Shutter Island - The Spoiler Review

Yesterday, I wrote my review of Shutter Island, but wasn’t able to go as deep into the detail of the film as I wanted to. If I did, I would have given the whole movie away, and that isn’t fair to people who haven’t seen the movie. So, if that’s what you want go read that review. Then, after you have seen the film, come back and read this. This one has tons of spoilers. So now that we’ve got rid of everyone who HAS NOT seen the film, let’s discuss the movie with no reason to hold back the secrets of the film.

As I said in my other review, I think Shutter Island is the type of film that works better when you know the secrets of the movie, then when you don’t. Having read the book, I knew what was coming, so I was able to let the movie wash over me. Instead of focusing on the plot – or what the movie is about – I was able to concentrate on Scorsese’s storytelling – or how the film is about what it is about. That is where Scorsese’s true talents as a filmmaker have always lied.

So, let’s just get this out of the way here and now, and come out with the movies big secret – Leonardo DiCaprio’s Teddy Daniels is not really a US Marshall sent to Shutter Island to investigate a missing patient. He is the patient, and everything that happens in the movie has been set up for his benefit. Unable to deal with his own guilt over what happened – that after the war, guilty about what happened over there, he came back a changed man, who was unable to see that his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) was a damaged woman. When she burned down their apartment building, he ignored the signs, and simply moved to his family to a lake house. One day after returning home from catching a criminal (he was, at that point, an actual US Marshall), he discovers that his wife has drowned their three kids in the lake behind their house. Mad with grief, Daniels kills his wife.

Daniels is unable to deal with these events in his life, so he has constructed an elaborate fantasy world while being imprisoned on Shutter Island. He is Teddy Daniels, US Marshall out to find the missing patient, Rachel Solondo, in the mental hospital where he is convinced they are playing the same sort of games, carrying out the same sort of experiments, as the Nazis did. His doctor, Mark Ruffalo, is his partner, and the head doctors, Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow, are evil men doing the experiments. In reality, Kingsley and Ruffalo are trying to help “Daniels”. If they cannot get him to accept reality, thus curbing his violent tendencies (he lashes out at anyone who refers to him by his real name, or confronts him with the truth), then von Sydow wants to give him a lobotomy. To give him a sense of peace and calm in his world.

In many ways, I thought that Teddy Daniels resembled another famous Martin Scorsese character – Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Both have recently returned from the war, and although we never find out what happened to Travis in Vietnam, we do not that the experience has scarred him for life. With Daniels, we do find out what is haunting him. At Dachau, he saw the worst of what men can do to other men. The commander of the prison camp tried to kill himself when the Americans arrived, but messed up. Instead of having a quick death, he slowly bled to death for more than an hour. None of the Americans wanted to end his misery. The Americans then lined up all the guards at the camp, and in a mesmerizing tracking shot by Scorsese, we see them mow them all down. According to Daniels, this wasn’t warfare, it was murder. So when Daniels returned from the war, his guilt was already causing him trouble getting back to a normal life. When his wife started showing signs of mental illness – he ignored them, which led directly to her killing their children. He is no unable to forgive himself for that – he blames himself for the death of his children, and the death of his wife.

Like Bickle, Daniels lives in a world that is entirely of his own making. Bickle sees himself as some sort of avenging angel, taking out the trash on the streets of New York. He could avoid the areas he goes to, but then, his fantasy world wouldn’t be the same. He needs the filth, to help his fantasy world along. Both men are capable of bursts of extreme violence, that manifest itself in different ways. When Bickle shoots up the whorehouse at the end of Taxi Driver, and unwittingly becomes a hero – which will simply feed his fantasy life well after the movie ends – he doesn’t do it simply to save Jodie Foster, like he convinces himself he is. He is doing it because of all that pent up violence that he needs to get out – and his first attempt to assassinate the Presidential candidate was thwarted, meaning he had to look for another outlet. Bickle would have fit right in with the inmates in Shutter Island. The “men of violence” that Max von Sydow says are his specialty.

Watching Shutter Island, we become aware right from the beginning, that we are seeing all the proceedings from Teddy’s point of view, and yet we are unaware that we really cannot trust his point of view. There is something off about everything he sees though. Critics who were distracted by the booming soundtrack, and the strange point of view shots from inanimate objects, the matching shots that Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson litter the movie with, I don’t think every really thought about WHY Scorsese was shooting the movie in this way.

