Darren Aronofsky’s new film is a blast from the past; a half-cut retro tour of late-1990s New York. Beetling around the tatty East Village, casually framing the twin towers downtown, it lifts the lid on a time that has been and gone: when the city was a melting pot of miscreants and misfits, when lowly bar staff could still afford Gotham rents, and when every car came equipped with a cigarette lighter. “Don’t they have those any more?” says Aronofksy, frowning at his untouched cup of herbal tea. “I don’t know, maybe not. It’s been many years since I smoked a cigarette.”
Caught Stealing, he says, could almost be his parallel-universe first movie, given that it’s set in 1998, around the time he was shooting his actual first film, Pi, on the same East Side streets. He was in his late 20s back then, subsisting on pizza and living in a fifth-floor walk-up. He was anxious and ambitious; he had his eyes on the prize. He now thinks he ought to have enjoyed himself more.
