The Irishman reviews
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Re: The Irishman reviews
Good one.
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Re: The Irishman reviews
Send him “down under”?Big Magilla wrote: The only thing that I couldn't figure out was why "send him to Australia" was used as a euphemism for "get rid of him" - I guess it meant "send him to the other side of the world" or something like that but it seemed odd especially since it was about a mob hit in Northern California which didn't otherwise enter into the film's scenario.
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Re: The Irishman reviews
Close - it's so he can see his eyes.
Re: The Irishman reviews
Just watched it again. Wondered that myself.dws1982 wrote
What was the significance of Pesci's character making DeNiro give him his glasses before he went to carry out the hit on Hoffa? It seemed too deliberate of a choice (especially since it then made a point to show, after he came back from the hit, Pesci returning the glasses) to be meaningless, but I'm still not entirely sure what the significance was.
I think Pesci's character takes off DeNiro's sunglasses so that Pacino can see DeNiro's face unobstructed. If he wore the sunglasses, he wouldn't look like his friend, and perhaps he wouldn't get in the car. Because Pacino can see DeNiro's face unobstructed by the sunglasses, he just trusts him more.
But it's also another example of DeNiro being used as a tool by somebody else. No matter how close DeNiro and Pesci are, Pesci controls him to the point where Pesci can essentially dictate who DeNiro is supposed to be that day.
"How's the despair?"
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Re: The Irishman reviews
Aside from the obvious comparisons to Godfather II and GoodFellas, the film this most reminded me of was John Ford's The Last Hurrah from 1958 which was an old man's film with actors who were popular twenty years earlier revolving around star Spencer Tracy who himself had been a star in the 1930s. Here we have actors who were popular forty years ago in the principal roles with other familiar faces popping in and out.
I thought this was DeNiro's best performance since Awakenings nearly thirty years ago and Pesci's best performance ever. I liked Pacino in his quieter moments but I've seen enough of him yelling and screaming over-the-top to last two lifetimes.
The only thing that I couldn't figure out was why "send him to Australia" was used as a euphemism for "get rid of him" - I guess it meant "send him to the other side of the world" or something like that but it seemed odd especially since it was about a mob hit in Northern California which didn't otherwise enter into the film's scenario. Walnut Creek, which is in the East Bay of San Francisco, is where I had an office from the mid-1980s through the end of 2005. The place of the execution was described as "near Walnut Creek" and sure enough it was. Lafayette, as indicated by the theatre marquee showing The Shootist to be playing, is the town you quickly pass through on the BART train or the freeway just before you get to Walnut Creek. The marquee they used, appears however, to be the marquee of the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, New York which is closer to where most of the film was shot.
I thought this was DeNiro's best performance since Awakenings nearly thirty years ago and Pesci's best performance ever. I liked Pacino in his quieter moments but I've seen enough of him yelling and screaming over-the-top to last two lifetimes.
The only thing that I couldn't figure out was why "send him to Australia" was used as a euphemism for "get rid of him" - I guess it meant "send him to the other side of the world" or something like that but it seemed odd especially since it was about a mob hit in Northern California which didn't otherwise enter into the film's scenario. Walnut Creek, which is in the East Bay of San Francisco, is where I had an office from the mid-1980s through the end of 2005. The place of the execution was described as "near Walnut Creek" and sure enough it was. Lafayette, as indicated by the theatre marquee showing The Shootist to be playing, is the town you quickly pass through on the BART train or the freeway just before you get to Walnut Creek. The marquee they used, appears however, to be the marquee of the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, New York which is closer to where most of the film was shot.
Re: The Irishman reviews
I might be misremembering but those are his final lines, correct? Or close to it? I interpreted the significance of those lines in juxtaposition to him ending up in prison, to him being sick and old in prison, virtually alone save for Frank, who is truly his family (“kid”).dws1982 wrote
Near the end, when they're talking in prison, Pesci says something along the lines of "I chose the family", in justification for the hit on Hoffa, but the way it plays out in execution, it was much more about forcing DeNiro to choose between Hoffa or the family (which, because he's Irish, he could never truly be a part of).
"How's the despair?"