We sense something is off because of the way everyone treats DiCaprio’s character, and yet we can never really pinpoint what exactly it is. Why is Mark Ruffalo always so calm with Daniels, always so willing to agree with him, and try to soothe him? Why does Ruffalo, a supposed US Marshall, struggle with a task as simple as taking his gun out of its holster? Why does John Carol Lynch, the Assistant Warden who greets the Marshalls on their arrival, seem to be putting on an act of niceness, instead of actually being nice? Why is Ben Kingsley so willing to put up with all the questions, and insinuations, that Daniels makes, so willing to allow himself to indulge Daniels questions, whereas von Sydow is a little more strict? Why does Ted Levine, in his one scene of the warden, seem to regard Daniels with utter and complete contempt? Why do the inmates all seem to regard Daniels with confusion, as if they know who he is? Why, after all the lectures about how tightly controlled Ward C is, are DiCaprio and Ruffalo able to wander right in, and why does it seem like the orderly is talking down to DiCaprio when he discovers that he beat up an inmate?

Of course, when the secret of the movie is revealed, we know why all of these characters react they way they do, and more. What we don’t know, or at least aren’t 100% sure of, is what in the movie actually happens, and what is mere fantasy on the part of DiCaprio’s characters. Obviously, the visit with Rachel 2 (Patricia Clarkson) is complete fantasy, as is DiCaprio seeing Ruffalo’s lifeless body on the jagged rocks below. But how about the scene where Ruffalo seems to feed DiCaprio’s paranoia, by suggesting that he was lured there as a trap? Would Ruffalo, who is a doctor trying to cure DiCaprio, really feed him line? Or would Kingsley really just try and confuse DiCaprio more by telling him that he showed up on the island by himself with no partner? Or is this all part of the fantasy that DiCaprio has structured for himself?

Like Bickle, by the end of the movie Daniels has chosen the easier way out. Bickle fully intended to die in that whorehouse, as is evidenced by the shot of him putting him bloody hand to his temple like a gun and pulling the trigger. It is his own bad luck that he survives. Daniels on the other hand, has chosen a life of blissful ignorance. Knowing full well that he cannot go back to pretending – to living in his fantasy world where he is still a hero, and not a grief stricken man, haunted by his own feelings on guilt for not having saved his wife and kids, and what he did in the war, he chooses to become a zombie. He acts like he has reverted back into the fantasy – which he knows will result in him getting a lobotomy – but he lets Ruffalo in on his secret when he says “This place had made me wonder if it’s better to live as a monster, or die like a hero”. He knows what is coming, and he has chosen the ignorance to the reality.

The mark of an auteur, to me anyway, is that a filmmaker can take pretty much any film and make it their own. Put their own authoritative stamp on the film. Scorsese has always been able to do this. Of course, it has caused for some of less successful films like Boxcar Bertha, New York, New York and Cape Fear, where Scorsese’s sentiments were not really in line with the movie, and at times, actually seemed to fight the narrative (although, I will say I prefer that to Scorsese films like The Color of Money, or even Kundun, where Scorsese seems to take himself out of the movie completely). One of the wonderful things about Shutter Island is that Scorsese fools you into thinking that he simply making a genre film. That he has decided to simply make homage to Hitchcock and film noir. It’s not really until the final scenes in the movie – perhaps the very last one, when DiCaprio delivers his very last line – that you realize just what a complex movie this really is. The film falls right in line with the other films of Scorsese’s career, which often are about men who do not really like themselves, and construct different ways of dealing with that. Not only Bickle in Taxi Driver, but Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, who is driven to violence by his sexual jealously, Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, who creates a world for himself where he is the celebrity he believes he is entitled to be, Henry Hill in GoodFellas, who hates himself for ratting on his friends, Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence, who denies himself what he wants most, Frank in Bringing Out the Dead, who thinks that if he just saves one person, he can save himself, Howard Hughes in The Aviator, who locks himself away from the world, and both Billy and Colin in The Departed, who move slowly toward their own doom. Hel, even Jesus Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ, fits here. It is not a stretch to say that many of these characters could, at some point after the movie ends (assuming they are alive of course), could end up in a mental hospital (in fact, in the Infernal Affairs trilogy, which The Departed was based on, the character that Damon is based on doesn’t get killed at the end of the film, and by the end of the trilogy, is in fact, in a mental hospital). Shutter Island, which has all the markings of a thriller, and works on that level as a great one, is not really about its thriller elements at all. It is about Teddy, and his slow dawning of realization of who he actually is – which is something he cannot deal with.

