Black Mass

The FBI’s Least Wanted Man

Black Mass, directed by Scott Cooper.

            The progress of that grand American form, the gangster film, demonstrates the perennially fascinating and intricate connections between life and art.  The form began fictionalizing the exploits of actual criminals, virtually lionized in the newspapers and consequently entirely familiar to the public, in that first great trilogy, Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface.  The practice continued in film after film, stretching for decades from the 1930s to the present—think of Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather trilogy, and GoodFellas.  Now Black Mass reinforces the tradition, emphasizing that unusual relationship between what we like to think of as real life and the creation of art.

            Black Mass, as most viewers know, deals with the life and career of James “Whitey” Bulger (played by Johnny Depp), who ran the Irish mob in Boston and worked closely with the FBI, both as a protected informant and perhaps even as an instrument for the agency’s own misdeeds.  Although it necessarily omits numerous details and of course dramatizes a substantial amount of the drab daily business of crime, a far less glamorous subject than its treatment in the movies, the picture provides a reasonably accurate summation of Whitey Bulger’s career during its most successful years.  The film shows the middle and end of his career, skipping his youthful crimes and his early incarceration in Alcatraz, concentrating mostly on his relationship with a childhood friend and fellow native son of South Boston (Southie to its residents), the FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton).

            In a quest to rid Boston of the Italian mob, Connolly persuades Bulger to provide information on La Cosa Nostra in exchange for a kind of protection from investigation of his own criminal activities, which consist of gambling, loan sharking, drug peddling, and their almost inevitable consequences, murder.  Although Bulger prizes loyalty above all other qualities and systematically tortures and kills anyone suspected of snitching, he actually follows a long Irish tradition of informing, an act of self destruction that perennially defeated the historic struggles against the British in Ireland itself.

            The narrative runs in a kind of retrospective, showing the interrogation of Bulger’s associates, who ultimately turned on him for a variety of reasons, especially in order to escape the most severe possible punishments, then opening up into the visual story.  All of them guilty of various crimes, including murder, they relate a number or anecdotes about their experience with Whitey, as friend, assistant, fellow killer.  The story, barely fictionalized and well known now, shows a career of almost unparalleled ruthlessness, and above all, the collaboration between Bulger and Connolly, between the Whitey’s Winter Hill Gang and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

            Aside from the steady diet of torture and murder, an incomplete record of Bulger’s crimes, the film at least shows some the culpability of the FBI in the gangster’s achievements.  The connection between Connolly and Bulger ultimately involved the agent and one of his colleagues, John Morris (David Harbour) in a number of crimes; Connolly and Morris concealed evidence, falsified records, fingered at least one informant whom Bulger killed, and even tipped him off when the heat from their bureau threatened exposure and arrest.

            Despite its resources and its publicity, the FBI remains something of a gold standard for official incompetence.  The Bureau’s record in the search for the Unabomber, the two-year hunt in North Carolina for a fugitive ultimately arrested by a probationary patrolman, the botched anthrax case, or one of my favorites, the failure to catch the serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who was driving a stolen red pickup truck with New Jersey plates all over Miami and using his own credit card, often seems like a bad comedy, funnier if it hadn’t resulted in so many deaths.  The Whitey Bulger case, however, reveals an unsuspected record of crime and dishonesty; some people, including this writer, believe that Bulger escaped arrest for so many years because the FBI really didn’t want to catch him—his arrest would reveal the Bureau’s involvement, much of which remains hidden.

Like its many predecessors in the last century, the movie itself follows the patterns of both history and fiction.  Just as the makers of those great gangster flicks from the 1930s ripped their people and events from the headlines, Black Mass recounts a story well known to many of its viewers that even at times resembles a documentary.  Only a few of its cast members rank among recognizable actors—Johnny Depp of course and the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon as John Connolly’s supervisor—which underlines the authenticity of the story.  In addition, gangster movies are generally brother movies, in which the brothers sometimes pursue polar opposite careers, with the gangster’s brother a cop or a lawyer or even a priest.  Black Mass shows the relationship between Whitey and his brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), who rose from the same working-class background in a political career that made him the most powerful legislator in the state, then the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts: you can’t make this sort of thing up, though as Mark Twain noted, life is stranger than fiction because life has no need to be probable.

