IRISH AND ITALIAN
By
now I am sure, anyone at all interested in current cinema knows about the
release of Martin Scorsese’s new work, The
Irishman. In addition to all the
initial publicity surrounding its appearance, on both Netflix and ultimately in
theaters, most of the reviews appear to provide the usual Niagara of superlatives
worthy of a Donald Trump rally speech, interrupted only by exclamation points,
that generally passes for film criticism these days.
Based
on a book about a real person, Frank Sheeran, who worked for the Mob and
allegedly killed Jimmy Hoffa, the movie features a whole compendium of the
director’s typical methods, subjects, and themes. Essentially a voice-over narrative, which
Scorsese often employs, the movie proceeds from the reflections of the aged
Sheeran (Robert De Niro), now in a nursing home, facing the end of his
life. Complete with a priest who sporadically
visits Sheeran, the narrative then constitutes something like a confession,
with the narrator returning frequently to his greatest regret, his estrangement
from his daughter. (Perhaps because of
his Catholicism, Scorsese likes to use the device of confession, which also
explains his attachment to voice-over narration). Apparently to prevent the work from turning
into one long, linear chronology, the director moves scenes and sequences back
and forth in time as he follows Sheeran’s career from truck driver to thief to
mob enforcer to the confidant and eventual assassin of the labor leader.
Along
with some of the director’s favorite techniques, the cast includes some of his
favorite actors; aside from De Niro, who has appeared in so many of his films
he easily qualifies as Scorsese’s alter ego, Al Pacino appears as Hoffa, Joe
Pesci plays Russell Bufalino, and Harvey Keitel occupies a small role as Angelo
Bruno, all actual mobsters in Sheeran’s life and career. In keeping with its pseudo-documentary style,
the film often freezes a frame, showing those men and other gangsters, complete
with the dates and causes of their deaths, mostly of course from lead
poisoning.
Along
with the frequent movements back and forth in time, the film applies state of
the art techniques to alter the appearance of the characters, so that they look
the appropriate age in a particular scene or sequence. Typically, Scorsese also uses the appropriate
popular music of each time period as a background and even a commentary on the
people, places, and actions. The clothes,
the cars, the interior decoration all match those moments—Scorsese is famously
meticulous in the look of his pictures.
As
for the picture itself, despite the hype and the praise, it is actually a very
long, repetitive, intermittently dull movie not terribly different from a
number of Scorsese’s films, though inferior to several of them; it takes a long
time in its elliptical manner to tell its essentially simple story. If it resembles any of his films in the
gangster genre he frequently explores, it seems quite close to Casino, another long, repetitive,
overpraised work based on a mobster’s reminiscences. Its time scheme, its production values, its
distinguished cast rescue it from what could have become crushingly
boring.
Despite
that cast, however, the performances generally disappoint, especially those of
the two headliners. De Niro naturally
occupies the screen most of the time—it’s his story, after all—but he seems to
play almost every moment the same way, with the same mostly impassive facial
expression; he confronts almost every situation with a squint, a shrug, a
downturned mouth apparently intended to show emotional engagement, but mostly
suggests a kind of deadly neutrality. Pacino,
on the other hand, plays Hoffa with an occasionally exhausting excess,
remaining on one note—anger—throughout and confined by the picture to a series
of repeated scenes, in most of which he flies out of control.
Perhaps surprisingly,
the most impressive person in the movie, the real star, turns out to be Joe Pesci. Totally unlike the scary psychopath of GoodFellas
or Anthony the Ant of Casino,
as Russell Bufalino he virtually exudes enormous confidence, even charm, as he
attempts to instruct Sheeran in his understated way in various violent
behaviors, including murder; somehow he retains a certain likeability
throughout the picture, and somehow, with his quiet style he dominates the
scenes he occupies. He essentially outperforms
every other actor in the movie, quite an achievement, considering his
colleagues in the cast.
Scorsese’s apparent
attempt to make the film a kind of epic, a reflection of an era with its own
peculiar hero, ultimately fails. His
major figures prove only intermittently interesting, his plot meanders without
a good deal of energy, and the focus of it all, Jimmy Hoffa, generally seems a
hysterical clown. Despite the gushing
paroxysms of so many critics, great length does not automatically confer
greatness itself; size provides no special grandeur.
