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In our first look at Neil’s house, he leaves his gun on the table. The still possessions are shot in close-up before the camera tilts up to a wide shot of him staring out at the ocean from the balcony. This moment is a near recreation of Pacific, a 1967 painting by Canadian painter Alex Colville which evokes similar feelings of longing and solitude. Unlike Colville’s naturalistic colors, Mann’s shot has a palette soaked in dark blue, reflecting both the ocean-side setting and melancholic mood.
Speaking to LA Weekly, Mann recalled that a “challenge” with finding locations for “Heat” was ensuring that each one evoked the proper emotions of the scene. Neil’s house was no exception:
“It all starts with scene analysis: the dramatic content of the scene, what the scene is telling us, how should it make the audience feel. I want you to feel the alienation of somebody who has the absolute minimum in that place. He lives in a world of abstraction. That’s why I picked that location, with the ocean out the window. And the windows are kind of dirty, you know — he doesn’t pay much attention to maintenance. He’d probably have a fork and a knife and a spoon, a coffee maker, and that’s about it.”
Later in the movie, after Chris has a fight with his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd), he crashes at Neil’s place. Since there’s no couch, he sleeps on the floor with a pillow. When the two men have coffee in the living room, we get glimpses of just how clear the house is. The cabinets are empty aside from a couple of neatly stacked plates and utensils. There’s no furnishing on any of the walls, which are painted white to boot. A world of abstraction indeed.
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