Showing a heretofore hidden penchant for malevolence, Depp captures the look and feel of the psychopathic Bulger, willing to kill anyone for the slightest infraction of his rules—disloyalty above all, but also insults, and the mere possibility that someone might inform on him.  In his most vicious murder, he strangles the stepdaughter of his closest associate, Steve Flemmi (Rory Cochrane) because she knows too much, while Flemmi looks on, helpless to prevent it, perhaps frightened of his boss’s willingness to erase any opposition: no wonder his henchmen finally betrayed him.  Above all, of course, the notion that Bulger himself worked as an informant for the FBI underlines his own lack of loyalty or even a violation of something like gangster’s honor.  In his trial, not shown in the movie, he reacted angrily when anyone called him a rat, the lowest animal in his sphere, which despite all his other crimes labeled him the very thing he hated.

While conforming to the conventions of its genre, the movie represents the new face of gangsterism, the collusion with law enforcement touched on in GoodFellas , a situation in which the good guys now closely resemble the bad guys, even to the point of informing on their own colleagues in order to receive a light sentence.  Disappointingly, it omits the alleged search for Bulger, which took 16 years and covered three continents, and the surprising method that led to his capture.  That search suggests the reluctance of the FBI to find the man who assisted in their corruption, whose accomplices they became, and whose actions forever tarnish the well shined image of their badge.  The story of Whitey Bulger really needs another movie to deal with all the subjects raised in Black Mass.

On the Road Again

The End of the Tour, directed by James Ponsoldt.

The subject of the artist presents some special appeal in film, in part because of the inherent fascination of an art that in effect studies and transforms another art.  Among the many actual artists studied in numerous biopics, unfortunately, writers constitute the least promising material for that study and transformation.  The visual and musical arts naturally work well--painters making their masterpieces, composers creating music provide obvious subjects, which talented directors can turn into exciting images.  If the person in question, like most great artists, led a troubled or colorful life, the the filmmaker can plunder the biography for all sorts of interesting details--unhappy childhoods, love affairs, even crimes, the whole spectrum of behaviors that often please both producers and audiences.  More important than biography, however, the very creation of a work of art makes for appealing cinema.  Although probably not limited to American film, Hollywood handles the fascination of sheer process with special distinction--the barn raising in Witness, for example, Robert Redford crafting Wonderboy in The Natural, John Travolta assembling the accident sequence in Blow Out--so that the painting of a picture, the composition of a symphony, and even the staging of a show in all those backstage musicals make perfect subjects in numerous movies.

Writers and writing, however, cannot compete with those arts and those artists.  Few writers, for example, if they are not Ernest Hemingway, lead interesting or eventful lives, a fact that haunted a number of American novelists, including James Jones, Robert Roark, and above all, Norman Mailer.  More important, the act of writing, unlike the act of painting, sculpting, or making music possesses very little visual interest.  Whether with a chisel on a clay tablet, a quill pen, a typewriter, or a word processor, writing looks boring (which it often is)--someone staring at a blank sheet of sheepskin, paper, or the gray gloaming of a computer screen hardly qualifies as a compelling image.  The process, after all, takes place somewhere inside the head, the heart, or even the genitals, which the dancer Pearl Lang called "that lonely place between the legs."  Those internal processes seldom translate successfully to the screen, unless a director with more than the usual quantity of imagination finds some way of showing creative composition turning into action, a rare feat George Roy Hill accomplished in The World According to Garp, in a sequence that showed the title character writing as a series of images coalesce into a charming short story.

After all that pedantry, which I hope whatever readers are out there will forgive, the latest movie about a writer, The End of the Tour, avoids anything like the actual process of writing in order to concentrate on a writer's thoughts about his art, his ambitions, fame, life, and other heavy stuff.  Based on a memoir by David Lipsky, a writer for Rolling Stone, the film shows the five days that Lipsky, played in the movie by Jesse Eisenberg, spent with David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel), interviewing the author about his work and his life.  At that point, Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008, enjoys an enormous success with the publication, sales, and critical reception of thousand-page novel, Infinite Jest.  That novel created a kind of cult around the author and, sadly and inevitably, his suicide cemented his cultish appeal.  (The film never raises one obvious question: how many people actually read that enormous book?)