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Re: The Irishman reviews
I wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing this but the near universal acclaim did lift my interest in the last couple of weeks, though not enough to pay premium prices at the cinema though the prices dropped to regular ones this week.
I found the first 70 minutes or so I bit of a drag to be honest. Lots of introductions of characters and a subject matter that I'm really not interested in but once the film settled into the Jimmy Hoffa part of the story it did become more interesting. But as the film progressed it won me over and the last two hours were very impressive. Though I didn't feel it had the showiness and epic feel of much of Scorsese's work of the last couple of decades and it felt more low-key to me which worked to its advantage.
Pacino and Pesci (who is is great to have back) are great throughout but I did have a bit of a problem with De Niro whose blue contact lenses (or digital colouring) was very distracting (they made him look like Alec Baldwin, even though Baldwin actually has hazel coloured eyes) but his performance like the film grew on me as it went along. Anna Paquin was effective too but I never really got much out of the other characters who felt like side dressing.
I may have done the film a disservice watching it on TV in the comfort of my lounge room but hell that's what Netflix want and we have entered an era when cinema and TV have basically merged. I strongly suspect that this is a film that will hold up very well with subsequent viewings and for someone like me a second viewing would probably increase my appreciation of the film.
I found the first 70 minutes or so I bit of a drag to be honest. Lots of introductions of characters and a subject matter that I'm really not interested in but once the film settled into the Jimmy Hoffa part of the story it did become more interesting. But as the film progressed it won me over and the last two hours were very impressive. Though I didn't feel it had the showiness and epic feel of much of Scorsese's work of the last couple of decades and it felt more low-key to me which worked to its advantage.
Pacino and Pesci (who is is great to have back) are great throughout but I did have a bit of a problem with De Niro whose blue contact lenses (or digital colouring) was very distracting (they made him look like Alec Baldwin, even though Baldwin actually has hazel coloured eyes) but his performance like the film grew on me as it went along. Anna Paquin was effective too but I never really got much out of the other characters who felt like side dressing.
I may have done the film a disservice watching it on TV in the comfort of my lounge room but hell that's what Netflix want and we have entered an era when cinema and TV have basically merged. I strongly suspect that this is a film that will hold up very well with subsequent viewings and for someone like me a second viewing would probably increase my appreciation of the film.
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Re: The Irishman reviews
SPOILERS...
Went to Nashville yesterday to see this in a theater with a friend. (Pacino's line about "lots of crazy people in Nashville", or something to that effect, got a big laugh.) Loved it, definitely want to watch it again before I have more thoughts on it, but I do have one question for those who've seen it:
What was the significance of Pesci's character making DeNiro give him his glasses before he went to carry out the hit on Hoffa? It seemed too deliberate of a choice (especially since it then made a point to show, after he came back from the hit, Pesci returning the glasses) to be meaningless, but I'm still not entirely sure what the significance was.
I feel like that in part it seemed to underline the control that Pesci had over DeNiro, which the entire hit on Hoffa seemed to underline. Near the end, when they're talking in prison, Pesci says something along the lines of "I chose the family", in justification for the hit on Hoffa, but the way it plays out in execution, it was much more about forcing DeNiro to choose between Hoffa or the family (which, because he's Irish, he could never truly be a part of).
Went to Nashville yesterday to see this in a theater with a friend. (Pacino's line about "lots of crazy people in Nashville", or something to that effect, got a big laugh.) Loved it, definitely want to watch it again before I have more thoughts on it, but I do have one question for those who've seen it:
What was the significance of Pesci's character making DeNiro give him his glasses before he went to carry out the hit on Hoffa? It seemed too deliberate of a choice (especially since it then made a point to show, after he came back from the hit, Pesci returning the glasses) to be meaningless, but I'm still not entirely sure what the significance was.
I feel like that in part it seemed to underline the control that Pesci had over DeNiro, which the entire hit on Hoffa seemed to underline. Near the end, when they're talking in prison, Pesci says something along the lines of "I chose the family", in justification for the hit on Hoffa, but the way it plays out in execution, it was much more about forcing DeNiro to choose between Hoffa or the family (which, because he's Irish, he could never truly be a part of).
Last edited by dws1982 on Wed Nov 27, 2019 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: The Irishman reviews
SPOILERS...
