American Hustle: “Come out of the bathroom and pray!”
David O. Russell’s great talent for mixing light-heartedness with dramatic depth was clear in both The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, the more obvious underlying melancholy of those films leading to plenty of moments in which something that had been under the surface could be brought through in some subtle but utterly human way. The nature of American Hustle doesn’t lend itself as immediately to that device in the same way – but every character does have a degree of vulnerability behind them that Russell is careful to draw out.
This is relatively clear for Edith (Amy Adams) and Irving (Christian Bale), both of whom are continually just one small step away from prison. It is not so clear, however, when it comes to the FBI agent ‘running’ the operation, Richie DiMaso. Until, that is, we see him at home.
Played by Bradley Cooper with a feverish sort of energy that is almost exhausting to watch, Richie DiMaso is difficult to like and difficult to hate. But, as we are given the shot of Richie eating chicken wings in the dingy bathroom of a dingy New York apartment, what does become clear is that it is almost impossible not to pity him. In his vest and rollers, and with his mother yelling at him to come and join the family for dinner properly, Richie strikes a faintly pathetic sight here that is painfully at odds with the confident and often arrogant persona he has portrayed so far.
Suddenly we are seeing the rather sad reality of Richie’s life – his humble background, his preoccupation with appearances, the mundane demands on his time (classic dramedy here as he and his mother bicker about the fish-tank: “Your job is to do the filter Mom, mine is to do the gravel”). The scene is short and the only one of its kind, but it is hugely effective in telling the audience who Richie really is; essentially little more than a boy, self-serving and desperate for respect, who must strive at every moment to be the person his colleagues think he is, and the person that he wants to be.
Although if all that fails, he can always clobber them senseless with a telephone.
