defiance against inevitability, the individual in opposition to the collective, and a ‘normal’ world transformed into the alien and utterly incompatible.
Macauley’s terse summary of this speaks volumes:
Neil Macauley: “A normal life, what the fuck is that? Barbecues and ballgames?”
Beyond Macauley’s words, there is a hidden demonstration of this point during the bank shootout. As these men engage in a deafening, life and death battle on the streets of LA, notice what is behind Hanna:
The thought of “Barbecues and ballgames” is as alien to them as the thrill of bank jobs and bullets are to civilians.
These men were never going back.