Picking Fights and Playing Favorites: Reacting To The Irishman
I’ll say this right up top: When it comes to Martin Scorsese, I prefer Who’s That Knocking at My Door to Mean Streets. I believe After Hours and Cape Fear are top-tier work. I think The Age of Innocence stands tall above everything he’s made since. And each time I revisit Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, or GoodFellas, they only seem to get better.
Those of us eager enough to call ourselves critics — professional or amateur — have only our words, our insights, and our individuality at our disposal. As critics, they are our most valuable possessions. We are responsible only to them. They are the baggage and biases we clutch in our laps whenever we sit down to watch a movie. To surrender any one of these possessions would be to sacrifice a piece of ourselves. It’s always fascinating, then, when a movie comes along that causes us to speak with one voice. It’s difficult to get ten people to agree on anything these days, let alone without reservations, but a movie we love can sometimes bring us together. If we’re not careful, however, our expressions of enthusiasm can sound like a chorus of uniformity. When that happens, I’m often left to wonder which is ultimately more powerful: the movie itself or the sense of belonging it has engendered amongst its admirers. Maybe the answer is somewhere in between.
I’m also fascinated by our desire to chisel a film’s legacy into stone even as the cement itself is still being poured. Perhaps this impulse has always existed within us, but it certainly seems to have intensified in recent years. Maybe that has something to do with the accelerated pace of consumption, the aggressive competition for our time and attention, the sheer volume of contemporary critical discourse, or the subtle ways in which our own anticipation for a film can act as a buoy for our first impressions. I don’t have an explanation for that one either. Regardless, it can sometimes feel like we might be skipping a step or two in the process.
All of this has been at the forefront of my thoughts in the wake of seeing The Irishman, Scorsese’s new three-and-a-half-hour crime drama now playing in theaters and streaming on Netflix. I’m not interested in writing a “review” of the film, not in any kind of traditional sense. There are plenty of those already. I’m much more interested in taking stock of our reaction to it — and, more specifically, one type of reaction. It’s a reaction that’s not exclusive to Scorsese or The Irishman, but it’s one that often accompanies the work of those we place in his league, those we recognize as true masters of the art form. We rarely state it outright, but it’s underscored by the signifiers we use: masterpiece, brilliant, genius, classic, perfect. There’s nothing wrong with any of those words — they’re ours for the taking, after all — but they do have a way of graciously positioning their recipient, whether it’s a film or its maker, beyond the realm of disapproval. Of course, none of us would ever make the outrageous claim that our cinematic heroes or favorite directors are infallible. We all know better than that. But, too often, I think we might believe they operate outside the parameters of more common filmmakers, floating high above the limitations that plague other director’s material, other director’s sets, and other director’s editing suites.
That’s an enviable and cushy spot for any artist to find themselves, but I worry that our generosity — however well-intentioned, as motivated as it is by the countless hours we’ve spent enjoying their work — might be a bit unrealistic and unsustainable. We might be creating a vacuum in which even sincere, good-faith criticism is viewed as an affront. We have to allow even our most brilliant filmmakers a bad day or two. Because, sometimes, even they fall behind schedule. Sometimes, even they have to throw aside their storyboards and shot lists and start from scratch. Sometimes, even they don’t realize a scene isn’t working until they’re actually shooting it. They might try everything they can to fix the scene on set, but, sometimes, even they move on without satisfactorily solving the problem. Sometimes, they shoot with multiple cameras and allow the actors to improvise, and, sometimes, those choices paint them into tricky corners in the editing room. You can fix a lot in post, but not everything. Sometimes, even the best filmmakers have to find the movie they actually made while cutting it. And, in doing so, sometimes narrative redundancies don’t reveal themselves until the scenes have all been shot and laid end to end. Even when those redundancies are caught, however, sometimes plotting dictates the scenes remain intact and unchanged in the final release.
On the most abstract level, films are nothing but movement and light, sound and color, shapes and rhythms. That doesn’t seem like much to get worked up about, but, if we’re lucky, something is forged into being by those elements that stir our emotions and stimulates our intellect in such a profound way that we will defend them at any cost. The best movies grip us this way, and the best filmmakers accomplish this through juxtaposition. Movement needs stillness. Light needs shadow. Sound and color need contrast. Shapes need differentiation. Rhythms need variation. This is the essence of drama, and it’s precarious. Too much or too little of anything might throw off the balance. Hopefully, we’re just as engaged at the end of a movie as we were at the beginning. There’s nothing as disappointing as the realization that a film’s grip on you is loosening, its spell dissipating. But filmmaking is a form of alchemy and the rigors of the process all but guarantee its measurements will be imprecise.
