There are always limits and a generous
bit of speculation involved when attaching a real-world narrative to an artist’s
work or career. Having said that, one can see parallels between Martin Scorsese’s
career and his forays into the gangster genre. Mean Streets, his 1973 breakthrough,
came when he was a hungry young filmmaker. The world it showed was full of
danger and violence, but it looked so cool and exciting and sexy. Goodfellas
and Casino came as Scorsese reached middle age. There’s a no-longer-young man’s longing relish to the hedonism in those movies and a feeling of “Remember when?”
(in between the scenes of horrific bloodshed and brutality). The Departed…finally
won him an overdue Oscar (like I said, limits; I love The Departed,
though).
Now in his upper-70s, Scorsese
has no plans to retire as far as I know (though he is admittedly showing his
age some with this tiresome war of words between him and Marvel). But his
long-gestating The Irishman definitely has the perspective of a
filmmaker in his autumn years. This isn’t a ride through the “glory days” like
his previous gangster pics; what glimpses we see of the old days here are fleeting, somber, and absolutely not glorious. This one’s about what comes after those days, where men in power desperately cling to it as their time passes (a metaphor for mortality if ever
there was one).
The Irishman of the title refers
to Frank Sheeran, an Eastern Pennsylvania Teamsters Union official and the
subject of the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. Before
his death in 2003, Sheeran claimed to have been a hit man for the mafia who
hobnobbed with famous underworld figures and tangentially or directly
participated in major mob hits and historical moments. The film casts Robert De Niro
as Sheeran (digitally de-aging him as the era calls for it) and follows his (alleged)
decades-long relationship with the mob and the Teamsters, specifically Buffalino family head
Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci) and Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).
Let’s get this out of the way: the
picture does not need to be this long (a whopping three-and-a-half hours, with no
intermission). A few sequences could have simply been cut, and the movie better for it. Short scenes of Sheeran’s path
crossing with history are mostly just superfluous, but one in particular comes out of nowhere
and offers little explanation or context. It’s as if they felt they needed to
insert someone getting whacked to remind viewers who might tail off that this
is still a gangster picture, but the anecdote’s significance will be lost
upon those unfamiliar with mob history. Also, the last half-hour or so is obvious
and, frankly, a little sloppy, and comes after the main arc of the story
reaches its perfect conclusion.
Those bits aside, the heart of
the picture—the conflict between Hoffa and the mob and mobbed-up Teamster
rivals, with Sheeran floating in the middle—is mesmerizing. Even without the
crackerjack style and bravura sequences Scorsese usually brings (the cocaine-fueled
errand run in Goodfellas, or any one of half-a-dozen inappropriate parts in The Wolf of Wall Street), the film never bores. Steven
Zaillian’s script sizzles, capturing the viewer and building more dread in
simple conversation than any scene of bloodshed. Despite the grimness, it’s
also often funny, the wordplay shifting unexpectedly from tension to laugh-out-loud levity, and
just as starkly going back again (and a running motif of providing supporting and tertiary players
with captions showing their names and date and method of death becomes humorous
as it goes on). The period production looks sharp, too, and the much-hyped de-aging
effects blend in seamlessly (at least they did on my HDTV).
The cast is a mile-long murderers’
row, with great supporting roles from Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano
(terrific at playing things serious while also bringing some of his comedy chops
when appropriate), Bobby Cannavale, Dominic Lombardozzi, and too many bit parts
to list. Pacino gives one of his career-best performances. His more flamboyant
late-career style gets so much parody and criticism (unfairly, if you ask me),
but it fits this role perfectly, as he plays Hoffa as a megalomaniacal blowhard
at war with everyone around him, and yet undoubtedly and unceasingly charismatic.
And Pesci gives probably his very best performance, contrasting his normal motormouthed
brutality with a turn more restrained and soft-spoken on the surface, but undoubtedly fearsome and Machiavellian closer in. In a few scenes, his laconic, almost grandfatherly demeanor is nearly more intimidating than when he was violently
psychotic in Casino or Goodfellas.
De Niro is, predictably, strong
in the title role (as if you’d expect anything less). The only knock against
him is that he gets upstaged by Pesci, Pacino, and others, to the point where
he practically becomes a supporting or even bit player for large chunks of the proceedings.
Because of this, his Sheeran seems a bit of a cypher, merely the hook into the
more interesting story of Hoffa and the mob, and one of the less interesting
players in it. That, and the recurring subplot of his estranged daughter (Lucy Gallina as
a child, Anna Paquin as an adult, both offering little more than icy stares) is
underdeveloped. One could argue the lack of connection with the character is the
point, to underline Sheeran’s distance from his daughter, but it’s never given
time to develop into anything compelling or affecting to the audience, either (though I’m
reluctant to suggest this movie should be longer).
The Irishman isn’t quite
the Götterdämmerung of the gangster genre (no one’s done that better
than The Godfather Part II 45 years ago), but it is a great one. It’s
also arguably where the career parallels break away from Scorsese’s mob movies. The film posits that the
“good old days” were pretty horrible, actually, and those who make it out alive
only look back in despair and have nothing to be proud of in their old age. The
exact opposite is true for Scorsese.
