Glengarry Glen Ross
“I’m going to shove my appointments around just for you.”
By Philip Bassett
Glengarry Glen Ross—a film based on a play by David Mamet, one that won the Pulitzer Prize—tells the story of four real estate salesmen and the two bosses who supervise them at Premiere Properties. Times have grown hard; properties are not selling. Employers blame their salesclerks, and clerks blame their leads.
To fix the problem, management introduces two new initiatives. First, they have purchased a new set of leads from Glengarry Glen Ross properties. Before they put these “good leads” into the hands of their sales team, however, they want some signs of assurance. So, their second step is to launch a sales contest: the winner will get a Cadillac, the runner-up will get a set of cheap steak knives, and the others will get the axe. The problem for these salesmen, aside from the prospect of placing third, is that this contest requires them to use the old Rancho Rio leads. The duress that follows turns them into cornered rats.
This film portrays men who feel no need to, as Wendell Berry advises, “stand by words.” In their world, everything is permitted in the name of closing a sale, and these creatures take full advantage of such an approach. They lie to customers, and in ways that sound familiar. “Our computer has chosen you of all the customers who have requested information about our properties.” Or: “I’m here overnight and have to go home tomorrow. But Danny, I know you’re serious, and because of that I’m going to shove my appointments around.” Doing their job means pressuring customers to make quick decisions on bad products. Here, there is certainly no hero to be found.
But the movie does have its virtues. For one thing, its cast amounts to one of the best ever assembled: it includes Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Price, and Alec Baldwin. Their performances—especially their ability to handle dialogue at this level, where a single sentence demands a range of emotions—confirm and further their reputations. I am thinking especially of Jack Lemmon, who plays Shelley “The Machine” Levene. Roger Ebert has called his character as memorable as Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, and rightly so. While each salesman in Glengarry has the capacity to shift from “chatting with the guys” to “working a client,” no one executes this switch with more ease and sliminess than Lemmon. His voice alone still haunts my ears.
And then there is the dialogue, which is a virtue in itself. There is a repetitiveness to it, one that reinforces the catch-22 in which these men find themselves. Dave Moss (Ed Harris), for example, cannot break free from the leads. He simply goes on and on like this: “He’s got the leads, he’s got the good leads…We’ve got to go to them to get the leads…It’s the leads, the whole thing is the leads.”
Near the end, topics of discussion at the beginning return to conversation. This move seems to suggest that things have come full circle and the cycle is starting anew. Such an effect brings hell to earth. These men inaugurate their own doom. As each character cusses the other into isolation, the irony is that all of them are just as deceived as their customers. That elusive promise of prosperity—you can find it in the titles they give their properties. Glengarry Glen Ross, Rancho Rio: both ring with exoticness. Tucked within these tags lies the very vapor for which both salesman and customer give away their lives.
Given the cause of the current economic crisis, this movie-play from the early ’90s still has a pertinent warning to offer, but that message certainly has a limited range. This movie is only concerned with the vilest of our race.
Rating: Enjoyable/Impressive
Written on July 1, 2010 by Philip
Points of Interest: Alec Baldwin, David Mamet, Drama, Ed Harris, On DVD, Real Estate
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