Review: The Age of Innocence (1993)

* * * *
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

The Age of Innocence may very well be Martin Scorsese's most underrated movie. While his certified masterpieces like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Mean Streets and Goodfellas are still spoken of with reverence sometimes bordering on worship, and even flawed, divisive work like Gangs of New York and The King of Comedy have their passionate defenders, his elegantly meticulous rendering of Edith Wharton's masterpiece seems to have been somewhat forgotten. This is a shame since, aside from being simply a great movie, it's also a near perfect adaptation of its source, one which captures the narrative scope of Wharton's story as well as its stylistic flourishes, translating them from the literary to the visual. It's a wonderful film, albeit one which begs the question: how does a film which boasts marvelous performances from Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer end up with only one Oscar nomination for acting and see it go to Winona Ryder?

Review: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

* * 1/2
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill

The Roman Empire lives and it is now called Wall Street. Though a satirical account of the rise and fall of stockbroker Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street is nevertheless illuminating in terms of the current state of the North American economy - that we haven't collapsed into anarchy is something of a miracle if this story is to be believed. A tale of excess, debauchery, greed, and massive consumption, the film is as loud, as brash, as slick, and as unapologetic as its protagonist but, Jesus God, does it ever feel like it's a million hours long. At just a hair under 3 hours, it's far from being literally the longest movie I've seen all year, but when it comes to characters like the ones portrayed here, a little goes a long way.

Partners in Crime: Scorsese and De Niro

Celebrating cinema's greatest collaborations


For the modern filmgoer there are few director/actor collaborations that have been as fruitful as that of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Almost twenty years after their last film together, their collaboration remains an example against which other director/actor pairings are measured due to the richness and quality of the films they produced together. While many of their films together explore similar themes and milieus, the key to the Scorsese/De Niro pairing is that each one explores different aspects of those themes and milieus, and while De Niro has played a number of, lets say, psychologically challenged characters for Scorsese, each one has been crazy in his own particular way.

The Best Picture Countdown #79: The Departed (2006)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin

The Departed is the film that finally (finally!) won Martin Scorsese his long overdue Oscar for Best Director. Despite this, the film sometimes gets mentioned as one of his “lesser” projects – an attitude that I find ludicrous. The level of craft on display in this film belies the notion that this is anything less than a masterwork and to my mind The Departed deserves to be considered alongside Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas as one of Scorsese’s very best. To me, this film was a return to form for the director, whose previous two efforts (Gangs of New York and The Aviator) were bloated just a bit by too much self-indulgence. It is also one of the few films of which I can honestly say that the remake is better than the original.

The Departed begins with Jack Nicholson as mobster Frank Costello and if the opening doesn't remind you of Goodfellas then... you've never seen Goodfellas. However, while Goodfellas begins with the still star-struck narration of the protégée, The Departed begins with the weary narration of the mentor. Frank will take Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) under his wing, grooming him to enter the police force and become his spy. Sullivan thrives, rising quickly through the ranks and passing on information to Frank so that he can stay one step ahead of the authorities.

While Colin is a bad guy pretending to be good, there's also a good guy pretending to be bad: Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is rising in a different fashion as a cop tapped to infiltrate the mob. Years pass as this cat-and-mouse game is played with Costigan supplying information to Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) and Sullivan keeping Costello apprised. Both organizations are aware that there's a leak and both Costigan and Sullivan are on edge, under constant threat that the delicate balance of their lives will tip and leave them exposed and in danger. The plot itself is quite delicate insofar as any element revealed too soon would destroy the tension that's been building, but writer William Monahan manages to maintain the balance, keeping the plot from toppling over on itself and also keeping it from growing too heavy. This is a film with a complex plot and a two and a half hour running time, but it clips along at a great pace and that's as much a credit to Monahan as to director Martin Scorsese or editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

DiCaprio and Damon carry the weight of the film and both are able to convey the desperation both men feel. These two characters are in a sense rudderless, their identities so flexible that even they don't always know who they are, but neither actor ever seems lost behind their masks. The performance by DiCaprio is especially moving as Costigan's knowledge that not only is his false identity under constant threat of exposure but that if something were to happen to Queenan and Dignam, he could lose his "real" identity as well, takes a heavy toll on him both physically and mentally. It's a performance which displays a great deal of vulnerability, which you don't often see or expect in this type of movie.

There are many other reasons to see this movie, from the inter-play between Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin (Wahlberg and anyone, actually), to the performance by Nicholson, to the almost comical way that cops keep turning out to be criminals and criminals keep turning out to be cops. It's a great movie, a genre film in the best sense: one that embraces the conventions of the genre but rises above the cliches.

