The Irishman (2019)

The Irishman is a tale spun from the vantage point of an older man in a nursing home and displayed through a series of extended confessional flashbacks. Robert De Niro takes the lead role of World War II veteran meat-delivery driver Frank Sheeran, who, beginning in the 1950s, gets involved as a hitman for the mob after meeting and providing his services to well-known crime boss Russell Bufalino. During his time working with Russell, Frank ends up meeting and becoming a close confidant of the nation’s most influential union boss, Jimmy Hoffa, known for using strongarm tactics to bring the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union to power. Organized crime had a significant influence in this era, on the unions, in business, and up to the highest levels of government, and Frank finds himself on the rise playing bodyguard and man of trust to Hoffa in his attempts to keep control of the most powerful union in the country.

The Irishman is a notable film in Martin Scorsese’s long and illustrious career for many reasons. He struggled with the financing for over a decade to get the movie made his way. The current studios make decisions primarily for what will make them profit; cinema for art and Oscar-bait prestige films are packaged with a similar notion in mind, to limit their budgets and market on the hope it might take off. After languishing for several years, Scorsese made a press to push forward with the film after the release of Silence in 2016. The financially struggling Paramount Pictures paid for domestic distribution rights then scoffed at the exploding costs of putting forward the filmmaker’s vision. They dropped out when the leading financiers, a Mexican company called Fabrica de Cine, canceled its $100 million bid to fund the money when the costs looked to skyrocket well above that.  Scorsese bucked the traditional studio system in 2017 to make his film with the streaming service, Netflix, where there is no need to worry about selling tickets. Netflix has a different profit structure that relies on getting new subscribers to sign on to see their wealth of entertainment, and old subscribers to keep from canceling because they are satisfied with them getting fresh content.  They footed $105 million for exclusive rights, in addition to the overall budget, to make the film to one of the best films in the career of one of the best filmmakers of all time is quite a feather in their cap.

Despite not being made by a major studio, Scorsese received a hefty budget to make the film he wanted: $159 million. That’s the kind of money that studios usually only afford the movies Scorsese has recently criticized as “not cinema” in interviews. A lifelong cinephile, Scorsese has also been a cinema purist, long extolling the merits of the theater and crowd experience to take in movies, which makes his marriage to Netflix particularly striking. They would split the difference by releasing The Irishman exclusively into movie theaters for twenty-six days before debuting it on the streaming service. It’s not a popular way do to it, as some major chains who have been resistant to showcasing films going quickly to digital chose not to carry it. Not only do short runs cut into theater profits, but audiences are hesitant to pay for the experience when they would see it on Netflix in a short number of days. Scorsese has since softened upon his initial criticisms on studios and their quest for ever-profitable tentpole releases, choosing to let his work speak for him. The Irishman is his best argument in reminding cinephiles on what it’s like to see a visionary filmmaker deliver an honest-to-goodness artistic and dramatic achievement in crafting challenging cinema rather than try to service audiences by making strictly what they want to see.

The Irishman adapts the 2004 true-crime book by former Delaware deputy attorney general turned author Charles Brandt entitled, “I Heard You Paint Houses.” The book chronicles Sheeran’s alleged activities working for the Bufalino crime family and details his purported involvement in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. It’s a book that Robert De Niro read during his time directing his film, The Good Shepherd, in 2006, due to its subject matter regarding the Bay of Pigs.  De Niro connected with Brandt’s book, handing it to Martin Scorsese to read as a possible project for them to work on together instead of one they had planned, the Don Winslow novel, “The Winter of Frankie Machine.” Scorsese felt that, with De Niro finding so passionate about a potential project in a way he hasn’t been in some time, it would be worth pouring their time and hearts into getting a film they truly wanted to see made. He optioned it immediately after reading it in 2007 but struggled to bring it to the screen for over a decade. Initially, he struggled with scheduling all of the actors to appear. Then, a darker reality on studios growing more reticent to provide the funds necessary to bring a sprawling epic gangster film to big screens in an era of massive tentpole releases. The film marks the ninth feature film collaboration between the director and De Niro, not having done a movie together since 1995’s gangster opus, Casino.