One of the chief pleasures of The Irishman is that it plays like the lost De Niro/Pacino/Pesci film that we never got. Except we did. Scorsese redeems these players by switching power dynamics between De Niro and Pesci (really, they take each others roles) and giving Pacino a substantive role to go over-the-top. In the case of De Niro and especially Pesci, it's mightily effective and the source of the most emotion in the film. The moment where Pesci calls De Niro "kid" is overwhelming, and the overall sight of watching De Niro play this reactive, philosophy-less lunk (a tool, really) is quite moving. It's a farewell to these mighty talents.
I don't have anything really to add to what Tee wrote, except that I wasn't quite as shattered by Hoffa's death as some. Nor was I gut-punched by the ending. For much of its running time, The Irishman keeps expanding its focus, encompassing so many new subjects. But when it narrows back down, I found myself talking myself into being more affected than I was. It's interesting that De Niro was the driving force behind this film because Scorsese never seems that interested in Frank Sheeran until the final stretch, and even then he's a somewhat frustrating tragic figure who is always viewed somewhat smallish from afar. I needed something more from my time with him at the end. I couldn't help but wonder... aren't we going to see him tell somebody? But I guess he does throughout the film. File the final moment along with so many of Scorsese's final moments (The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator...) as close but no cigar.
Still... a remarkable viewing experience I'm still mulling over and over in my head. Something I can't quite get over there is the relative lack of surprises.
One of the chief pleasures of The Irishman is that it plays like the lost De Niro/Pacino/Pesci film that we never got. Except we did. Scorsese redeems these players by switching power dynamics between De Niro and Pesci (really, they take each others roles) and giving Pacino a substantive role to go over-the-top. In the case of De Niro and especially Pesci, it's mightily effective and the source of the most emotion in the film. The moment where Pesci calls De Niro "kid" is overwhelming, and the overall sight of watching De Niro play this reactive, philosophy-less lunk (a tool, really) is quite moving. It's a farewell to these mighty talents.
I don't have anything really to add to what Tee wrote, except that I wasn't quite as shattered by Hoffa's death as some. Nor was I gut-punched by the ending. For much of its running time, The Irishman keeps expanding its focus, encompassing so many new subjects. But when it narrows back down, I found myself talking myself into being more affected than I was. It's interesting that De Niro was the driving force behind this film because Scorsese never seems that interested in Frank Sheeran until the final stretch, and even then he's a somewhat frustrating tragic figure who is always viewed somewhat smallish from afar. I needed something more from my time with him at the end. I couldn't help but wonder... aren't we going to see him tell somebody? But I guess he does throughout the film. File the final moment along with so many of Scorsese's final moments (The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator...) as close but no cigar.
Still... a remarkable viewing experience I'm still mulling over and over in my head. Something I can't quite get over there is the relative lack of surprises.
"How's the despair?"
Re: The Irishman reviews
I'm a little less enthusiastic than Tee (my butt felt the length, not gonna lie; I drifted off a little in the middle), but it's definitely one of the year's best films. It's certainly got one of the strongest screenplays of the year (Zallian's gift with dialogue and storytelling serves the story well, and even if I drifted off, the film does earn it's length).
The casting of van Zandt had me laughing, not gonna lie. In terms of the smaller roles, I also really liked what Welker White did with Josephine (Jo) Hoffa. And I think Pacino is De Niro/Pesci's equal and gives easily one of his finest performances
The casting of van Zandt had me laughing, not gonna lie. In terms of the smaller roles, I also really liked what Welker White did with Josephine (Jo) Hoffa. And I think Pacino is De Niro/Pesci's equal and gives easily one of his finest performances
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Re: The Irishman reviews
I FOUND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCUSS THE FILM WITHOUT DISCLOSING SPOILERS. SOME MIGHT NOT BE SPOILERS FOR YOU, IF YOU KNOW HISTORY, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M OFFERING WARNING
When Pauline Kael reviewed Bertolucci’s 1900 back in the 70s, she allowed as how the film wasn’t truly successful (the review was entitled “Hail, Folly!”), but she said its ambition and scope made all the other films of the season seem “like something found at the end of a toothpick.” The Irishman doesn’t have the failings of 1900 – I think it’s close to a complete success -- but the formulation otherwise applies: the film is so dense, so rich, so wide-ranging that it dwarfs even most of the better films out there. It’s one of those movie-going experiences for which I live.
