Hard Architecture

After seeing The Departed last night I feel duty-bound to tell you what I thought about it, what I'm still thinking about it, but the picture is so damned fast and furious that all I can give you are some positive impressions and not a lot of deeper understanding of the movie. This one I may have to see twice, but I sure don't want to do it right away. The movie is too seductive.

I've got a little theory about master filmmakers, the ones who sometimes make you utter "genius!" and the problem we have when all their pictures don't give you the same buzz as the ones they made that you hold all their others up against. The theory is that you have to give them a little critical leeway, on the off-chance that nobody's perfect. Even Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, even Akira Kurosawa doesn't hit every picture out of the park.

How many masterpieces is the limit for a feature film directing genius. Four? Six? For fans like us, you go along a particular filmmaker because you like his or her point of view and you want to see what they say next. You enjoy their company. You're glad their contributing to the cultural discourse and maybe the two of you share a sense of humor.

I remember getting all teary-eyed at the end of John Huston's final movie, the James Joyce short story adaptation, The Dead. I was fortunate enough to be alive for his late classics -- Prizzi's Honor, Under the Volcano, Wise Blood -- not all masterpieces, but all an extraordinary night out at the cinema. The picture, which opened four months after Huston's death in December 1987, is a gorgeous final bauble, mainly in real-time, an Irish dinner party of lost souls with an incredible singing scene in the middle and an elegiac somberness that was shot fluidly, vividly, alive.

So the sadness I felt for Mr. Huston was a sadness for a voice gone, a companion lost. You had to feel this guy died vindicated over and over again -- great directors rarely make a last movie that good, and him on an oxygen tank at 81 hard-lived years old.

Here comes Marty Scorsese, so many Oscars unrewarded, four or five certifiable masterpieces (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, King of Comedy, Goodfellas and maybe Kundun) under his belt. Lunchtime critics may feel superior because this or that picture didn't work perfectly, but he's an artist, and artists never phone it in. They may repeat themselves, they may slightly disappoint you here or there, but they always have their moments.

I thought The Aviator was a terrific movie and kinda hoped it would beat Million Dollar Baby for Best Picture, but I understand why it didn't and still think it's an amazing picture, with a particularly inspired ending. The Aviator had so much to say about the ambition it takes to make history and its cost, and since it is based a true story, it should and in some ways does have the benefit of gravitas over The Departed which is, after all, just based on a 2002 Hong Kong thriller (Andy Lau's wildly impressive Infernal Affairs).

But in terms of Scorsese's career, this new one is simply his most unabashedly entertaining night at the movies since Goodfellas (1990).

Pretty much all of Marty's movies, even Cape Fear, are more about character than plot. He's always been more interested in showing us his convincing vision of how things really work than in making events fit a classic Hollywood storyline. What gives his pictures such a dynamic kick is that he's one of the greatest students of Hollywood who has ever lived. You see it in the lighting in Raging Bull, in the climactic Liza Minelli number in New York, New York, how he handles the biggest stars alive by simultaneously magnifying their legend while making us think we know them better.

Since The Departed wisely keeps the crackerjack original plot intact or improved, it's really the lethal focus of the movie. How many times have I heard "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones but now I can't get out of my head how he uses it near the start, how it signals everything that's wrong with Jack (Nicholson as mob boss Frank Costello). The picture is cut so sharply that the 2 1/2 hours fly by like half the time, and at the end you feel suckerpunched but aren't quite sure why. I mean, it doesn't seem that deep.

I think there are maybe three reasons why it may be deeper than first glance.

For one, the story transplant to not just Boston but the Boston Irish world, Southie boys turned cops and hoods. On one hand, it's Angels with Dirty Faces all over again, even the main character names being similar and I'll be damned if DiCaprio didn't study James Cagney for this role (that's a compliment), but on the other it's Scorsese social anthropology all over again only with Irish rather than Italian Catholics.

Number two, the movie has the courage of its dramatic convictions in the Jacobean revenge play kind of way. Adapting screenwriter William Monahan (Kingdom of Heaven) has fashioned a classical structure -- not merely a classic Hollywood script structure -- and I think it resonates.

Number three, there's a lot of little allusions and layers hidden in there. In his big film documentary Marty explains how the filmmakers from "A" to "B" grades throughout Hollywood history have hidden messages and tropes in even the most studio of product, and as he's taken the opportunity here to reference James Joyce himself ("departed" is standard Irish Catholic for dead), I imagine there are more depths to plumb in a second viewing. There's certainly a wealth of doubling and criss-cross imagery, but I swear I was just keeping up most of the time; it's that kind of ride.

So I can't go deep into what he did with the camera on one viewing, just impressions of hard architecture and circular traps. I can't comment on the final image without spoiling something, but I think it's a bold move. For a sixty-four year old guy, Scorsese is making it more exciting and unexpectedly relevant than all of the guys half his age.

Which brings me to some closing thoughts on the acting, and the direction of actors. It's demonstrable now that Leonardo has brought as much to Marty as he's gotten in return -- the two of them have made Scorsese young again. I have know idea how they actually work together, but if a rumor about the director dressing down the young actor for misbehavior on the Rome set of Gangs is true, maybe something clicked then and Leonardo's allegiance has been a gift to everyone.

There's not a bad casting decision in the entire picture, with the thrill of these two icons of 70's breakthrough filmmaking (Marty and Jack) working together for the first time, with Martin Sheen and Nicholson facing off like the two old Irish acting successes they are, with Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin getting all the best lines, with Ray Winstone walking away with scenes and both Kevin Corrigan and Anthony Anderson putting in welcome, memorable bits. DiCaprio hits maybe his best groove since What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Matt Damon gives a classic ambiguous villain performance, daring to be just enough less sympathetic, in the long run, than his corresponding character in the original. He scores (sic) strongest in his flirting/wooing scenes with Vera Farmiga, a clever go-getter routine, and it's their scenes that make it a date movie.

Because Mr. Scorsese has a find with Ms. Farmiga, who's scored in a few indies but is about to break out, bigtime. Smart smart smart, sexy sexy sexy, with piercing blue eyes and a kind of Klute era Jane Fonda bone structure. As the woman in the middle, it could so easily be a thankless role, but between her performance and the screenwriting here, it isn't. She even gets a killer Third Man moment of her own.

So that's it. Not too deep, hopefully no real spoilers. It's a hard rockin' time, and maybe not all that much more than that.

But who cares -- rock and roll will never die, baby.

Those aren't bullets. That's the soundtrack.