On the odd year when a new one arrives, Martin Scorsese’s films—for true cinephiles—more on the divisive root of that word later—are always events. While I’m neither Scorsese superfan nor completist, I’m firmly in this camp and was looking forward to seeing The Irishman.
His 26th feature, shot on 35mm film for Netflix over 106 days, clocks in at 3.5 hours on a budget of ~$160 million. His longest, most expensive movie with the lengthiest shoot in Scorsese’s oeuvre, The Irishman adapts Charles Brandt’s 2004 memoir I Heard You Paint Houses. In the book, Brandt writes of his years as a homicide prosecutor, investigator and defense attorney to tell the story of the life of Frank Sheeran, a career criminal and hitman who confessed to the still unresolved murder of labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975.
Over the last few months in Variety, Esquire and elsewhere, I’d read several interviews with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro as they made the rounds of the international press junket. I was charmed by their 50-year friendship and obvious mutual affection, their stories of meeting each other on the streets of New York and of confiding in each other regularly in decades past about various challenges amid their unique and yet comparable career trajectories.
It was fun to hear them dish on the experience of making Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), a favorite of mine and perhaps the only other time they’d shared screen time in what proved to be an excellent film, as they both dismiss Righteous Kill (2008, the only other time they appear onscreen together) as an inarguably lesser-than blip on the radar. Learning that Scorsese’s latest would not only star Pacino and DeNiro but would also lure Joe Pesci out of “retirement” to reunite the fab four for one last hurrah, along with Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano and Sebastian Maniscalco, it was hard not to feel optimistic about the film’s potential.
Then came the news about the extensive use of computer graphics to de-age the actors across the span of the film’s perhaps 50+ years of exposition. This curious trend of de-aging older actors, beginning with the novelty of David Fincher’s Benjamin Button (2008) which led to disturbing instances of even resurrecting dead actors for new movies (see Peter Cushing in Rogue One, 2016). This process, like any painfully obvious instance of computer graphics—but often even worse, when a dead actor is reanimated, or 50 years is digitally removed from someone’s face—has a way of booting me right outside the otherwise immersive world of a well-made film, much like fumbling with 3D glasses or some jerk in the next row on his smart phone.
With spaceships, monsters, fighter jets or Shakespeare—and especially with drama based on plausible, if not verifiable history—it’s all about suspension of disbelief. Any filmmaker is either contributing to this or taking away from it. In this case, the computer-graphics-generated de-aging was accomplished pretty well, all things considered. While it was often obvious that a man pushing 80 years of age was hobbling around with a 40- or 50-something face—and a gait or gestures that didn’t match—so many other aspects of this filmmaking exercise (an art of inherent immersion) were pulled off so flawlessly that these instances were only occasionally distracting.
Part of this, of course, is because nobody recreates period-perfect Americana like Scorsese, and The Irishman is no exception. A smorgasbord of decade-specific visuals—the cars, costumes, sets, props and lighting are all a consistent feast for the eyes. The hats. The glasses. The suits. The dresses. The hairstyles. The pinkie rings. The neon signs. The low-lit restaurants. Those city streets at night, wet and dangerous and reflecting all the colored lights and possibilities, first perfected by Scorsese in Taxi Driver (1976) and again in the underrated Bringing Out The Dead (1999).
In short, production design is impeccable and utterly convincing…and did I mention those cars? The showroom-spectacular cars. Maybe they were my favorite part of the film. Rodrigo Prieto’s discerning cinematography somehow always knows where the camera should be, and how close. Scorsese’s editor for more than 50 years, Thelma Schoonmaker’s adept hand echoes Prieto’s discernment, as both repeat collaborators and masters of their craft get the details right, time and again.
With the exception of Francis Ford Coppola or David Chase, few directors have examined the history of Italian-American organized crime culture with the depth and breadth of Scorsese, and The Irishman sounded as though it could contain his final words on the subject. It yet may. All the ingredients for a masterpiece seemed to be aligned. An incredible cast. A master auteur waxing philosophically on a subject he knows well. The budget he required to realize his vision. Seasoned technical collaborators at the top of their games. There was so much to admire.