Also from Casino is Joe Pesci, reportedly asked dozens of times to come in to do the film before consenting. Pesci had not appeared in any movie other than voice work since 2010’s Love Ranch, his first significant role since 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4.  Pesci said he was through with the gangster movies, but Scorsese insisted that this one would be worth his while. De Niro also played a role in getting him to reconsider, and Pesci finally assented when Netflix was involved, because then the project changed from a pipe dream to something that had solid backing and interest. De Niro was right that the film is different. The Irishman isn’t just about the rise and fall of a criminal empire. It’s about the corrosive nature of crime itself on those who participate in a life of killing and thuggery. It’s a story of a man at the end of his life looking back at all he has done. It’s made by people who are also looking back at the kinds of films they have done. In that retrospection, they find a defined poignancy in the tolls that paid and traded away to live a wretched life. It’s something that can only be observed at the other end of life looking back.

Although both knew each other and traversed the same cinematic circles for nearly five decades, The Irishman marks the first collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino. They had discussed making films together for years. The most promising project was a biopic on Jewish-Italian artist Modigliani that dissipated due to studio reticence after United Artists faced bankruptcy after making 1980’s Heaven’s Gate in putting forward the funds to make lengthy and lavish art films. Pacino appeared in three prior films with Robert De Niro. The first is an all-time classic where they didn’t work together (The Godfather Part II). The second is a great one where they shared a scene (Heat). The third is a lackluster misfire very few fans care about beyond their pairing (Righteous Kill). After that last one, De Niro said he would like one more chance to work with Pacino, but in a project that they could be proud of making. The Irishman is that movie they should be pleased they made.

All three of these actors give their best performances on film in decades, especially De Niro, who acts like the film means a great deal to him, probably because it does. We witness his passion in a scene that comes late in the movie. Frank struggles to spin hopeful assurance to a concerned wife agonizing about a man who has been missing for a couple of days. Frank knows the husband is dead, but must maintain a facade of being a family friend. It’s a masterful performance that should allay naysayers who have long touted that the actor’s best work is long behind him. Pacino is electrifying as Jimmy Hoffa, both manacing and comical, with a mix of strength and vulnerability that could only come from one of the great actors in cinema. Though he’s rarely acted in the last two decades, Pesci seems like he hasn’t missed a beat. Even longtime Scorsese collaborator Harvey Keitel gets an appearance here, though the role may be too small to garner him the accolades of the others.

Scorsese is still in peak form here, with his use of Steadicams to add intimacy, music to punctuate the time, setting, and mood, and heaps of emphasis on period details. He already had a shorthand with his lead actors who he has worked with before. Pacino was new to him, but he is a seasoned actor used to improvisation and reactions, as well as having variations of tough guys like Hoffa throughout his career. Scorsese discovers new facets by not portraying the top gangsters as unapproachable and glossed over with menace. No, they are flawed, petty, and concerned with mundane issues on a human level. Russell doesn’t want people to smoke in his car. Jimmy Hoffa can’t get over someone meeting with him without wearing a suit, especially if they are late. In all these ways, it’s a measure of control and respect that drives them, setting up arbitrary rules as guideposts on whether they continue to have that respect. It dogs them to no end when they don’t.

The film features over 250 characters to portray throughout several decades, with heavily researched period wardrobe, sets, vehicles, guns, and other props appropriate to each. Over 6000 extras were also utilized in the course of the shoot, taking place at over a hundred different locations. Does it need to be 3.5 hours long? Not to tell the story, but removing even an hour of the film would likely lose many of the smaller and more relevant reflections and personal tidbits that feel unique in the world that Scorsese and company are creating. Scorsese deliberately brings in the details like a statement that we should, in this continually moving era of perpetual distractions, take more than a moment to examine the subtler signs and value the importance of the little things that end up becoming more significant and more valuable over time.

One such scene is of Frank as a soldier in World War II being ordered, without being overtly ordered, to execute the enemy after making them dig their graves. They continue to dig despite knowing only death awaits as if doing a good job will save them in the end. Without calling too much attention to it, Scorsese and screenwriter Steve Zaillian are commenting on just about every character we meet going forward, who are digging their own grave, but there’s no way out of it. All they can do is continue to dig, despite knowing that the only reward for their effort is a bullet to the head. In this and many other ways, The Irishman is a very immersive and detailed film that has been made by people who put a great deal of time and effort to craft.