Review: Shutter Island (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams

Four years after finally getting the award hardware he’s richly deserved for, oh, the last 30 years or so, Martin Scorsese is back with his follow-up feature to The Departed. Teaming up once again with Leonardo DiCaprio, he's created a tight psychological thriller that seems great while you're watching it, but less so the more you reflect on it afterwards.

There is no respite from darkness in Shutter Island as it plunges us immediately into the creepy, intense atmosphere of its eponymous locale. Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) already has a bad feeling about the place as it emerges from the fog and that feeling isn’t going to let up any time soon. The island houses a facility for the criminally insane and Teddy and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) have been sent to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), one of the inmates. By all appearances, Rachel has simply vanished, escaping from her locked cell with its barred window and making her way across the island’s rocky terrain without any shoes. There’s no trace of her except for a note she left behind, inquiring as to the identity of Patient 67.

Teddy is constantly at odds with the staff, particularly Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), whom he believes is actively trying to impede the investigation, and Dr. Naehring (Max von Syddow), whose accent brings back Teddy’s memories of liberating Dachau and the horrors he encountered there. He’s increasingly convinced that, like the Nazis, this particular facility is conducting experiments on people and he’s certain that these experiments are taking place inside the lighthouse at the edge of the island. I’m reluctant to say more about the plot, though having read the book I can state that even if you know the twist, it’s still pretty effective the way Scorsese handles it. The film ends on a more ambiguous note than the book, making Teddy less passive and leaving you to wonder a bit more about his mental state.

Much of the film depends on being able to successfully articulate the mental fragility of its protagonist. Teddy is a deeply troubled character and from the first moments we’re given a sense of just how on edge he is. Teddy’s memories/nightmares/hallucinations about his late wife (Michelle Williams) play a prominent role in the story, growing more intense the further along the narrative gets. At first these scenes and the story’s current day scenes are separate and apart, distinct from each other, but as things progress Teddy’s inner life begins to intrude more and more on his current reality until it comes to the point where he’s talking to his wife and one of the patient/prisoners at the same time. The mixture of tones and colour pallets – the Shutter Island scenes tend to be very dark, shadowy, grim looking; the memories/hallucinations tend to be brighter and more colourful – gives the film an appropriately unbalanced feel that forces you to question everything. We never know for certain how much of what we’re seeing is “real” and how much is part of an elaborate game of the mind.

Scorsese shoots the film in a very intimate way, using sets that seem narrow and closed in to create a feeling of claustrophobia that unsettles us and aligns us more firmly with Teddy. As Teddy, DiCaprio renders a good performance that begins with barely repressed anger and fear that slowly starts to bubble to the surface until finally exploding in the film’s final act. He manages to skirt the line, letting you see just enough beneath the surface that the turnaround at the end doesn’t come as a complete shock, without tipping his hand and making it really obvious. A lot of skill went into making this film both in front of and behind the camera and yet, for all that, Shutter Island ultimately left me a bit cold. I found it engrossing as I was watching it but it didn’t leave a very lasting impression on me. It’s a good movie, but not a great one.

Review: The Departed (2006)

* * * *
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson

I need to confess to a bad movie related habit: sometimes it takes me a really (really) long time to get around to seeing a movie that A) I want to see, B) I have every reason to believe I'll like, and C) has been much praised and talked about by others. Part of the reason I started blogging was to break myself of this habit. And so, like Eternal Sunshine... before it, The Departed, is a movie that I've only recently seen, loved and lamented having missed when it first came out.

The Departed begins with Jack Nicholson as mobster Frank Costello and if the openning doesn't remind you of Goodfellas then... you've never seen Goodfellas. However, while Goodfellas begins with the still star-struck narration of the protégée, Departed begins with the weary narration of the mentor. Frank will take Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) under his wing, grooming him to enter the police force and become his spy. Sullivan thrives, rising quickly through the ranks and passing on information to Frank so that he can stay one step ahead of the authorities.