The film is so many movies at once. On the basic level, it’s the memoirs of an organized crime soldier who works his way up through the ranks to become an inner-circle assassin, the narrative probing what that ascent meant to who he was and who he became. But The Irishman is also a history of post-war America, drawing a straight line from the election of John Kennedy through Watergate, making the case you can’t understand the era without seeing how the Mafia, organized labor, and the U.S. government overlapped and interacted with one another. On top of that, it’s a musing on the U.S. crime film, implicitly referencing high-water marks of the genre – some by Scorsese, some by others – and issuing correctives/adjustments. And, in the end, it’s (like Almodovar’s Pain and Glory) an aging man’s look back on the high spirits of his youth and middle-age, seeing them now through the lens of the pain he caused others and the wreckage he’s made of his life, all while mortality looms. This is Scorsese’s Unforgiven: his part-apologia, part-celebration of the genre he’s mastered. It’s an incredible late-career firework – easily the year’s best film, and a contender for best of the decade.
As I said, on the baseline level, it’s the story of DeNiro’s Frank Sheeran, a WWII vet who came back from the Italian campaign as something of a killing machine. (One of the film’s more audacious moves is to de-mythologize The Greatest Generation – we’re accustomed to seeing Vietnam/Iraq vets as psychopathic murderers; this is the first I can recall seeing a WWII guy so characterized.) When the film begins, Frank is a truck driver with an eye for the borderline-criminal buck. He catches the attention of Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci, in a terrific performance), a top-tier Philadelphia capo. Buffalino bonds with Frank over the fluent Italian the latter picked up during time at Anzio, but perhaps what really attracts him is the sense that Frank can be a premier soldier. For a brief time, Frank merely performs collection services, but, after a blunder that offends a powerful wiseguy, he’s ordered to whack someone. He fulfills this duty without fuss or remorse, and you get the sense the act opens Frank up to his true calling. Soon, he’s serving as prime hit man for Buffalino, his innate rage having been channeled into a vocation (with a bit left over for civilian life – there’s a notable incident involving his daughter Peggy and a local bodega guy that has far-reaching consequences). This stretch of the film – it occupies roughly an hour, I guess – will remind many of Goodfellas, and it has the full Scorsese panoply: wall-to-wall oldies, freeze-frames, tracking shots, and of course many killings.
The film takes a turn when Buffalino introduces Frank to Jimmy Hoffa, the famed labor leader then at the peak of his powers. It’s unclear what Buffalino’s motives are in sending Frank his way. The Teamsters and the mob had overlapping areas of interest at the time, but they weren’t a perfect match, and things were to diverge further very soon: Hoffa’s loathing of the Kennedys conflicted with the Mafia’s initial support; Hoffa being sent to jail put the more-pliable-with-loans/thus-preferred Frank Fitzsimmons in charge of the union. It’s ambiguous whether Buffalino had these schisms in mind when he put Frank by Hoffa’s side: perhaps what he wanted was a spy, all along. But what he likely never reckoned on was Frank’s developing such affinity for Hoffa. Within the mob, Frank was respected but always something of an outsider – his ethnicity marking him an interloper (the film’s title is incisive in that regard). With Hoffa—who had some Irish mixed in with his mostly German roots – the relationship is more equable; he and Frank share hotel rooms, and over time become something like friends (or as close as either is likely to get). Hoffa even encourages Frank to run to head a Teamsters local. When Frank wins the position, it gives him his first sense of independent power and achievement, and he’s undoubtedly grateful to Hoffa for leading him there. The problem is, Frank is still bound to Buffalino, which puts him in the existentially impossible situation of serving two masters. And when Hoffa – newly released from prison – tries to recapture his union position by publicly denouncing the mob, it creates a crisis in Frank’s world. It’s unclear whether Hoffa was just showboating with these claims – even some mobsters suspect he’s doing it strictly for media consumption – but eventually a decision comes from on high that Hoffa can’t be tolerated any longer; that he has to go. (In Pesci’s bone-dry but suggestive phrase, “It is what it is.”) And, though the order is slow in evolving, it ultimately becomes clear that the wiseguys want/need Frank to be the instrument of Hoffa’s disappearance.
