R:
The movie was tedious. The conversations where one didn't say what one meant many time in various ways were simply boring, neither funny parodies nor subtle and inventive. After "you paint houses" and the blood spattered wall it went downhill. I was puzzled by what the movie was up to since I found the thugs thuggish, and their lives and wives and even kids boring. I think the guy I watched with may have it right. He said that the "you do what you gotta do" without any moral fuss attitude that dominated makes people boring. The wives were as boring as they guys. Hoffa was different, but I didn't like Pacino either. There were also in-jokes I think, like the fish? (a red herring?) that I didn't get.
I was utterly unmoved by the fate of de Nero and when he offered the lame excuse he did it for his family I heard an echo of Breaking Bad where Walter says that to his wife and she says, in one word, bullshit. As for his emptiness emotionally, right, but boring to watch.
I am utterly amazed at the Rotten Tomatoes rating and praise.
I utterly miss the glamour. Scorcese keeps reminding us that many of the side characters were murdered, which kind of dims their achievement as survivors. And the survival trick here (unlike in the Sopranos) is simply doing what you are told. Where is the glamour in that? Di Nero makes murder pretty routine, and gets away with it easily. The cigarette business was puzzling and then it struck me that the husband and wife negotiate in about the same bored spirit as the murder etc. They've done it hundreds of time and no-one wants to make a big deal of it. The more I go on the worse it gets.
I liked both godfather movies and loved the Sopranos. This film seem nothing like either to me.
Me:
I don’t know how you escape being drawn into this story, the characters, how they talk, what they do, how Scorsese creates their world, how he creates a series of set pieces that stand on their own as scenes and yet fit together into a tight, yes tight , whole, even as the story in a leisurely, discursive yet steady and coherent way moves inexorably forward, and how there is self conscious, discussable artistry behind every scene and that very tight coherence.
Take the impersonal, matter of fact killings for example. Routine? Sure. They're done with detachment, impersonality, done in the usual course of business. You see it from the point of the view of the murderer. It’s as nothing.
The cigarettes? There’s a big slice of a world traced in that: from Lansky and Luciano getting chased out of Cuba, them telling Russell never to smoke, maybe in the spirit, as Sheeran speculates, of “O God, if I ever get out of here alive, I’ll never smoke again,” which sets up slyly, subtly and minutely, the end time futile shot at redemption and forgiveness by both Russell and then Sheeran before they’re to meet, or never get to meet their makers, coming down to a trifling domestic issue between Russell and his wife, also for an instant ironically, humorously inverting Russell’s vaunted power, with a single unifying strand running through all of it.
And it’s not that the slight argument over smoking reflects the boredom with which bigger homicidal decisions are made. It is that there is a quietness in the way things are—it is what it is—that the logic of situations impose themselves and those who are wise accommodate them and live to thrive. So Russell’s wife working within their personal dynamics forces a smoke stop and Russell keeps his wife happy as far as happiness in the demimonde goes—happy wife, happy life—and Russell goes on to thrive in demimonde way, until he doesn’t.
And, so, Sheeran conflicted between Hoffa and Russell accommodates where his interest lies even as his loyalty and friendship with Hoffa press against him and he gets to live until he dies, of natural causes, as does Russell. But Hoffa unaccommodating—Sheeran to Hoffa: “It is what it is!” Hoffa: “It is what it is! They wouldn’t dare! Nobody threatens Hoffa! I know things! They don’t know what I know!” And so, Hoffa, in the ways of the demimonde, doesn’t know when, so to say, stop for a smoke break, and, so, he gets offed. “It is what it is.”
“It is what it is.” Everything comes down to it what it is, the way things are, reality itself, a theme running through the film.
I could go on for a long time on almost every little thing.
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Me Back To R’s Back To Me:
Me:
The impersonal, matter of fact killings for example. Routine? Sure. They're done with detachment, impersonality, done in the usual course of business. You see it from the point of the view of the murderer. It’s as nothing.
R:
PRECISELY. WHAT IS INTERESTING IN THAT? AS IF THE KILLER WERE ANAESTHETIZED, AND WORRIED ONLY ABOUT GETTING AWAY.
Me:
You’re making a massive critical error. It surprises me. You wrench something out of context, a specific thing that is paraphrased briefly simply to explain it and ask why that’s interesting. Why is it interesting that Romeo and Juliet are immediately attracted to each other? It’s a silly question. Scorsese paints an entire hierarchical world filled with any number of details and aspects and personalities. Sheeran killing those who have to get got is part of it. His war experience is the template for him doing it. So duty to country in one world becomes necessary business as usual in another. And it’s that other where this movie has a big part of its center.
Me:
....coming down to a trifling domestic issue between Russell and his wife, also for an instant ironically, humorously inverting Russell’s vaunted power, with a single strand running through all of it.
R:
I THINK HE HAS NO MORE POWER THAN HIS WIFE, HE KEEPS THE PEACE WITH HER JUST AS HE WANTS TO KEEP THE PEACE WITH THE MOB.
Me:
Another surprising comment from you in its misapprehending this bit of film business. True, she comes from Sicilian mafia royalty, but you miss how integrated they are in each other’s life. When he comes home bloodied and dazed from some bad business he’s done she steps right in domestically to direct him and accommodate him. They’re an integrated unit in this life of theirs. As as are Sheeran and his second wife.