While Colin is a bad guy pretending to be good, there's also a good guy pretending to be bad: Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is rising in a different fashion as a cop tapped to infiltrate the mob. Years pass as this cat-and-mouse game is played with Costigan supplying information to Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) and Sullivan keeping Costello aprised. Both organizations are aware that there's a leak and both Costigan and Sullivan are on edge, under constant threat that the delicate balance of their lives will tip and leave them exposed and in danger. The plot itself is quite delicate insofar as any element revealed too soon would destroy the tension that's been building, but writer William Monahan manages to maintain the balance, keeping the plot from toppling over on itself and also keeping it from growing too heavy. This is a film with a complex plot and a two and a half hour running time, but it clips along at a great pace and that's as much a credit to Monahan as to director Martin Scorsese or editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

DiCaprio and Damon carry the weight of the film and both are able to convery the desperation both men feel. These two characters are in a sense rudderless, their identities so flexible that even they don't always know who they are, but neither actor ever seems lost behind their masks. The performance by DiCaprio is especially moving as Costigan's knowledge that not only is his false identity under constant threat of exposure but that if something were to happen to Queenan and Dignam, he could lose his "real" identity as well, takes a heavy toll on him both physically and mentally. It's a performance which displays a great deal of vulnerability, which you don't often see or expect in this type of movie.

There are many other reasons to see this movie, from the inter-play between Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin (Wahlberg and anyone, actually), to the performance by Nicholson, to the almost comical way that cops keep turning out to be criminals and criminals keep turning out to be cops. It's a great movie, a genre film in the best sense: one that embraces the conventions of the genre but rises above the cliches.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Goodfellas (1990)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci

Although it doesn’t really succeed in deglamorizing the mafia, Goodfellas comes closer to dissecting our fascination with it than any other film. Based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, the film charts the highs and lows, the excitement and tedium of working for the mob and – extraordinarily for a genre that focuses nearly exclusively on the experiences of men – splits the narrative in two in order to tell the story from the perspectives of both Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and his wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco).

The story opens with a young Henry Hill, who remembers in a voice-over that he’d “always wanted to be a gangster.” He gets his break at a young age and spends most of his adult life slowly moving up the ranks and becoming friends with Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci). From the beginning, even though the story is told from the perspective of someone who has gotten out of the mafia and who knows that one of his best friends was murdered in an act of mob vengeance, Hill’s voice-over is reverential. He still clearly idolizes the image of the mobster and what it means to be a one. “Anything I wanted was a phone call away,” he tells us at the end. Being a goodfella was something to aspire to and something about which he can be nostalgic because he knows that he’ll never again feel so important. “Today everything is different. There’s no action… I’m an average nobody.”

The voice-overs by Karen Hill are similar in tone. “One night Bobby Vinton sent us champagne. There was nothing like it… [Henry] was an exciting guy. He was really nice. He introduced me to everybody. Everybody wanted to be nice to him.” She knows that her husband is a criminal and in certain respects she’s afraid of that… but it also excites her and you can see that in a scene which takes place early in their relationship, when Henry pistol whips a guy for hitting on Karen then gives her the gun to hide. She admits to us that most women would have ended it there, but the danger which surrounds Henry is part of her attraction to him. In the voice-overs of both Henry and Karen, there’s a sense that if things hadn’t gone so far wrong and had remained as “good” as they were in the early days, there would be nothing for them to regret – even though Henry kills people and Karen is living off of money made from murder, robbery, drugs and prostitution.

But things do go wrong, and spectacularly so. The climactic scenes, when Henry is high on the cocaine that he’s supposed to be selling and convinced that at any moment he’s going to get busted, are some of the most suspenseful scenes ever filmed. Director Martin Scorsese perfectly establishes a sense of claustrophobia and panic here, especially when Henry is convinced that a helicopter flying above is about to swoop down on him. This is the end for Henry, one way or another. But instead of going out in a hail of bullets, or spending life in prison, Henry testifies against the mob and is relegated to the middle of nowhere, an “average nobody” who longs for the days when he was important and life was exciting. In this sense, the film falls in line with other mobster movies by glamorizing/idealizing the lifestyle, but in other ways it also deconstructs the screen image of the mobster and, while the image remains glamorous, it isn’t quite as shiny as it was before Goodfellas took it on.

What really sets this film apart is the way that it deals with violence. These men kill in such a cold, dispassionate way. The deaths here aren’t “glorious” (as bloody as it is, you have to admit that Sonny’s death in The Godfather is framed in such a way to elevate it to the level of mythology); they’re simple, one of many brutal acts these men will partake in during the course of an average day. Take, for example, the scenes following the attack on Billy Batts. Henry, Jimmy and Tommy realize that Batts isn’t completely dead so they stop at Tommy’s mother’s house to get a knife and then stay to have something to eat. There’s nothing extraordinary about the fact that they’re about to kill someone (although they’ll come to regret this particular death later). It’s just one more thing, something that has become utterly routine and devoid of excitement.