The long section dealing with the lead-up to and execution of Hoffa’s murder is extraordinary, some of the most imaginative and distinctive filmmaking of Scorsese’s career. The decision is made at a public event – a tribute dinner honoring Frank’s union work, with all the wiseguys and labor folk on hand. It’s a dazzling, extended sequence, with half-heard arguments and knowing glances leading us inexorably to the realization that Hoffa is marked for death. The film then takes us back to what has been a seemingly-benign-but-not-really framing device, a road trip of Frank and Buffalino with their wives to a cousin’s wedding. It now becomes clear that the trip was always a cover for Hoffa’s execution, and Buffalino, in small steps, leads Frank – boxes him in, essentially -- to the understanding it’s his job to fulfill. At last, we get the day of Hoffa’s killing itself, a sequence that leaves one breathless. It’s the quietest section of the film – the soundtrack goes virtually silent for the first time – and consists of one mundane action after another, till final exploding in the quick, abrupt shooting. And one detail really jumps out from this section: there’s a repeated overhead shot of a car turning onto the street where the killing will take place. We first see the car heading to the house for inspection, then coming back to retrieve Hoffa, then turning a third time to commit the act. But we never see the car leaving afterward. I think this is Scorsese’s way of telling us that, on some level, Frank never left that house; that killing his friend – becoming his Judas – changed something in him.
A word about Steve Zaillian’s script. It’s full of lively dialogue – DeNiro’s bit about a river where hitmen drown their culpable guns; Pacino’s rant about how many Tony’s there are in the mob, or his argument with Tony Pro over how many minutes late is acceptable; a Pulp Fiction-like aimless discussion on the wisdom of transporting fish in automobiles. But I especially loved the riffs on Mafia patois: the way someone will refer to a character as “Not him, the other one” – and, above all, the euphemisms for killing. Just as Eskimos have a seemingly infinite number of words for “ice”, mobsters can suggest death in a myriad of ways. The title of the film’s source book (and semi-official alternate credit title) “I hear you paint houses” is one, but there are others, like “Can you take him to Australia?”. In fact, there are so many that people jump to this extreme interpretation in instances where it wasn’t intended -- “No, not that” becomes a repeated gag in the film, as people are corrected of that misimpression. The phrases are of course meant to avoid incrimination (though the Pesci character is apparently convicted despite using one), but I think the film makes the point that it also distances the characters from the consequences of their actions. Saying “Send him to Australia” feels so much more benign than “Kill the bastard”. Same with that “It is what it is” phrase used to signify Hoffa’s demise –– it spares the characters from the full brunt of their decisions.
Coming to grips with that full brunt, though, can’t be put off forever in this film, and it’s what the last portion so powerfully deals with. DeNiro, as I suggested, is never the same after he kills Hoffa. Not that he remakes his life…but he can no longer block out feelings so easily. His phone call to Hoffa’s widow is agonizing; he just can’t make the words come out, knowing how false they are. And, even were he able to do a better job of rationalizing, or forgetting, he has his daughter Peggy sitting in stern judgment. The use of Anna Paquin to play the nearly wordless part of Peggy is a bold one, and some might say a bit heavy-handed, but it worked for me. Peggy has been wary of her father from early on, and equally suspicious of Buffalino, but she for some reason embraces Hoffa – perhaps he’s the father she wishes she had, the one who doesn’t let his darker edges show so obviously. She perceives immediately it must be Frank behind Jimmy’s disappearance, and, once she does, she cuts him cold for life. Frank has known all along he hasn’t had Peggy’s unmitigated love, but for this last half-hour or so of the film, her freezing him out comes to symbolize all his failures and regrets about his life. DeNiro has been excellent throughout the film – showing his feelings often through reaction shots, as he did so peerlessly in his early, glory years – but in this last section, Frank’s passion play, he reaches heights he hasn’t in decades. I’d given up hope of ever again being as moved by a DeNiro performance, but here it is, for all to see. A career peak.