But to think he has more no more power than her is ridiculous and suggests a failure to have understood the simplest things about the movie. “All roads run through Russ.” No one makes a move without him unless it’s those over him, Angelo Bruno and the NYC biggest heavies. Of course, he has more power than her. But you have to contrast the way she fits in when needed, when he’s bloody and dazed and him giving in to her on a minor domestic issue.
He loves her. They work together and accommodate each other on small things. That is what people who love each other and work well together do. Plus, the movie reflects the sanctity or family to that generation of mafia heads. Stay quiet and unobtrusive and keep your home life stable. He’s the head of a Philadelphia mafia family for goodness sake.
Either you’ve completely failed to understand the movie or you’re merely trolling in bad faith.
Me:
And it’s not that the slight argument over smoking reflects the boredom with which bigger homicidal decisions are made. It is that there is a quietness in the way things are—it is what it is—that the logic of situations impose themselves and those who are wise accommodate them and live to thrive.
R:
THAT MAY BE SENSIBLE IN LIFE BUT IT MAKES FOR DULL ART.
Me:
You’re so assertive and prescriptive here. Dull to you but hardly to anyone else. The near to universal reaction to this movie is that it moves slowly but is decidedly not dull. Just the opposite, it’s compelling in character, acting, sweep of story and cinematic technique, the framing, the stories within the story, the cinematography and so on, even the integration of the music.
Certainly you’re lord and master of what interests you but when your lack of interest is such a critical outlier, you’d need at least to distinguish between your finding the movie dull and asserting it’s dull let alone being prescriptive about what makes for dull art. But at least I’ll agree with you that the film is art.
Me:
And so, Hoffa, in the ways of the demimonde, doesn’t know when, so to say, stop for a smoke break, and, so, he gets offed. “It is what it is.”
R:
HE WAS UNCONVINCING. HYSTERICAL.
Me:
I thought Pacino was miscast as Hoffa, understanding what I do of Hoffa and the movie suffered in virtually equating Hoffa in his silly tics with his profound importance in American life, which the movie also makes apparent. But for all the miscasting of Hoffa and Pacino’s hyperbolic performance, the scene in which that back and forth takes place is brilliant in all what it has going on and in the acute contrast between those who in this life quietly accommodate each other and those whose loudness does them in. Hoffa, Crazy Joey Gallo. Russell’s understatedness, fabulously acted by Pesci— almost as magnetic as De Niro’s portrayal of Sheeran— measures inversely the extent of his power. And in this scene, for all his misplaced noisiness, Pacino’s flamboyance works.
Me:
“It is what it is.” Everything comes down to it is what it is, the way things are, reality itself, a theme running through the film.
R:
AGREED. GREAT LITERARY WORKS ARE NOT MIRRORS OF THE WAYS OF ACCOMODATION. HEY, MENELAUS, GET OVER THE THEFT OF YOUR WIFE, IT'LL COST US LIVES.
Me:
But this movie isn’t a mirror. It’s a depiction of a whole way of life over the fully lived adult life of one man as played by one of the great actors of our time accompanied, as noted, by other brilliant performances, the miscasting of Hoffa notwithstanding. “It is what it is” for all its explicitness arises as a theme rises organically from all the specifics of the film.
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R:
I can't resist. What of the scene where he viciously attacked the grocery store owner and made his daughter watch. He is a thug and nothing but a thug, there is nothing at all to admire about him. Maybe the movie is saved by Scorsese's refusing to guide our responses, and letting us have to bring the condemnation, rather than by transparently villainizing the main character.
And I thought when we talked that you didn't like the film because it led you to enjoy brutality.
Me:
Who says he’s not a thug?
Who says he’s glamorized?
But he has his feelings, confusions, senses of loyalty, friendship and duty that jostle each other, which is to say, some intrriority. The movie conveys all that, especially with Hoffa. DeNiro’s facial gestures when Russell lays it on him in his quiet, no nonsense, lethally authoritative concise way—“it is what it is”—what he must do are a master class in conveying with unexaggerated looks such hurt, tormented, confused feelings. He can’t sleep. His bedside phone beckons him. He doesn’t call Hoffa, his temptation to do so made vivid. Russell lays it down in about as directly assertive and stern as he ever gets: “Don’t call him,” only three words that say life and death much.
His daughter’s horror at what he does to the bullying grocer is the counterpoint, the critique of his thuggishness, which of course abides and grows throughout the film. And it shows his wrenching of family as the movie goes on, the inversion of what these thugs espouse as its stabilizing importance.
I reject the sometimes asserted proposition that his loss of his daughter, and less so his other daughters, is his comeuppance. And it may be that Scorsese wants to suggest that. If he does, then it’s facile. Facile? Hell, it’s silly.
Me, as I said in my linked note to you, I’m torn between finding the movie very fine, compellingly watchable, for the reasons I’ve pointed to and for others—it’s one I’ll watch from time to time as I do other thug movies by Scorsese: Casino, Goodfellas, The Departed, Mean Streets even Who’s That Knocking At My Door—and in that enjoyment finding critical pleasure in its many subtleties, which I’ve only begun to point out to you, between finding that and, too, finding deep fault with its defective moral vision. That’s precisely the point of my linked note, a point I trust I needn’t repeat.
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