Many critics will, and have already, dismissed the movie as little more than genre piffle – even some of the critics who liked it. There will be some who chose to see it as little more than a well made genre film with an M. Night Shyamalan type twist at the end. And if you want to see the film that way, fine. But Shutter Island is a movie that simply expands in your mind after you are done watching it. If it doesn’t quite rank among the very best films of Scorsese’s career, that’s because Scorsese has made more masterpieces than any living filmmaking. I have a feeling however, that over time, critics will recognize Shutter Island for the great movie it is.

Movie Review: Shutter Island

Shutter Island ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Laeta Kalogridis based on the novel by Dennis Lehane.
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels), Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule), Ben Kingsley (Dr. Cawley), Max von Sydow (Dr. Naehring), Michelle Williams (Dolores), Emily Mortimer (Rachel 1), Patricia Clarkson (Rachel 2), Jackie Earle Haley (George Noyce), Ted Levine (Warden), John Carroll Lynch (Deputy Warden McPherson), Elias Koteas (Laeddis).

Shutter Island maybe one of those rare movies that work better when you already know the surprises and twists of the story. Having read the book before seeing the movie, I knew what the twists of the plots were, so I was able to sit back and just let the movie wash over me. It is a grand, madhouse caper from Martin Scorsese, who love of Alfred Hitchcock and film noir are evident in every frame of this movie. As with the great movies by Hitchcock, you watch the movie once to get the story, and then watch it again to see what the master does, how he plays with the audience’s unease, and unsettles and disturbs us. The plot of the movie – the twists, the turns – is not really the point of the movie at all.

The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall in 1954 who is sent to mental institution on Shutter Island, off the coast of Maine, with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the disappearance of an inmate named Rachel (Emily Mortimer). No one can figure out what happened to her, as there is no way she should have been able to escape her room, and even if she did, she still had to get by many orderlies on her way out. She has to still be on the island – there is nothing there except for the mental institution, and the only way off is a ferry. This mental institution is for the criminally insane – everyone there is a murderer of some kind or another. Rachel herself drowned her three kids, and refuses to accept reality. She still believes that she is at home, and everyone around her are delivery men and neighbors.

For the moment that they arrive on Shutter Island, there is something not quite right about what is going on. Everyone regards Daniels in a strange way – a mixture of kindness, contempt and pity is in pretty much everyone’s eyes. As he and Chuck start investigating, they keep getting stonewalled by the kindly Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), who is different from his peers in that he rejects the old way of doing things – which was essentially torture, followed by a lobotomy if that didn’t work – and the new way of giving the patients drugs. He prefers to talk to his patients, and treat them that way. Give them a sense of calm. Daniels is less sympathetic – screw their sense of calm he tells Cawley.

As with many of the movies of the era that Scorsese is referencing here, the war hangs over the entire film. It haunts Daniels memory, as we get flashbacks to his time in the war when he was among the people who liberated Dachau. And it haunts his memories of his wife (Michelle Williams), who died in a house fire. When he gets to Shutter Island, he starts to suspect the same sort of experiments are going on here, as what he fought against in the war.

Shutter Island may seem like a departure for Scorsese. He has rarely worked in the horror/thriller genre before. His previous effort, Cape Fear, while somewhat underrated, is still one of Scorsese’s lesser efforts. In that film, Scorsese had trouble melding his favorite themes of guilt and redemption to the thriller narrative. But no such problems exist in this movie. While the film has all the genre trappings of the a thriller – and Scorsese revels in them – at its heart it really is a film that touches on his favorite themes. Daniels is a man who is collapsing under the weight of the guilt he feels about his past. When he is asked if he believes in God, all he can do is smirk. Seeing what he has seen, how can he still believe in God?