That the film is meant to reference the entire mob-movie genre is implicit from the casting – not only bringing DeNiro and Pesci back together (with Harvey Keitel in a bit part), but also putting the star of the OTHER legendary Mafia movie in the third principal role (as well as multiple actors from Boardwalk Empire, and Stevie van Zandt as nod to The Sopranos). But it goes way beyond that: the film is full of passing allusions to the earlier movies, allusions turned on their heads. The story is knit around a wedding, but we never see the reception – just a glimpse of the church service (the opposite of The Godfather). We see the front façade of the Copacabana, but don’t travel inside. There’s a whacking in a barber shop, but the bloody act takes place off-screen. And the film ends with a shot through a slightly open door – though from the point of view of the man within the room trying to bring the world in, rather than Diane Keaton standing outside, feeling exclusion. With all this (and more I’m not remembering just now), I think we’re meant to view The Irishman vis a vis those preceding films much the way Frank views his life pre- and post-Hoffa’s death – with some regret for how carelessly entertaining things were made to appear; how different it all feels when the time of life-reckoning is nigh. This cultural cross-reference adds huge resonance to the film, and makes one appreciative of just what a miracle it is that Scorsese and his collaborators are still around and bankable to make such a film – and that the technology (seamlessly used, to my eye) has been developed that enables those actors to play themselves over such a broad time-canvas. Netflix or not Netflix, we should be grateful such a film was able to be made.
I guess at this point I’m supposed to hazard guesses at how well this film will do in year-end awards, but, truthfully, I think spending time pondering what an elimination-ballot will do with such a film only diminishes it. I’ll try and get to that in due course. For now, I just want to celebrate one of the most exciting cinema events it’s been my privilege to experience in this millennium.
When Pauline Kael reviewed Bertolucci’s 1900 back in the 70s, she allowed as how the film wasn’t truly successful (the review was entitled “Hail, Folly!”), but she said its ambition and scope made all the other films of the season seem “like something found at the end of a toothpick.” The Irishman doesn’t have the failings of 1900 – I think it’s close to a complete success -- but the formulation otherwise applies: the film is so dense, so rich, so wide-ranging that it dwarfs even most of the better films out there. It’s one of those movie-going experiences for which I live.
The film is so many movies at once. On the basic level, it’s the memoirs of an organized crime soldier who works his way up through the ranks to become an inner-circle assassin, the narrative probing what that ascent meant to who he was and who he became. But The Irishman is also a history of post-war America, drawing a straight line from the election of John Kennedy through Watergate, making the case you can’t understand the era without seeing how the Mafia, organized labor, and the U.S. government overlapped and interacted with one another. On top of that, it’s a musing on the U.S. crime film, implicitly referencing high-water marks of the genre – some by Scorsese, some by others – and issuing correctives/adjustments. And, in the end, it’s (like Almodovar’s Pain and Glory) an aging man’s look back on the high spirits of his youth and middle-age, seeing them now through the lens of the pain he caused others and the wreckage he’s made of his life, all while mortality looms. This is Scorsese’s Unforgiven: his part-apologia, part-celebration of the genre he’s mastered. It’s an incredible late-career firework – easily the year’s best film, and a contender for best of the decade.
As I said, on the baseline level, it’s the story of DeNiro’s Frank Sheeran, a WWII vet who came back from the Italian campaign as something of a killing machine. (One of the film’s more audacious moves is to de-mythologize The Greatest Generation – we’re accustomed to seeing Vietnam/Iraq vets as psychopathic murderers; this is the first I can recall seeing a WWII guy so characterized.) When the film begins, Frank is a truck driver with an eye for the borderline-criminal buck. He catches the attention of Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci, in a terrific performance), a top-tier Philadelphia capo. Buffalino bonds with Frank over the fluent Italian the latter picked up during time at Anzio, but perhaps what really attracts him is the sense that Frank can be a premier soldier. For a brief time, Frank merely performs collection services, but, after a blunder that offends a powerful wiseguy, he’s ordered to whack someone. He fulfills this duty without fuss or remorse, and you get the sense the act opens Frank up to his true calling. Soon, he’s serving as prime hit man for Buffalino, his innate rage having been channeled into a vocation (with a bit left over for civilian life – there’s a notable incident involving his daughter Peggy and a local bodega guy that has far-reaching consequences). This stretch of the film – it occupies roughly an hour, I guess – will remind many of Goodfellas, and it has the full Scorsese panoply: wall-to-wall oldies, freeze-frames, tracking shots, and of course many killings.
