Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Sideways
2004 · Alexander Payne · Sideways on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch Miles's hands at every tasting: swirl, sniff, sip, spit. (performance)
Giamatti runs the same drill each time. Lift, swirl, smell, hold it in the mouth, assess, spit. He has built a whole self on a ritual whose entire point is not to swallow.
Payoff: A man with an exquisite palate and no follow-through. The procedure tells you what kind of trouble he is in. In the reading: the gest. The reading calls this a gest: a posture that suddenly exposes the whole social relation it sits inside.
Watch how small the two men look against the vine rows. (camera)
Phedon Papamichael keeps a sober, observational distance, setting Miles and Jack against wide valley landscapes and two-lane roads. The camera closes in only for the quiet two-shots that carry the feeling.
Payoff: The landscape dwarfs their small crises and asks nothing of them, so the scale reads as indifference rather than destiny.
Notice the motel rooms, chain counters, and tasting-room formica. (setting)
Payne sets the week in interchangeable American nowheres: motels, a fast-food joint, a cluttered mother's house, a pouring counter. The wine-country postcard stays at the edge of the frame.
Payoff: These places refuse to work as a stage for anything, which keeps the trip from becoming an adventure. In the reading: any-space-whatever. The reading calls these any-spaces-whatever: interchangeable places that no longer function as a setting for action.
Listen for the bossa nova playing under Miles's worst moments. (sound)
Rolfe Kent scores the film with light, jazz-inflected cocktail-lounge ease. The breeziness holds while Giamatti lies, drinks alone, or humiliates himself, and the music never swells to tell you how to feel.
Payoff: The score refuses to underline the misery, which keeps the sadness from tipping over into self-pity.
Count how long a conversation runs before Tent cuts away. (cutting)
Kevin Tent stays patient in the talk scenes and lets the awkward pauses sit. His timing turns sharp for the set pieces. A single scene can move from farce to flatness without a jolt.
Payoff: Behavior gets more room than plot, so you end up watching people instead of waiting for events.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the hands. Swirl, sniff, spit. Miles has built an identity on a ritual whose entire point is never to swallow.