I want to go into more detail about how Daniels – and DiCaprio’s remarkable performance in the role – really does fall in line with other Scorsese heroes, but I think in doing so, I would be giving too much of the plot away, and I do not want to do that. What I will say is that Shutter Island is one of the best made films of the year – and will likely remain so for all of 2010. Scorsese’s restless camera probes the grounds of Shutter Island, and corridors of the hospital. He gives the entire movie an mounting sense of doom and dread. Violence is just around the corner at every step of the movie. Scorsese does an excellent job at showing, not telling, us what is going on. He gives us visual clues throughout the movie as to what is going on, often with only the slightest movement telling us more than we think possible. He does an excellent job of getting great performances out of his cast – not just DiCaprio, who slowly unravels brilliantly – but the entire cast around him. Shutter Island has already been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. And while I do not think that this film is that good – or even among the very best films of Scorsese’s career – it is still a great film. To a certain extent, Shutter Island is Scorsese playing around in one of his favorite genres. But he has found a story that still addresses his obsessions. I would rather see Scorsese play around, than I would most directors play something completely seriously.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XXXI: The Blues: Feels Like Going Home

The Blues: Feel Like Going Home (2003) ***
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese loves music. You can tell that by watching any one of his films which contain almost wall to wall music. He has made several documentaries – The Last Waltz, No Direction Home and Shine a Light – about rock music. In 2003, he produced a documentary series about The Blues, and recruited some of the best directors in the world – Clint Eastwood, Wim Wenders, Charles Burnett, Mike Figgis etc – to direct segments of it. But Scorsese chose to direct the first part of the documentary himself. The result was The Blues: Feels Like Going Home, an interesting little documentary.

Feels Life Going Home seems to want to be an all encompassing look at the origins of blues music. Throughout the film, Scorsese looks at the earliest recordings of the blues made in the American south by Alan Lomax, and the artists who recorded them. He also looks at modern blues musicians who were inspired by the music, as well as any surviving old masters that are still around. Eventually, Scorsese will travel to Africa to see where the origins of the music all began.

The Blues: Feels Like Going Home is an interesting, if not altogether involving documentary. I cannot say that I was bored by the movie, because I wasn’t. The music in the film is great and inspiring (not just to me but also to Scorsese, as we hear where he got that music he used throughout Gangs of New York played live in this movie). The musicians themselves are an interesting cast of characters, and their stories are never less than fascinating. Some of these old timers are people whose grandparents were slaves, where playing music like this would get them into trouble, yet somehow the music survived all the trials and tribulations and generations to make it all the way to the present day.

And yet, I was never really involved in the movie either. Perhaps it’s because I am not a big fan of the Blues. In Scorsese’s other documentaries about music, I was either a fan of the artists in question, or became a fan of them through the movie. Because of the rather episodic nature of this documentary however, that never really happened. I enjoyed the music, without ever really being swept in it. I was not a fan of the blues before this documentary, and I’m not one after it either. While I enjoyed the movie, it does not exactly make me want to go out and rent the rest of this long series. It’s a fine documentary, and for people who love the blues, they will probably love it. For me though, it was an interesting distraction.

The FIlms of Martin Scorsese Part XXX: Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York (2002) ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Jay Cocks & Steven Zallian & Kenneth Lonergan.
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio (Amsterdam Vallon), Daniel Day-Lewis (Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting), Cameron Diaz (Jenny Everdeane), Jim Broadbent (William 'Boss' Tweed), John C. Reilly (Happy Jack Mulraney), Henry Thomas (Johnny Sirocco), Liam Neeson ('Priest' Vallon), Brendan Gleeson (Walter 'Monk' McGinn), Gary Lewis (McGloin), Stephen Graham (Shang), Eddie Marsan (Killoran).

When Gangs of New York opened in December 2002, I went to see it at least four times in the theaters – more times than I believe I’ve seen any other movie in its first run. Here was one of those grand old Hollywood epics that they had stopped making before I was even born. There was not a scene in the film that didn’t bursting with ambition, where the scope of the film didn’t seem to be huge. I heard some critics complain that the film was flawed, but I ignored them. I loved every inch of Gangs of New York. Now, returning to the film several years later, I find that it is easier to see the flaws in the film then it was at the time. Perhaps shrunken down to a television screen, they seem more glaring. But I hardly care. I still love every inch of Gangs of New York. Flaws and all, the film is a masterpiece.