The film takes a turn when Buffalino introduces Frank to Jimmy Hoffa, the famed labor leader then at the peak of his powers. It’s unclear what Buffalino’s motives are in sending Frank his way. The Teamsters and the mob had overlapping areas of interest at the time, but they weren’t a perfect match, and things were to diverge further very soon: Hoffa’s loathing of the Kennedys conflicted with the Mafia’s initial support; Hoffa being sent to jail put the more-pliable-with-loans/thus-preferred Frank Fitzsimmons in charge of the union. It’s ambiguous whether Buffalino had these schisms in mind when he put Frank by Hoffa’s side: perhaps what he wanted was a spy, all along. But what he likely never reckoned on was Frank’s developing such affinity for Hoffa. Within the mob, Frank was respected but always something of an outsider – his ethnicity marking him an interloper (the film’s title is incisive in that regard). With Hoffa—who had some Irish mixed in with his mostly German roots – the relationship is more equable; he and Frank share hotel rooms, and over time become something like friends (or as close as either is likely to get). Hoffa even encourages Frank to run to head a Teamsters local. When Frank wins the position, it gives him his first sense of independent power and achievement, and he’s undoubtedly grateful to Hoffa for leading him there. The problem is, Frank is still bound to Buffalino, which puts him in the existentially impossible situation of serving two masters. And when Hoffa – newly released from prison – tries to recapture his union position by publicly denouncing the mob, it creates a crisis in Frank’s world. It’s unclear whether Hoffa was just showboating with these claims – even some mobsters suspect he’s doing it strictly for media consumption – but eventually a decision comes from on high that Hoffa can’t be tolerated any longer; that he has to go. (In Pesci’s bone-dry but suggestive phrase, “It is what it is.”) And, though the order is slow in evolving, it ultimately becomes clear that the wiseguys want/need Frank to be the instrument of Hoffa’s disappearance.
The long section dealing with the lead-up to and execution of Hoffa’s murder is extraordinary, some of the most imaginative and distinctive filmmaking of Scorsese’s career. The decision is made at a public event – a tribute dinner honoring Frank’s union work, with all the wiseguys and labor folk on hand. It’s a dazzling, extended sequence, with half-heard arguments and knowing glances leading us inexorably to the realization that Hoffa is marked for death. The film then takes us back to what has been a seemingly-benign-but-not-really framing device, a road trip of Frank and Buffalino with their wives to a cousin’s wedding. It now becomes clear that the trip was always a cover for Hoffa’s execution, and Buffalino, in small steps, leads Frank – boxes him in, essentially -- to the understanding it’s his job to fulfill. At last, we get the day of Hoffa’s killing itself, a sequence that leaves one breathless. It’s the quietest section of the film – the soundtrack goes virtually silent for the first time – and consists of one mundane action after another, till final exploding in the quick, abrupt shooting. And one detail really jumps out from this section: there’s a repeated overhead shot of a car turning onto the street where the killing will take place. We first see the car heading to the house for inspection, then coming back to retrieve Hoffa, then turning a third time to commit the act. But we never see the car leaving afterward. I think this is Scorsese’s way of telling us that, on some level, Frank never left that house; that killing his friend – becoming his Judas – changed something in him.
A word about Steve Zaillian’s script. It’s full of lively dialogue – DeNiro’s bit about a river where hitmen drown their culpable guns; Pacino’s rant about how many Tony’s there are in the mob, or his argument with Tony Pro over how many minutes late is acceptable; a Pulp Fiction-like aimless discussion on the wisdom of transporting fish in automobiles. But I especially loved the riffs on Mafia patois: the way someone will refer to a character as “Not him, the other one” – and, above all, the euphemisms for killing. Just as Eskimos have a seemingly infinite number of words for “ice”, mobsters can suggest death in a myriad of ways. The title of the film’s source book (and semi-official alternate credit title) “I hear you paint houses” is one, but there are others, like “Can you take him to Australia?”. In fact, there are so many that people jump to this extreme interpretation in instances where it wasn’t intended -- “No, not that” becomes a repeated gag in the film, as people are corrected of that misimpression. The phrases are of course meant to avoid incrimination (though the Pesci character is apparently convicted despite using one), but I think the film makes the point that it also distances the characters from the consequences of their actions. Saying “Send him to Australia” feels so much more benign than “Kill the bastard”. Same with that “It is what it is” phrase used to signify Hoffa’s demise –– it spares the characters from the full brunt of their decisions.