And yet…after investing three and a half hours, the one word left lodged in my brain was “hollow.” With a disappointed shrug, it’s how I felt. Despite all this thing had going for it, it felt empty at its core. What was it trying to say? Was it a retrospective on a life of crime gone wrong? No. The primary criminal in question is quite successful and tends to avoid introspection. Was the film a portrait of a man looking back on his life, examining the choices he made, wondering how it could’ve been different? No. There was no palpable remorse, no regret. I hear apologists arguing, “but it’s all in the eyes!” and well, yes, DeNiro’s eyes are indeed expressive.
This is not to say that the performances, DeNiro’s included, weren’t powerful, convincing or even emotive. They were. As written, these characters just never seemed to question what they were doing or why, never wrestled with the ramifications of their actions, before or after committing one atrocity or another. They never apologized, never looked back, didn’t ever seem to grow or change. Even Walter White had a character arc, albeit in the opposite direction of what was once expected by general audiences. Even Tony Soprano came to learn a few things about himself and wrestled with his choices. Did Don Draper learn anything? Maybe, as my wife said, we’re both getting tired of watching old, rich, white guys acting like total assholes, unapologetically. Of course, drama requires protagonists and antagonists, and when those lines are blurred and the anti-hero or even super-villain takes the stage, he or she is most interesting when displaying multiple shades of nuanced humanity. Despite all the talent, for me this story just felt flat. It was an “it is what it is” sort of story, and yes, perhaps that’s the point.
I’d read descriptions of the film like “elegiac,” as though it were an elegy for a bygone era, a cautionary tale about how life of crime has consequences, a mournful lamentation on loss and death, steeped in sorrow, longing and sad tough guys coming to terms with the wake of their destruction. I’d say that “elegiac” is a misnomer. This wasn’t the film that I saw.
Sure, it acknowledges that murdering people for a living can make close father-daughter relationships challenging, if not impossible, but I wanted some real reflection. I looked for a character arc that wasn’t there. I looked for at least a single, well-developed female character with more than a handful of inconsequential lines. She wasn’t there either. With the exception of Anna Paquin’s powerful, nearly mute performance, all the women were sidelined.
Maybe what I really wanted was a reckoning. I wanted the principals to reckon with the detritus wrought by a lifetime of crime and killing, extortion and murder. Without a reckoning, we’re left with a meticulously crafted, 3.5-hour slice-of-life, wherein great actors fail to really wrestle with what makes them what they are, how their actions get them where they’re going or why they’re willing to risk so much for so long. It failed to examine the why, and therefore, it all just felt empty to me.
It’s also a mystery. It’s not as though Scorsese’s characters are strangers to artful reflection. To moral turpitude. To characters who wrestle with their own nature, wrenching choices and inevitable consequences. He’s done this beautifully in many other films I admire and enjoy. He’s even done this in films I admire but don’t enjoy. Sometimes great art isn’t pleasant to see.
So what is cinema, really? Scorsese prompted the question recently with his spirited defense of the art form, which included a thumb in the eye to Marvel. According to Scorsese, Marvel movies “aren’t cinema.” They’re “amusement park rides.” I happen to think they’re both and feel fortunate to have access to those movies as well as to his, whatever you want to call them. It’s all part of a rich tapestry that is this wide-ranging and at times an utterly engrossing and rewarding creative art form that reveals profound truths about who we are and why we do what we do.
Scorsese’s personal definition of cinema encompasses “revelation—aesthetic, emotional and spiritual.” He writes that cinema is “about characters—the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.”
As much as I am a fan of many of his movies and consider him a real auteur, even a titan of American cinema—I don’t think Scorsese’s own definition of cinema applies to his latest film, The Irishman. It is what it is. Call me what you will, but damn, what great cars!