THE IRISHMAN

2019; directed by Martin Scorsese; adapted by Steven Zaillian; 209 mins

I have not been that enamoured of Scorsese’s work this decade. It started strong with Shutter Island and the George Harrison doco but the rest was not his best stuff, as far as I’m concerned. You wouldn’t know from the reviews though. I’ve said this with Tarantino but there are critics who just won’t say no to him. It’s good to be a fan and I would consider myself as such but even Ken Loach makes movies I’m not so hot on. Among other things, my problem with most of his work recently (The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence and Rolling Thunder Revue) is that they’re all too long. It’s funny then that his longest film is my favourite since 2011.

Aged Frank Sheeran is in a nursing home, telling the story of his life as a hitman for the Mafia. He had no qualms about killing, stemming from his wartime experiences but came into the embrace of the Mob through his job as a truck driver. The Mob went hand-in-hand with the unions who looked after working men and women. Sheeran does favours for them and in doing so comes into contact with Russell Bufalino, a much-respected family capo and brilliant negotiator. Through Bufalino, Frank meets Jimmy Hoffa, leader of the Teamsters Union and one of the most powerful men in America. Sheeran becomes Hoffa’s closest confidante and friend but Hoffa’s bloody-minded desire for political influence is becoming a problem, conflicting with the Mafia’s desire to regain power in Cuba after the revolution. Frank is caught in the middle of these increasingly aggressive factions.

It’s inescapable that there is a real excitement about seeing a new Scorsese film starring De Niro, Pacino, Pesci and Keitel. Keitel has more of a cameo role but he gets the most out of it and in his key scene is the most fearsome man in a room full of fearsome men. Pesci is wonderful. As Russell Bufalino, he is much more calm than Tommy DeVito and Nicky Santoro. He’s a middleman who is invested in the Italian American business of murder, inc. Pesci plays a kind friend and family member who will order deaths like coffee. A lot of his sense of threat, I think, comes less from knowledge of what his character is doing and more from what we’ve seen of Pesci throughout his career. He has been one cinema’s most convincing and terrifying tough guys and that persona and relationship with us allows him to be so quiet. People says Pacino’s being Pacino but that seems to be the point. Most people don’t know who Hoffa was and we need to believe that he could run the most powerful union in the most powerful country through strength of will and personality. Pacino’s the guy you get for that. I mean, De Niro could be said to be doing his average Joe thing again and even if that were true, swap him and Pacino over. Have them do the other role. Wouldn’t work. The two offset one another and allow each other to be brilliant, doing what they both do best. This film is actually De Niro’s baby – he brought it to Scorsese – and you can tell that he really cares. There are moments in which Frank really subtly coils up into himself when his hand is forced. It becomes a really palpable and actually affecting turmoil which has us reaching for this serial killer. It’s so great to see all these guys back in the saddle.

As a matter of fact, it’s nice to do some spotting of Scorsese bit-part players throughout the movie, especially GoodFellas‘ “lucky hat” lady, Welker White, as Jo Hoffa. Even better are the newer Scorsese favourites such as Boardwalk Empire regulars, Jack Huston, Bobby Cannavale and Stephen Graham, Domenick Lombardozzi, Jesse Plemons and Ray Romano. In fact, regarding Romano, I saw thirty seconds of Everybody Loves Raymond and I thought it was shit but in movies, he’s been great. Every single member of this enormous cast is great. Scorsese isn’t really given enough credit as an actors’ director but to see a project of this scale, filled with such properly naturalistic acting (as opposed to pretending to trip over lines all the time) across the board is a real brace for a film so embedded in brutal reality.

A lot of Steven Zaillian‘s screenplay, early on, explains the way these criminal enterprises express themselves. The many euphemistic discussions for illegal activities are made just plain enough that by the end, the characters can have these discussions without us getting confused. Zaillian is sure what to enunciate and what not to. It’s not the first time we’e seen that in a movie, of course but in this it does seem to be integral to ideas in the movie; misdirection, misinterpretation and bullshit. Narratively (not to mention length-wise), the film recalls a previous De Niro movie: Once Upon a Time in America. That film used flashbacks within flashbacks to create a bedrock of memories* but unlike De Niro’s character ‘Noodles’ in America, this is partly about a man trying and failing to feel guilty. It’s almost as if Frank doesn’t get guilt. He’s an Irish Catholic, sinning fit to bust but he only tries to feel guilty late on because he feels like he’s meant to. He feels bad that his daughter hates him but he doesn’t have any emotion about the men he kills. I guess it’s all about communication. Look at that. Well done me. Have a biscuit.

What’s really interesting is how the vastness of the bulk of The Irishman contrasts with the intimacy of it’s final act. Despite the colossal downgrade in his situation, both financially and physically, Sheeran’s temperament remains largely the same and so you genuinely wonder if it all just happened (inasmuch as one can fully believe any professional criminals’ testimonials) but without being cynical, the way the story is presented really feels like it all could’ve been some fantasy, cooked up by a lonely old man.

The Irishman is not perfect, though. It has flaws certainly and much as I didn’t and still don’t agree with the criticism of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood‘s largely wordless depiction of Sharon Tate, the same criticism aimed at Sheeran’s silently disapproving daughter, Peggy, seems valid. I do agree that how much a character speaks is not indicative of how three-dimensional they are. Charlie Chaplin. Case closed. However, with Peggy, all they ever do is cut to her looking frightened of and latterly pissed off at her father. She doesn’t have much else other than that but there are sections where the movie does it so much it becomes a bit tedious. I understand the point of it but it’s not the film doesn’t have the time to flesh her out a bit more**. It’s not as bad as last year’s Never Look Away in that respect but it’s not far off. Anna Paquin has defended the role but it’s a bit of duff role for someone as talented as her.

Secondly, whilst the de-ageing technology is pretty seamless, considering (I’ve said this before but sometimes we can’t forget it’s an effect simply because we know it not to be true), there are moments wherein the older actors unfortunately cannot disguise their bodies’ shortcomings. The most glaring example is the beating outside the grocery. I really do think they should’ve used a stand-in. It’s an older man’s physicality there and it dents an otherwise effective scene. That said, for the most part, you actually do forget about it (which I just said in a crap Italian-American accent in my own head).

Roger Ebert famously said; “No great movie is ever too long and no truly terrible movie is ever short enough”. I’m not saying The Irishman is one of the great movies, I’ve established I have problems with it but for something that’s nearly four hours, there is a far greater feeling of immersion than fatigue. The first two and half hours are more like GoodFellas and Casino (with which this undoubtedly makes an unofficial trilogy, documenting Italian mafia life from the street to the highest castle towers); courtesy of Thelma Schoonmaker, we’re being hurtled through decades of narrative with that impressive dance of montage and neorealist detail, accompanied by music and stylistic flourishes and yet never losing sight of who’s who and where we are in the narrative. In it’s final hour, the film settles down into a wintry decline as monumental historical events wind down into prison sentences and quiet reprisals. Some people have found that last hour to be where the fatigue sets in but I didn’t. It seemed to be indicative of that passage of time. The whirlwind of the heyday capped off by the slow descent into infirmity and funerals. For a project which has had so much talked about it’s cutting edge technology, it really feels like a 20th century movie. In almost all the best ways.

*Also like Nixon.

**For a bit, read: a lot.