🎬 #196 What We Can Learn From Characters /02/: Neil McCauley.

This is the second in this series of posts, taking learnings from different characters throughout cinema. This week it’s one half of Michael Mann’s crime epic - Heat, focusing in on Neil McCauley, played by Robert DeNiro.

Please enjoy

Bry

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One of the characters in cinema who’s most clearly definable. He states his rule for living early on in the film’s runtime. We all know that rule - “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” His stringent way of living is what keeps him out of prison, leading a professional crew of thieves on high-wire jobs around LA. He is exacting, calm - exactly the kind of leader you want. He’s a literal man of action, sorting out not just the jobs, but anything in even the personal lives of his crew that might end up interfering with their work.

His rules of engagement and attachment are so strict that there’s barely a stick of furniture in his blue bathed, ocean view hideout. We all know these things, but what can we learn from Neil for our own lives. It’d say it’s good to live by a set of your own personal rules, as a guideline. What’s great about cinema is it’s usually compelling and dramatic because it features characters in the extreme. Much more so than the average punter. But like Neil it is good to have boundaries. To have a code to live by.

It’s this very rule he gets into conflict with that inevitably leads to his downfall. He breaks his one rule. However, you could argue that by letting himself get actually attached to something - in this case his relationship - that it was all worth it. That it lead him to the noble death his character always needed. Otherwise he’d just be in Figi alone, on a beach. Living out the rest of his life as a lone wolf with no purpose. It’s his purpose to live by his rule but also to die by it. His romantic relationship lead him to the maybe even more important relationship in his life - that with his inverted mirror image, Al Pacino’s detective - Vincent Hanna. The relationship that gave his life most of its meaning up to that point.

It was also his exacting nature that couldn’t let the thread of Waingro go - the film’s one true villain. He was free and clear - but he fell into the trap set by Hanna, because he couldn’t let that itch fade. In many ways, it’s not being able to walk out on that attachment that contributed to his fall too, maybe more so. But was it a fall or rise? That’s what I’ll ask.

So what can I say, it’s sometimes the glory of living in spite of your own rules that leads you to true meaning - getting to at least taste something formerly out of your grasp. And important to remember - McCauley has another rule to live by - never going back to prison. He gets to maintain that rule if not in the way he intended, with dignity and deep connection in the final moments. Within that beautifully tragic, that wild decay of one’s own identity - true essence can be found. Leading to a special intimate moment, hand in hand, of two men who truly understand each other. That transcends any police / criminal boundaries, like god moving over the face of water.

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