The Irishman: A Review
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT.
The Irishman, written by Steve Zaillian (based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt) and directed by Martin Scorsese, is the alleged true story of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a truck driver out of Philadelphia who becomes a trusted member of the Italian mafia. The film stars Robert DeNiro as Sheeran, with supporting turns from Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.
Martin Scorsese is one of the true masters of American cinema, and so when he releases a new film cinephiles take notice. Scorsese’s newest project, The Irishman, is a Netflix film, which means it will have a very limited release in theatres in November before it settles in for the long haul on the streaming service at the end of the month.
Being the obnoxious purist that I am, I wanted to catch The Irishman in theatres so I decided to see the first show at 10:45 on Tuesday morning. I assumed the theatre would be just how I like it…sparsely populated. I mean who, besides a loser like me, goes to a movie on a Tuesday morning? Well…apparently there are a lot of losers in Los Angeles. I was stunned to see that my screening of The Irishman was jam-packed and nearly sold out, with only the first two rows of the theatre with empty seats. The film is supposedly only playing in two theatres here in Los Angeles, and luckily for me one of the two is my regular hang out. My screening was bursting with an interesting cross-section of people, from hipsters to the elderly to elderly hipsters.
What surprised me the most about such a large crowd was that the film runs three hours and thirty minutes, which makes it a prime candidate to watch in the comfort of your home where you can hit the pause button to take bathroom breaks and not miss any of the action. Such is the draw of Scorsese that audiences would put their bladders to the test and shell out money to see a film they could essentially see for free with unlimited bathroom breaks just a few weeks from now.
The Irishman is not so much a genre defining film as it is a genre closing film. Like Clint Eastwood’s eloquent tombstone on the grave of the western, Unforgiven, Scorsese gives us the mob movie that makes mob movies dramatically obsolete with The Irishman. Both Unforgiven and The Irishman burst the archetype and myth that animate them and replace it with the awkward, unwieldy and soul-crushing reality of the consequences of that myth.
Unlike its energetic and exuberant predecessor Goodfellas,The Irishman is a melancholy meditation, a profound existential prayer whispered into the abyss. Scorsese’s makeshift mob trilogy, which began with Goodfellas and continued with Casino, finds its weighty final chapter with the contemplative epic The Irishman, and reveals an introspective auteur coming to grips with mortality. The Irishman is a film obsessed with mortality, as death looms over every scene like an ominous storm cloud containing the relentlessly inevitable deluge of both physical and spiritual destruction and disintegration.
In Goodfellas and Casino, Scorsese sees the mob world as morally corrupt, but does so through a nostalgic lens…these guys may be bad but they are “good guys”, good-fellas. In The Irishman, as physical action turns to spiritual consequences, nostalgia is replaced with a plaintive reflection, so profound as to be akin to a sacramental confession.
The performances in The Irishman magnificently give life to Scorsese’s artistic contemplation, with Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci doing some of their very best work, and easily the best work of the last three decades of their careers.
DeNiro, with the assistance of a “de-aging” special effects technology, plays Frank Sheeran from his young adulthood into old age. DeNiro has not been this engaged, this sharp or this magnetic for a quarter of a century. DeNiro and Scorsese give Frank time and space, with which he is able to be still and contemplate his choices both in the moment and in hindsight. DeNiro sublimely fills these moments with a consequential aching, and his character with an acutely unconscious wound that gives Sheeran a complexity and profundity he is unable to grasp. DeNiro is now 76 and this performance may very well be his last hurrah as an actor, and it is a fitting monument to his colossal talent and extraordinary career.
Al Pacino has a supporting role and is absolutely fantastic. Caustically funny and desperately combustible, Pacino’s character (I won’t tell you his name so as not to spoil it) is a force of nature. Pacino imbues his character with a compulsion for control and a pulsating pride that make a toxic combination and undeniably dynamic viewing.