This is true of every film, no matter the budget or shooting schedule, whether it’s $500,000 and 29 days on Mean Streets or $175 million and 108 days on The Irishman. These are the factors that ultimately inform the movie we’re all watching. It’s not the most romantic notion of filmmaking, but the reality is that a director shows up and tries their best under the constraints of that day. This is true of those who print the first take and move on, and it’s true of those who shoot a hundred takes of even the most inconsequential camera setup. Sometimes, a filmmaker can overcome these obstacles, with little to no evidence of their role in shaping the movie. That’s when we all applaud and say, “They make it look so easy and effortless.” But, sometimes, they succumb to these obstacles. When that happens, is nothing sacrificed? Is nothing compromised? If we disregard the process or its impact on the art form we all love, if we no longer believe it’s even a consideration for our most cherished artists, that it’s simply not a reality that they face, then that’s when we start being dishonest with ourselves as critics. Our words will betray our insights and our individuality will be threatened. Every cinematic triumph is hard-won. We shouldn’t discredit the victories by ignoring that. But there’s a reason we don’t turn to the cheerleaders for post-game analysis. That’s not their job. Unfortunately for us, if our thoughts and opinions are to gain any traction these days, we have to yell them out as if we’re attending a deafening pep rally, all of us climbing over one another to reach the top of that enthusiasm pyramid. It’s exhausting, but we’re all voluntary participants. No one is forcing me to post on Twitter, but I crave attention and want my opinions to be heard as much as anybody. I’m just not sure it resembles thoughtful commentary anymore.
But I think we can actually learn something from Scorsese on this point. Here’s an excerpt from Conversations with Scorsese, in which the late Time film critic, Richard Schickel, and Scorsese discuss one of the director’s all-time favorite movies:
SCHICKEL: The Searchers is an infuriating movie to me.
SCORSESE: Why?
SCHICKEL: Because it has greatness, and it has banality.
SCORSESE: It has problems in it.
SCHICKEL: It’s almost like, Oh, Jack, you’re doing it, it’s so great, and then —
SCORSESE: Then he has that comedy, and —
SCHICKEL: And then the fat, horny Indian woman.
SCORSESE: I know, that’s a problem.
SCHICKEL: I mean, it is so close to being a true masterpiece.
SCORSESE: It really is. But I loved it as my favorite film, because, among other things, the scenery in that film is a character.
SCHICKEL: Oh, absolutely.
SCORSESE: It’s not just scenery. If you see it on a small screen, it’s okay, but on that giant VistaVision screen —
SCHICKEL: But those people — how much corn are they going to get out of that land, do you really think?
SCORSESE: Nothing.
SCHICKEL: You couldn’t grow a radish out there!
SCORSESE: Desert, red dirt, you know. And then there was a period of time where I realized, too, that the comedy may have been strained.
SCHICKEL: And the romance — Vera Miles waiting and waiting and waiting for Jeffrey Hunter back home.
SCORSESE: But when I saw it again, a year and a half, two years ago, I got involved with it again. And the archness of the humor actually wasn’t as arch as I remembered it. I watched their faces. I saw Jeffrey Hunter’s eyes. He really was so earnest, you know. I still have some problems with it in some areas. But for some reason, seeing it on a big screen in the right atmosphere, it seemed to carry itself along in a way. Even the Indian woman has her moments; when he mentions the name Scar, the music score kicks in, and she gets upset. And that changes everything. You actually see it in her eyes and her face. I’m just saying, Give it another chance, if you can ever see it on a big screen.
Notice that Scorsese doesn’t dig in his heels. He’s even gracious enough to concede some of Schickel’s points. As one of cinema’s most obsessive devotees, Scorsese understands that our reactions are fluid. We can age out of them and we can age into them. Maybe there’s no need to chisel them in stone. In 1967, Roger Ebert displayed amazing foresight when he declared Scorsese’s debut film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, “a great moment in American movies,” but he was also humble enough to note, two years later, upon seeing it again, that Scorsese was “occasionally too obvious, and the film has serious structural flaws, but nobody who loves movies believes a perfect one will ever be made.”
I think it’s reasonable to make demands of the art and artists we love. Roger Ebert made demands of Scorsese, even as he consistently referred to him as the most exciting American director in contemporary cinema. Just read his reviews of The Color of Money and Cape Fear. If an artist is of any worth at all, we can trust that they’re also making demands, of themselves and of their audience. But we need to make similar demands of ourselves as well. Criticism is an ongoing investigative act, and we should be willing to scrutinize our own reactions. There will always be bad takes, and it will probably always be best to ignore them. The cream has a way of rising to the top. So much of Scorsese’s career is a testament to that fact. But his legacy can also certainly withstand our gripes. And, if The Irishman is anywhere near as good as we’re all saying it is, then it should be able to withstand them as well.
