‘The Irishman’ (Review)
★★★☆☆ — Martin Scorsese’s latest ‘fuggedaboutit’ flick is one of 2019’s most redundant movies
I never think of myself as a fan of Martin Scorsese. Despite my fondness for a number of his films, including Taxi Driver, The Departed, Cape Fear and The King of Comedy in particular, I can’t help but see Scorsese as the man who made Goodfellas… And is still trying to make Goodfellas all over again. Since the start of the decade, Scorsese’s efforts have grown increasingly tiresome with each volume. If The Wolf of Wall Street wasn’t enough of an emotional rehash of Scorsese’s renowned ’90s mobster movie, thinly veiled behind a new Tarantino-esque fascination with drugs and sexual violence, The Irishman is something else entirely.
Perhaps it’s because the director’s style is simply so unique that I can’t help but hear it shouting out of the screen every time I watch one of his movies — although he makes films that, at the very least, once were very different to the films everyone else was making, Scorsese has never made any effort whatsoever to make movies that are distinguishable from each other. He has been content to ride the success of Goodfellas for almost three decades, apparently with no intention of stopping. The defining characteristic of The Irishman, if it has one, is that it is the most derivative of his latest lacklustre opera. It’s about Italian American gangsters. It’s about Catholicism. It’s got voice-over narration. Where have I seen any of this before?
Scorsese’s remarks on the ‘theme park rides’ of Marvel movies are immensely ironic. (Not least because I partially agree with him.) Outside of the superhero genre, The Irishman is the most redundant movie I’ve seen this year — the sheer audacity of Scorsese in calling out superhero films for their pedestrianism in the same year as releasing ‘The Irishman’ is astounding. The film plods through its narrative like agèd DeNiro plods through prison with his cane: slowly, with the occasional trip just to make sure you’re awake.
Part of the problem is the visual constraints of the film. Unlike Scorsese’s more striking films, such as Silence, The Aviator or even Shutter Island much of the plot takes place indoors, primarily with middle-aged men sitting around a table, discussing affairs and assassinations and rivalries. It’s inevitable, really, that the plot should become stagnant, given that the dry dialogue rarely makes up the lack of movement driving the story. It is a perfectly uninspiring blend of Goodfellas, The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America, yet paling in comparison to all three.
Comparisons to the first two in that list were inevitable — in many ways, they are the definitive gangster films and will likely never be replaced in film canon. Every crime film ever created will likely be compared to it, at least until cinema dies at the hands of VR or whatever new art form takes its place. But the more interesting comparison of the three, for me, is with Once Upon a Time in America. Directed by Sergio Leone, a man better known for his spaghetti westerns, …America is the story of aged gangster ‘Noodles’ (likewise played by DeNiro) turning through the tragedies of his private history in search of the moment when it all went wrong. The narrative flows between his childhood, his prime and his elderly years effortlessly, instilling a kind of emotional whiplash as we experience the peaks and troughs of Noodles’ life with him.
Scorsese attempts to emulate this narrative device, moving between old DeNiro, slightly older DeNiro and de-aged DeNiro at will — but rather than making the film more dynamic, it becomes disjointed and uninteresting. Whereas …America indulged itself in its drama, giving Noodles all too much to reflect and regret, the back-and-forth between young and old Frank Sheeran exists only to interject with the occasional humorous remark or a one-liner to jerk the narrative ahead to its next stage. Presumably, these lines are taken verbatim from the memoir upon which the film is based, I Heard You Paint Houses… by prosecutor Charles Brandt, but it scarcely matters. The voice-over has been little more than a crutch to Scorsese for years now — a device to be employed when the plot has stalled and is in dire need of reignition.
The trouble is that a good plot never needs a voice-over to spurn it on. Voice-over as a cinematic device is supplementary — it works only when it adds a new layer to the narrative that cannot be attained through other means. Needless to say, there is little such justification in The Irishman. Without reasons to invest emotionally in the fates of the characters, both the voice-over and time-hopping devices are useless… And who can sympathise with Scorsese’s Frank Sheeran? He’s not a good husband — by his own admission, he’s not a good father. Noodles, at the very least, is the fall-guy — he may be a street criminal, but a difficult childhood and (albeit somewhat skewed) clear moral compass makes him a hero worth our time. He may not always do right, yet we want him to, which is all that really counts. Scorsese’s Sheeran, on the other hand, has nothing going for him. He starts out as a truck driver, one who is willing to commit a few petty crimes for the mafia locals — being the dirty-work guy, apparently, is enough to make a man a hero in Scorsese’s books. Sure, Sheeran is a fall-guy of sorts: one early sequence shows Sheeran keeping names to himself in the courtroom — but that’s the whole of his character development for the whole first half of the film.
DeNiro is utterly wasted in the role. (As an aside, Pacino and Pesci are much more impressive.) In a way, the de-ageing CGI stifles him. The CGI was always going to be under scrutiny, given the excessive budget required to de-age two of cinema history’s biggest names by 30 years, but DeNiro’s performance makes me wonder why they bothered. At least for the first half of the film, the de-ageing CGI distracts almost constantly — think Prometheus’ Guy Pearce but in reverse. It would be one thing if it was consistently bad, but it varies in effectiveness from scene to scene, usually dependent on how much younger DeNiro is supposed to look. Really, he just looks like one of several 60-something-year-old men throughout — the only change is whether he’s the one who aged either particularly gracefully or the one who aged particularly poorly. In other words, the wrinkles are removed, but the agèd look never really is. As a result, and coupled with the one-dimensional characterisation of Sheeran, DeNiro appears utterly flat opposite his costars.
Speaking of costars, there is Anna Paquin, who, though she appears often, I believe speaks in only a single scene in the entire 200-minute run-time. This is notable because Paquin is the most prominent actress featured in The Irishman, playing Frank’s eldest daughter, Peggy. I do think there’s something poetic about denying the adult Peggy any vocal involvement in the story at all, given that the crux of the film’s conflict derives from her affection for Jimmy (Pacino), the friend Frank is ultimately persuaded to assassinate. Her few lines are spoken after Jimmy’s death, too late to have any impact on Frank’s decision. It reminds me of the final scene of The Godfather, in which Michael literally closes the door on Kay after years of treating her as a glorified ornament.
The problem, then, isn’t Peggy herself—it’s that Scorsese, more than aware of the distinct lack of female characters, makes the most half-hearted effort to include a female voice I’ve ever seen. When Frank laments over having been shut out of Peggy’s life to one of his other daughters (who is so insignificant I forget her name), she responds with harsh criticism of his parenting. Each of his daughters, she tells Frank, was so afraid of his violent overreactions that they could never turn to him for ‘protection’ — not unless they wanted someone to end up in hospital or the morgue. That one scene is the extent of female involvement in the plot — literally an afterthought. It’s more than a step backwards from The Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese is still as content as ever to tell only half the story: the same gritty, businessy, masculine side he’s been telling for 40 years.
All of this is not to say that The Irishman is a bad film. After all, three stars is three stars. I could speak about how the film generally looks good and boasts a great (male) supportive cast. It’s just that so much more ought to be expected from one of the world’s most renowned filmmakers — yet the fact that I have come to expect so little from Scorcese in the 21st century speaks volumes. He doesn’t make bad films — perhaps he never will — but there’s only so much praise that can be given to a director who has become as stagnant as Scorsese. ‘Losing their touch’ is more or less expected of ageing filmmakers but Scorsese perhaps takes the cake. I suppose, at the very least, he’s still leading in something.