Joe Pesci is sublimely superb as the restrained and deliberate mob boss, Russ Buffalino. Pesci made his name playing frantically unhinged characters, but in The Irishman he shows off his mastery of craft. Pesci’s Buffalino is quiet and still, and yet because he fills his stillness and silence with an undeniable intentionality, he radiates an unnerving power. Pesci rightfully won the Best Supporting Actor for his work in Goodfellas, but his performance in The Irishman, while not as showy, is even better, as it is as layered and complex a piece of acting as you’ll find.
The de-aging technology used on DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci can be a little disorienting at first, and it takes some getting used to, but after the first few minutes you never even think of it. The one thing that is sort of odd about it is that the technology only de-ages their faces and not their bodies. So when a young and fresh faced DeNiro is beating the crap out of a guy on a sidewalk, he moves like a 76 year old man…like he is underwater…which is very strange to see.
The Irishman is epic is scope and scale, and it covers some 40 or 50 years of time. As previously stated, the film has a run time of three hours and thirty minutes, and I can tell you that the film is so engrossing and captivating, that not once during that three hours and thirty minutes did I mentally or physically check out. The same was true of the other people in my screening as bathroom breaks were minimal and phone checking was non-existent…which is extremely rare nowadays.
The long running time is a good sign because it means that this is Scorsese’s film, untouched by the filthy hands of studio execs or money people. Piece of Shit Hall of Famer Harvey Weinstein once famously demanded that Scorsese cut 45 minutes off of Gangs of New York and the film was immensely harmed by those cuts. The same is true of Silence, which Paramount demanded be cut for time, and also seriously suffered because of it. When studios meddle they always and every time fuck it up, this is why Netflix matters, because unlike other studios they don’t meddle and they don’t chase the short-end money of box office bravado, they let artists be artists.
Netflix is important too because without them The Irishman never gets made. The other studios passed on the film and its hefty price tag of $160 million, and so Netflix was the studio of last resort. Scorsese would no doubt prefer to have a long theatrical run with his film, but I bet he is quite pleased he made the trade-off of reduced theatrical run in exchange for Netflix letting him make the movie he wanted to make. Just more proof that the studios and theatres are fucked…they have no vision and no balls…and they will deservedly go down in flames.
The real question regarding The Irishman is not whether you should see it, you obviously should as it is one of the very best films of the year, but where you should see it. For cinephiles, I do recommend you make the effort to see it in the theatre, as it is beautifully shot by Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese’s cinematographer on The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence, with a subdued color palette, exquisite framing and deliriously gorgeous but subtle cameras movement. The film is also expertly edited by Thelma Schoonmakert who seamlessly keeps the film’s dramatic pacing on target while also allowing it to breathe. But for regular folks who are not as concerned about those things as I am…I think they can avoid the theatrical gauntlet and wait until The Irishman hits Netflix at the end of November and watch the movie at their leisure with the pause button at the ready when nature calls.
The Irishman is a powerful film that is the very best work of the second half of Scorsese’s career. While it is difficult to predict what the always erratic Academy Awards will do, I think it is a safe bet to say that The Irishman will at least garner a plethora of nominations. I think it will be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (both Pesci and Pacino), Best Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto), and Best Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker). In my opinion the film is certainly worthy of all of those awards…but there are other worthy films this year too, so we will see.
In conclusion, I have not revealed much about The Irishman’s plot or characters because I knew little about them when I saw the film and thought that enhanced my viewing experience. I have a lot of thoughts on the movie, its politics (oh boy do I have thoughts!!), its sub-text and its symbolism, but I will hold off on sharing those thoughts for now because they are potential spoilers. Once I have seen the film again and it is running on Netflix, I’ll write more in depth about it.
The bottom line regarding The Irishman is this…it is a phenomenal film well worth the time commitment to see. If you have the time and the bladder control, see it in a theatre, if not wait until you can watch it at home come November 27. Regardless of when or where you see it, see it, and enjoy one of the greatest film makers of all time as he wrestles with his legacy and his mortality.
©2019