Wallace and Lipsky it it off well from the opening moments of their connection and, despite a couple of incidents that create some anger between two neurotic individuals, generally appreciate each other's company.  Lipsky watches Wallace teaching a creative writing class at a local Illinois college, then accompanies him on a book tour to Minneapolis, where he reads from his novel, autographs copies, appears on an NPR interview, and meets up with on old graduate school friend.  Throughout they discuss life, writing, fame, relationships, and other related matters; in fact, the film mostly consists of conversations between the two, with Wallace delivering philosophical insights in a dreary monotone and Lipsky writing them down.  Unlike most movies about writers, The End of the Tour never shows the novelist scratching his head and staring out the window, the usual visible signs of writing in progress.  That choice, however, fails to turn the writer and his writing into anything cinematically appealing.

A dried-out alcoholic, Wallace appears to subsist on the whole panoply of junk food that American companies sell to poison the populace.  He gorges on doughnuts and soft drinks, eats Pop Tarts for breakfast, and treats Lipsky to what he considers an upscale meal at McDonald's.  His culinary tastes emphasizes some elements of his troubled, perhaps addictive personality.  Occasionally he refers to his time in the famous psychiatric institution, McLean Hospital, the preferred recovery place for affluent literary types; the depression he suffered from for most of his life apparently led him, despite all his success, to hang himself.  The news of that death begins the movie, which flashes back to Lipsky's experience with him and all those conversations that follow and essentially provide the substance of the movie.  Despite the sad subtext and back story, the film remains a dull effort, neither making its subject interesting or his work accessible; it may, however, inspire people to read his magnum opus and will surely magnify his reputation and the cult it created.

Old Timer's Rock and Roll

Ricki and the Flash,  directed by Jonathan Demme.

            Disproving the common contention that older women rarely find starring roles in Hollywood these days, Meryl Streep just keeps on acting.  Perhaps because she plays what might be called age-appropriate parts instead of attempting some sort of faded ingénue, she maintains a busy and distinguished career.  Whatever its merits, her latest movie, Ricki and the Flash,  once again demonstrates both her versatility and her commitment to her art; it also provides a kind of showcase for yet another facet of her onscreen persona.

            Streep plays the Ricki of the title, a superannuated rock and roll guitarist who plays with her band, The Flash, in a hole in the wall called The Salt Well, and works as a cashier in a place called Total Foods, which should indicate exactly the level of both her musicianship and her success.  The Well’s habitués, a scruffy lot, many of them beyond their first youth, apparently adore Ricki and her group; her fellow guitarist, Greg (Rick Springfield) a sensitive soul, also adores Ricki, who rejects him onstage, hurting his feelings terribly. 

Ricki interrupts her career in music and at the supermarket to return to Indianapolis when her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) calls with the news that their daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer), despondent over her husband leaving her, has attempted suicide.  While Ricki (real name Linda) deserted her family to follow her musical dreams, Pete cared for their three children, remarried, and prospered; he now lives in a mansion in a gated community, where Ricki seems as out of place as, well, an aged rocker in a motorcycle jacket, skintight pants, tattoos, and yards of jewelry in an affluent, uptight bourgeois ghetto. 

Most of the movie shows the tensions between Ricki and her grown children, understandably estranged and resentful, concentrating particularly on the fractured relationship between Ricki and Julie.  Some of its humor results from the contrasts between the world Ricki embraces and the one she left behind, with neither one emerging as an entirely positive dwelling place.  The plot inevitably concludes at the wedding of Ricki’s older son, an event fraught with tension until, despite all the complicated problems and her own mistakes and bad decisions, Ricki manages a most unlikely way to save the situation.

The movie primarily exists to demonstrate once again Meryl Streep’s versatility and commitment to her art; much of its surrounding hype concentrates on the fact that she learned to play the electric guitar and sing in order to play Ricki.  She apparently plays the few rudimentary chords demanded and sings no worse than most of the contemporary screamers of rock music, but she really shouldn’t quit her day job, either in Hollywood or at Total Foods.  Sadly, she also looks quite silly and even embarrassing in her ridiculous hairdo and attire, exactly like someone dressed up to impersonate a rock musician at a Halloween party.  As embarrassing as her appearance, the relationship with a younger man played by Rick Springfield, an actual major rock star, never achieves either conviction or chemistry, and his doglike devotion to her makes no sense at all.