Goodfellas would be a strong enough film in based on the force of it’s story (and how it’s told) alone, but it also has the good fortune of being perfectly cast. You really can’t imagine anyone other than Liotta, Bracco, De Niro and Pesci in their roles (especially Pesci given how the “Funny how?” rant is instantly recognizable even to people who haven’t seen the film). It’s the perfect marriage of story to storytellers, and an entirely rewarding viewing experience.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Taxi Driver (1976)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybil Sheppard

“Here is a man who would not take it anymore.” And here is an iconic moment in American cinema, when Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) stands in front of the mirror, preparing himself for battle. “You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.” The entire film is, essentially, Travis’ long conversation with himself, his attempt to reconcile one side of his nature to the other, a struggle made all the more intense by his alienation from the world and his chronic insomnia. He is one of the great characters in cinema, the anti-hero to end all anti-heroes, and Taxi Driver is brilliant for the way that it puts us so deeply inside his psyche that we can’t ever really be sure if what we’re seeing is “real” or fantasy, a moment taking place in Travis’ imagination as he looks in the mirror.

Travis is, of course, a taxi driver, having taken the job because he can’t sleep at night anyway, so he might as well be driving. This particular job offers him the opportunity to connect in some way with the rest of the world, to forge some kind of human contact, even if only briefly. However, having the job fails to help him connect with the world around him and he only becomes more disgusted by it, by the things he sees as he drives around the city at night. He actively attempts to make two connections – one to Betsy (Cybil Sheppard), a campaign worker for Senator Palentine, and one to Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute. His relationships with these women help to emphasize the dual nature of his personality.

Travis becomes infatuated with Betsy after spotting her from his car. He eventually works himself up to meeting her but fails to read her properly and connect. His jokes fall flat, he offends her by taking her to a porn film, his behaviour towards her becomes increasingly aggressive and stalker-like. His failure to relate to her ultimately stems from the fact that she has a secure position in the world which makes his own seem all the more unstable. She isn’t a woman who needs him to “save” her and their relationship – up to and including his attempt to assassinate Palentine – is marked by impotence and failure. He fails to shoot Palentine, he fails to understand Betsy and make her understand him. With Iris, however, things are different. She needs rescuing and she occupies a place in the world even more unstable than his own, so the balance of power is different between them. He succeeds in saving her, he succeeds in pulling the trigger and killing the dominant male figures in her life. In his relationships with Betsy and Iris, we see the full spectrum of Travis’ personality, the active and the passive, the dominant and the submissive.

Travis is a character who has taken on deep significance in popular culture (especially that image of him standing in front of the mirror) and I find it strange when people consider him in the terms of a rebel who lashes out against the establishment. Throughout the film, Travis is upholding traditional, conservative values, although he takes them to their most extreme. “Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets,” he tells us. He’s alienated by what he sees as the moral decay that surrounds him and the solution, as he sees it, is not social change, but rampage – to quickly and decisively get rid of all the city’s undesirable elements. In the film’s final, blood-soaked showdown he’s not rebelling against the system, he’s eliminating enemies of the system and thereby earning his place in society. The final scenes of the film see him treated as a hero (although there is some debate as to whether these scenes can be taken literally or are just Travis’ dying thoughts) for saving Iris, his attack on the brothel framed as self-defence.

This is a very tense film – it coils around and around until finally exploding in the final scenes. We know that Travis is going to snap; we know because we’re seeing the world through his eyes, seeing what he wants us to see. In one scene he makes a phone call to Betsy, pleading his case to a woman who has already written him off. The camera moves away from him and looks down the hall. It’s because Travis doesn’t want us to see him this way, this vulnerable. He is controlling the narrative. De Niro is perfect at conveying the pent-up anxieties and neuroses of Travis’ character, as well as his growing madness. We watch him hold his hand in a flame, we watch him rock his television back and forth before finally tipping it over, and he doesn’t have to say anything, because we can read it all in his body language and in his eyes. And even at the end, after he’s been accepted into society as a saviour, we can’t really be sure that he’s satiated the demons inside of him. There’s that same intensity to his look, that same tension in his body, and the world is, after all, still the same except that Iris is now back with her parents and her pimp is dead.

