The world Chico, and everything in it
How Scarface’s blimp scene encapsulates the American Dream.
Tony Montana, the titular antihero of Brian DePalma’s 1983 cultural landmark, Scarface, has narrowly survived an attempt on his life. Wounded wary and “How you say….. paranoid” he gathers his closest associates and hunts down the perpetrator. Unfortunately, the man behind the hit is his own boss, Frank Lopez. This is a problem. Loyalty is everything to Tony. Betrayal is unfathomable because according to him, “All I have in this world is my balls and my word, and I don’t break ’em for no one.” So, when he arrives at Frank’s Miami drug front, Lopez Motors, the tension is stifling.
The camera follows Tony, Manolo and a machine gun wielding ChiChi as they walk into Frank’s gaudily decorated office. It’s reminiscent of a deer being hunted. Lopez giddily celebrates his little league team’s victory, completely unaware of the danger that has just entered his room. However, upon turning to face Tony, reality hits him like a truck.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, Frank Lopez experiences all five stages of grief in exactly five minutes:
“Jesus Christ! Tony, what happened to you?”
He denies that he was behind the hit, feigns bewilderment at the situation. He says that he doesn’t know who did it, but will “return the favor in spades!”
“I gave you your start! I was the one who believed in you!” —Frank Lopez
The jig is up. Tony has made clear that he knows the truth. Now at gunpoint, Frank Accosts his protégé, cussing and scolding him like a twisted mother. He reminds Montana that he’s only here because he wants him to be, and could just as easily take him out. However, when corrupt cop Mel Bernstein refuses to back him up, his tone quickly changes.
“Alright Tony, I was the one.”
The click of a gun, creeping synths and “Please, give me a second chance, huh Tony?” mark the halfway point of Frank’s final deal. He pleads, implores Tony to spare him, offering everything from 10 million dollars to his wife, Elvira, which culminates at him quite literally begging at Tony’s feet.
Now in the penultimate stage of grief, he collapses to the ground and wails. “I never did nothing to nobody!” When Tony rebuffs his attempts, he sobs for his god, not realizing that those days are far behind him.
“Manolo, shoot that piece of shit.”
“No!!!”
As Tony’s right hand man, Manny Ribera, goes to execute Lopez, Frank throws up his hands in a final exclamation. Not refusal, but realization. For all his talk of loyalty and dedication, Frank Lopez has become what he despises, a chazer. But unlike Nacho Contreras, he underestimated his adversary and was eclipsed by his own greed.
Slowly, a somber Tony gently wakes the wife of his deceased boss. More than what it appears, this mise en scéne acts as a metaphor for Tony’s encroachment upon the (as we soon find out) white collar upper echelon of the drug scene. All of Tony’s superiors, Frank debatably included, are respectable, gentlemanly men who at least try and pretend they’re better than they actually are. As Tony so flagrantly scolds them for in the dinner scene, they need a “bad guy” like him to point their fingers at. This shot with Tony’s bloody, dirt covered, gang tattoo having hand slowly moving towards the immaculately ironed mother of pearl sheets, perfectly foreshadows the next act.
One year ago he was in a refugee camp, now he stands in a Miami villa, overlooking the waterfront and his multimillion dollar empire. Tony Montana is as close to on top of the world as one comes. Nobody stands in his way. However, as the name implies, the American Dream is just that. A dream. As Tony soon finds out, he’s at the bottom, even at the top. His higher ups use him as a messenger, a button presser, think of him as a “monkey”. He might be on the top floor of his mansion, but that Pan American blimp is still thousands of feet above him. “THE WORLD IS YOURS…” nothing but a flashing façade to hypnotize the working class. A neon nothing, a specious stimulant to stay the rope and instate a false hope of tomorrow. While he might have looked good doing it, Tony Montana ended up like everyone else. Face down, with the world far above him.
