I grew up watching the films of Martin Scorsese. It was movies like Taxi Driver (1976) and Goodfellas (1990) that first made me realize the power a movie could hold over an audience. I realized through Scorsese that cinema could be more than mindless laughs and brain-dead escapism. He taught me that movies could mean something.
Over time, however, I began having a hard time rationalizing Scorsese’s overuse and glorification of violence with my own ideals. As I grew older, I no longer found his gangsters charming or rebellious, but sadistic and unhinged. They were psychopaths who I’d admired as a teen for their brash and antisocial behavior but now criticized as an adult for the same reasons. Goodfellas, for example, is still a great movie (one of the best gangster pictures of all time, in fact), but I see it now in a different, more refined light. As I’ve grown older, so has Scorsese, and his new film, The Irishman, is perhaps an atonement for the violence of the past.
Contrasting the canonization of crime and violence found in his previous works, Scorsese offers something new for his hit-men and racketeers: hesitation. Most of the film’s murders are performed in a nearly off-hand manner, but when it comes time for the big one, there is a moment’s hesitation that captures the pain of these men’s chosen lifestyle. In fact, they spend a large part of the film trying to avoid this pivotal moment, but to no avail. Scorsese and The Irishman are more interested in the long-term effects a life in crime can have on one’s psyche than they are with gratuitous shock.
Much of this hesitation stems from the strong, decades-long and tightly knit bond shared between the film’s three leads: Frank Sheeran (who wrote the book on which the alleged true story is based, played by Robert DeNiro), Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci, in a brilliant return to the screen), and Jimmy Hoffa (a brazen and charismatic Al Pacino). These men present a much different kind of relationship than we’re used to seeing in mob movies. Machismo and bravado are replaced by genuine sentiment and a deep sense of fondness. Their brotherhood often interferes with the lofty concepts of “right and wrong” or “business and personal,” making Frank, Russell, and Jimmy the three most human organized crime figures I’ve ever seen in a movie.
Perhaps the most important factor in humanizing these less-than-savory characters is the film’s moral center: Frank’s daughter Peggy (played by Lucy Gallina as a child and Anna Paquin as an adult). Paquin utters only seven words in the film (a fact that is being pointed out all over the internet), but the importance of her role cannot be overstated. She sees each man as they truly are, and it’s Peggy – not the law, not prison, not death – who deals out Frank’s true consequences. It’s her silence that eats away at him and grinds him into the grim realization that his life has been meaningless and empty. She supplies the melancholy behind Frank’s unfulfilled and lonely life, and Paquin nails it with nothing more than the eyes on her face.
This is a film so packed with detail and professionalism that I nearly watched it again, right then and there. If you’re a mob history buff (I am) you should find The Irishman an irresistible source of factoids and tidbits. It frequently overlaps with Scorsese’s Casino (1995), but what’s most interesting is its odd connection to Oliver Stone’s 1995 conspiracy-laden JFK (see if you can catch it – I’ll even give you a hint: Pesci). At 3 ½ hours long, The Irishman may be too much for some (at least in one sitting), but if you’re up for the challenge, it’s an extremely worthwhile experience. It is not an action-packed film, but the story is so engrossing that “boring” or “slow” are not words that I would ever use to describe it. This is a film that takes work, but the breadth of its emotional sprawl and the pure distance it covers breaks it free of its genre constraints and firmly places among the great masterpieces.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.