Coming to grips with that full brunt, though, can’t be put off forever in this film, and it’s what the last portion so powerfully deals with. DeNiro, as I suggested, is never the same after he kills Hoffa. Not that he remakes his life…but he can no longer block out feelings so easily. His phone call to Hoffa’s widow is agonizing; he just can’t make the words come out, knowing how false they are. And, even were he able to do a better job of rationalizing, or forgetting, he has his daughter Peggy sitting in stern judgment. The use of Anna Paquin to play the nearly wordless part of Peggy is a bold one, and some might say a bit heavy-handed, but it worked for me. Peggy has been wary of her father from early on, and equally suspicious of Buffalino, but she for some reason embraces Hoffa – perhaps he’s the father she wishes she had, the one who doesn’t let his darker edges show so obviously. She perceives immediately it must be Frank behind Jimmy’s disappearance, and, once she does, she cuts him cold for life. Frank has known all along he hasn’t had Peggy’s unmitigated love, but for this last half-hour or so of the film, her freezing him out comes to symbolize all his failures and regrets about his life. DeNiro has been excellent throughout the film – showing his feelings often through reaction shots, as he did so peerlessly in his early, glory years – but in this last section, Frank’s passion play, he reaches heights he hasn’t in decades. I’d given up hope of ever again being as moved by a DeNiro performance, but here it is, for all to see. A career peak.
That the film is meant to reference the entire mob-movie genre is implicit from the casting – not only bringing DeNiro and Pesci back together (with Harvey Keitel in a bit part), but also putting the star of the OTHER legendary Mafia movie in the third principal role (as well as multiple actors from Boardwalk Empire, and Stevie van Zandt as nod to The Sopranos). But it goes way beyond that: the film is full of passing allusions to the earlier movies, allusions turned on their heads. The story is knit around a wedding, but we never see the reception – just a glimpse of the church service (the opposite of The Godfather). We see the front façade of the Copacabana, but don’t travel inside. There’s a whacking in a barber shop, but the bloody act takes place off-screen. And the film ends with a shot through a slightly open door – though from the point of view of the man within the room trying to bring the world in, rather than Diane Keaton standing outside, feeling exclusion. With all this (and more I’m not remembering just now), I think we’re meant to view The Irishman vis a vis those preceding films much the way Frank views his life pre- and post-Hoffa’s death – with some regret for how carelessly entertaining things were made to appear; how different it all feels when the time of life-reckoning is nigh. This cultural cross-reference adds huge resonance to the film, and makes one appreciative of just what a miracle it is that Scorsese and his collaborators are still around and bankable to make such a film – and that the technology (seamlessly used, to my eye) has been developed that enables those actors to play themselves over such a broad time-canvas. Netflix or not Netflix, we should be grateful such a film was able to be made.
I guess at this point I’m supposed to hazard guesses at how well this film will do in year-end awards, but, truthfully, I think spending time pondering what an elimination-ballot will do with such a film only diminishes it. I’ll try and get to that in due course. For now, I just want to celebrate one of the most exciting cinema events it’s been my privilege to experience in this millennium.
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Re: The Irishman reviews
Monumental. I daresay the film Scorsese was born to make. And the reviews didn't prepare me for the fact that this is DeNiro's best role and performance since his Taxi Driver/Raging Bull heyday.
I'll write something fuller when I have time/energy. But...wow.
I'll write something fuller when I have time/energy. But...wow.
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Re: The Irishman reviews
It's my understanding that it's mostly CGI, but makeup and hairstyling would obviously play a part as well.
Re: The Irishman reviews
idkGreg wrote
How much of that is visual effects and how much is makeup?
"How's the despair?"
Re: The Irishman reviews
How much of that is visual effects and how much is makeup?Sabin wrote:Visual Effects seems to be a room splitter with the aging techniques being effective but still distracting.