Seemingly without intention, The Irishman deals with contemporary politics in that it seems to suggest that the merger of government, industry, and organized crime has been with us for a long time.  There are notions here that the mob helped to get John F. Kennedy elected, at least in Illinois, and that they expected some favors in return. They didn’t get them, prosecuted for their actions by the new attorney general, the president’s brother, Bobby Kennedy. Hoffa was a particular target of Kennedy’s interest in breaking up organized crime. Still, the mob is full of players who vow unquestionable loyalty, and who operate with a code of speaking to their operatives in orders without actually saying them overtly. In some ways, many will reflect that the merger has continued in the politics of today, except now players in organized crime are global, and the leaders have made their way to become heads of nations. In that way, it’s a bit dispiriting to contemplate just how compromised and vulnerable our politics is and how it has likely been for a very long time.

While Sheeran gets elevated to the national stage as a power player operating behind the scenes, the politics of the home begins to chip away at his psyche. His home life seems to lose meaning to him in a tremendous way to the point where he walks away from it, even though he can’t seem quite to let go, which begins to become a theme of the story. The particular spotlight is his relationship with his daughter Peggy, who we meet as a quiet young girl who is seemingly ordinary until she begins to put two and two together as to who her father is and what he does in life. Russell notices as well and urges Frank to take care of things, but it’s a tricky issue that continues to dog him into Peggy’s adulthood. Anna Paquin plays the adult Peggy, who we only hear speaking in one pivotal scene in which she asks her father why he hasn’t called someone who is anguished. She initially asks, “Why?” which may more broadly question why Frank spent his entire life the way he has, and for what? In this way, Peggy is the silent but ever-present conscience that Frank has buried all his life, forcing him to confront the reality of his behavior in an environment full of people who only enable it.

The Irishman would get some press regarding its costly use of de-aging technology to portray the characters at various points in their lives, with De Niro’s character ranging anywhere from being in his 20s in age to his 80s. CG is not something generally associated with Scorsese. Still, he worked with Industrial Light and Magic on the technology to see what they could do and was very satisfied with the results. Scorsese felt that it looked better than trying to use makeup to portray age, especially as they had the time and capability to perfect it if things weren’t looking quite right. He felt that if audiences were into the story, they’d not even notice the technique and just get absorbed into the characters. Scorsese ends up being right. Even with the initial hint of uncanny valley territory, the story is so absorbing that we forget the artifice and sense the underlying emotions of the storyline and what each aspect means to the characters. We see it on their faces, close up, without feeling hindered from their feelings behind layers of digital effects. A posture coach helped the actors stand and move appropriately for various ages.

The director and stars are now into their late-70s in age, resulting in a thematic throughline to the film about making one’s mark, earning a reputation, and securing a legacy. The on-screen quest for legacy in the mob, though, is quite different from that of the art of filmmaking. Many critics accuse Scorsese of glorifying the life of criminals over his career. In The Irishman, he makes a deliberate decision to undercut the glamor of the mobster with a freeze-frame on their characters with a subtitle letting us know that things don’t end well for just about all of them. They might seem like high rollers at the moment, but there comes a permanent price for their actions that makes us continually question the worth of such a pursuit when reading over and over that most of them meet with grisly deaths in time. It’s a devastating commentary on the emptiness of such a life from a director long fascinated with the underworld types, feeling like he’s having the final say about these characters who themselves have a hard time closing the door to their chosen lives.

The film’s extended epilogue would almost certainly not exist in a traditional studio film. Some viewers who are seeing the movie for the first time will question its need to exist, even though it ends up perfectly encapsulating every critical theme of the entire picture. In these scenes, we spend more time with Frank as an older man, still alive but closer to inevitable death. His life of crime brought with it an estranged family and a group of fellow gangsters who’ve all perished around him. All Sheeran has is a collection of memories he continues to feel he can’t talk about because there isn’t much he can be proud of relating. Frank confronts closing out the chapter of his life, wishing he could have some permanence in the world he’s leaving behind but struggles to find the way. He continues to dig, despite his grave already waiting (we see him buy his coffin and pick his final resting place), but at the end of it, there’s no getting out of it. The Irishman serves as Scorsese’s final Ozymandian monument to this life of fast money and power players building empires that will have no other monuments, as their amassed wealth and prestige eventually erodes to nothing and those who choose to partake to nobodies over time.

Qwipster’s rating: A+

MPAA Rated: R for pervasive language and strong violence.
Run time: 209 min.


Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, Stephen Graham, Ray Romano, Anna Paquin, Bobby Cannavale, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jack Huston, Kathrine Narducci, Jesse Plemons
Small roles: Bo Dietl, Steven Van Zandt
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenplay: Steven Zaillian (based on the book by Charles Brandt)

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