One of the more interesting aspects of Streep’s recent work reflects a willingness to play negative characters.  The icy autocrat of The Devil Wears Prada, the alcoholic harridan of August: Osage County, and now the self-absorbed musician of Ricki and the Flash certainly demonstrate versatility and perhaps even a kind of artistic courage.  The movie itself, directed by, of all people, Jonathan Demme, exhibits a kind of confusion about its subject: should we admire Ricki’s choice of her art, such as it is, over something like normal life, or condemn her abandonment of her children?  Its resolution suggests a far too easy and sentimental papering over of that problem. 

   

Woody Goes to College

Irrational Man, written and directed by Woody Allen.

            If for no other reason, Woody Allen deserves some respect for his consistency and productivity; he brings out—I am tempted to write emits or perhaps excretes—a new movie almost every year.  With rare exceptions, like the wildly untypical Blue Jasmine, his work demonstrates a self-satisfied decline into mediocrity at best and failure at worst.  The dull, laborious, and essentially unsatisfying nature of most of his films in recent years—recent decades, actually—suggests one of the negative aspects of consistency: he repeats himself over and over again.

            Moving from his usual haunts in Manhattan and his recent jaunts to Europe, Allen sets Irrational Man in Braylin College, a small, charming campus in Rhode Island, apparently one of those Potted Ivies.  The protagonist, Abe Lukas (Joaquin Phoenix), a highly regarded professor of philosophy, arrives to teach what seems to be a summer school course.  Something of an academic superhero, in addition to his scholarly work his personal history includes vague stories about time in Iraq, in Bangladesh, and doing something or other in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. 

Alcoholic, impotent, depressed, he now finds little satisfaction in his teaching or research, which he tells the audience about in frequent voiceovers, matched by similar voiceovers from one of his students, Jill (Emma Stone), who naturally falls in love with him.  A sexually aggressive colleague (Parker Posey) throws herself at him, but his impotence prevents him from consummating a relationship with either woman.  When he accidentally stumbles upon a motive for what he considers a justified homicide, an existential act, his problems magically disappear and he finds himself transformed in every way.

The movie displays most of the usual Woody Allen themes and motifs, minus his distressing proclivity for turning situations into gags.  In the classroom Phoenix mouths some familiar references, essentially one liners, to Kant and Kierkegaard, mentions Husserl and phenomenology, and discusses Dostoevsky with Jill—he even keeps a copy of The Idiot by his bedside—but never expands on or digs deeply into any of the substance of those writers and thinkers.  The method, presumably the director’s notion of scholarly discourse, suggests a kind of academic name dropping rather than serious inquiry.

 All of that of course reflects Allen’s familiar obsessions with difficult writers and Deep Thoughts, with perhaps a touch of his ambivalence about intellectuals and intellectualism.  In Irrational Man he raises some of the issues that appear in his Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point, but resolves them quite differently, with a hardly believable and artificially pat ending that recalls Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. 

With almost no real sense of passion or engagement, the emotional level of the film parallels its intellectual depth; everybody seems bland, smug, or even willfully obtuse in a manner that recalls those many Hollywood depictions of college professors, people with a limited understanding of real life.  Joaquin Phoenix mumbles a good deal of the time and delivers most of his lines in this very talky picture in an offhand, generally affectless manner.  The only character with any energy is the sexually voracious chemistry professor played by Parker Posey, who seems a good deal more attractive than Emma Stone’s enraptured undergraduate.

Woody Allen employs the scenery of Rhode Island to good effect, capturing the summertime light, the charming towns, the picturesque seashore; even a scene in a garish amusement park—is there another kind?—looks polished and precise.  He also constructs the film with a fine sense of unity, keeping the action and characters tightly under control, and including a device worthy of Chekhov to conclude the plot.  Irrational Man, something of a pun itself, provides a certain charm with a certain lack of impact, not untypical of Woody Allen, who more and more appears to be imitating himself.