The central performance is fantastic – as are the supporting performances, for that matter – and the direction by Martin Scorsese is amazing. He presents us with a very tightly controlled film, limited not just to Travis’ point of view, but to the state of his psyche at any given moment. When the film finally explodes in its final orgy of violence, it comes as a shock to the system even though we’ve been preparing for it from the first moments. Scorsese’s ability to do that – to tell you where the story is going, but still shock you with the fact that it goes there – is the genius of this film.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Raging Bull (1980)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty

Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) is a hard guy to feel sorry for. He’s paranoid, he’s mean and he’s abusive and, yes, it all stems essentially from his own insecurities, but still. This is a guy who just won’t help himself, who makes the same mistakes over and over again, who shows control only when he’s in the boxing ring and spends his life outside of it relentlessly punishing himself and the people around him. And yet, by the time you get to the scene where he’s alone in a prison cell, crying and uselessly punching the concrete walls, you do feel sorry for him. Credit due to De Niro and Martin Scorsese for making that possible.

Raging Bull is easily the most poetic of all Scorsese’s films, which is surprising because LaMotta isn’t a poetic character. But when LaMotta is boxing, the film takes on this transcendent sense where even the way blood spatters looks beautiful in its way. The film is never kinder to LaMotta than when he’s in the ring, where no one, even Sugar Ray Leonard, can knock him down. Out in the world, LaMotta is getting knocked down every day – by the mobsters who want him to take a dive and keep the title shot just out of reach until he agrees, by his troubles with the law, his battle with his weight, his paranoia over the fidelity of his wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) – he only ever gets a moment of peace, a moment of grace, when he’s pummelling an opponent and being pummelled in return. He enjoys the punishment of his job, seeing how much he can take and still stay standing. In the scene where he takes a dive, he just stands there against the ropes, letting the other boxer punch him over and over while berating him for not being able to get the job done. Afterwards, he sits in the locker room crying because the guy was “a bum.” He didn’t fall down, but he still lost face in the place where it means the most for him to have it.

We see LaMotta at different periods of his life: at his height, where he’s one of the best boxers in the world, and afterwards, when he’s left boxing, gained weight and begun to trade on his past life for the sake of his new one as a nightclub proprietor. His marriage, which was always strained by his inability to trust Vickie, falls apart. His relationship with his brother Joey (Joe Pesci), falls apart, due primarily to LaMotta’s suspicion that Joey slept with Vickie, but it was probably only a matter of time considering the amount of abuse he’s heaped on Joey over the years. He gets arrested for having a relationship with an underage girl. He comes up with a plan to pay his bond by pawning the jewels in his title belt, which he mercilessly removes from the belt… only to be told that the jewels themselves aren’t worth as much as the belt would have been if it was intact. For me, that scene more than any other is the one where I really start to feel for LaMotta. He just doesn’t get it.

People always talk about De Niro’s physical transformation from young, fit LaMotta, to older, fatter LaMotta. It is definitely impressive, but this is a performance that amounts to more than just gaining weight. This is a fully fleshed – no pun intended – performance by De Niro, who more or less wears LaMotta’s thoughts right on his face. When he’s suspicious, we know it. When he’s struggling to understand, we know the extent to which he is struggling and the direction in which his thoughts are straying. There is never a moment when you think to yourself, “That’s De Niro.” It is always LaMotta and, essentially, two versions of LaMotta: the controlled, intuitive LaMotta in the ring, and the dangerous, out-of-control LaMotta who exists everywhere else.

Pesci and Moriarty also give excellent performances, each playing a character who loves LaMotta but becomes increasingly exasperated by his moods and inability to trust. There’s an especially great moment for Pesci at the end, when LaMotta catches up with Joey after years of estrangement and insists on a hug and Joey just stands there waiting for him to be finished with it. Pesci and De Niro play off of each other wonderfully, really giving the sense of two people with a lifelong history together.

But the acting is only half the battle, and I would be remiss if I didn't emphasize the masterful direction of Martin Scorsese, the cinematography of Michael Chapman, and the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker, who quite rightly won the Oscar for Best Editing. This is a technically beautiful movie, filmed with incredible grace and intimacy, both inside the ring and out. We're given insight into LaMotta's psyche through the way that the film always slows down whenever shooting from his perspective, as if he's memorizing details (most of the slow motion shots involve him looking at Vickie's interactions with other men). We're given further insight into LaMotta's frame of mind through the general narrowness of the composition of the shots. Everything always seems very tight, very closed in, as if to suggest the narrowness of LaMotta's vision. It's a very effective psychological movie and, without a doubt, it is my favourite of all of Scorsese’s films, perhaps my favourite of all of De Niro’s films, and probably the best film to come out in the 1980s.