The film opens in New York in the 1840s. The Dead Rabbits, a gang of Irish immigrants, are preparing to go to battle with The Natives, a gang of American born men who want to drive the immigrants, who are defiling their homeland, out. Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) leads the Dead Rabbits, and in the final moments before the battle, he tries to teach his young son Amsterdam valuable life lessons. Then the group sets off, through a maze of underground passages, quickly gathering men, before bursting out onto the square where the battle will take place. This is when we get our first look at Bill “The Butcher” Cutting, leader of the Natives. His face is grotesque, with one glass eye, and huge mustache, as he yells ugly epitaphs at his rivals. What follows is one of the bloodiest battles in cinematic history. Men are beaten, stabbed and hacked to death, as the snow beneath their feet slowly turns red with all the blood. Cutting kills Vallon, and thus has power know over the Five Points, the most crime infested area of New York. It will be 16 years before anyone challenges Bill the Butcher again.

That is when Amsterdam (now played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is finally released from the orphanage he was raised in after the death of his father, and returns to the Five Points. His rough upbringing has trained him well, and he soon falls in with a small gang of thieves. But if you want to operate in the Five Points, you have to ensure that you give Bill a piece of everything that you make. It isn’t long before Bill becomes enamored with this young kid, who is smart and ambitious, and draws him under his wing. Amsterdam, who came with the express purpose of killing Bill, and so was simply playing a part to get close to him (obviously never revealing his real identity) has mixed feelings. He even kind of grows to like Bill, and surely grows to like the money he makes working for him. But as always, the truth is bound to come out, and then all hell will break loose.

The focus of the movie remains on Bill and Amsterdam throughout, but there are other characters that swirl around them. Jenny (Cameron Diaz), a pickpocket who used to be Bill’s, and now maybe Amsterdam’s, if only he doesn’t let his pride get in the way. Boss Tweed (a delightful Jim Broadbent, playing broad amazingly well), a local politician for Tammany Hall, who shifts alliances with the breeze. Monk (Brendan Gleeson), a former Dead Rabbit now turned barber, who exchanges weird glances with Bill and Amsterdam. Constable Mulraney (John C. Reilly), another former Dead Rabbit, now a corrupt cop who gets away with what he does only because Bill allows him to. And McGloin (Gary Lewis), yet another former Dead Rabbit, who has sold out even more and is now one of Bill’s right hand men. These characters and more fill out Scorsese’s vast tapestry, and make the film come alive.

The filmmaking on display in the film is incredible. Shot entirely in the legendary Cinecitta Studio in Rome – where everything from La Dolce Vita to Ben-Hur was shot – it is to the films credit that it never feels like it’s on a soundstage. The entire Five Points Area of New York has been recreated, and makes up one of the distinctive environments in cinema history. The dirt, the grim, the blood, the wooden buildings, everything in the film is just about pitch perfect. Michael Ballhaus makes tremendous use of the location in his cinematography – the camera never stops moving, sweeping around often in 360 degrees in one shot, as it probes the dark corners of the area. There are a number of terrific, memorable images – Diaz’s introduction in slow motion through a dirty window (Scorsese loves to introduce his female characters in slow motion, and if he had to make Diaz a redhead instead of his preferred blonde, the effect is the same), Bill the Butcher throwing knives at Jenny, or the scene when Amsterdam awakes to find Bill sitting over his bed, an American flag draped over his soldiers. This doesn’t even mention the battles that open and close the film, which are visually stunning, and unlike so many modern action sequences, are not over edited to death. The whole film is a visual knockout.

But standing over every other element in the film is Daniel Day-Lewis’ towering performance as Bill the Butcher – a performance that would still be the best of the decade had Day-Lewis not topped it himself in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Bill the Butcher is one of the most memorable screen villains in history, and although Day-Lewis plays the character as larger than life most of the time, its to his credit that will still always believe his character would act like this. When the rare quiet moment comes – like when he teaches DiCaprio what the difference between a kill and a wound is using the carcass of a pig, or the aforementioned scene when he is draped in the American flag – Day-Lewis hits just the right notes. He is the villain of the film, but he towers over its hero, and everyone else in the film. When you walk away from the film, he is element you most remember.

Now, let’s get back to the films flaws, as they did stick out to me more this time then at any time previous to this. While I think DiCaprio and Diaz worked well together (I love this exchange for example: DiCaprio “Is there anyone is New York you haven’t fucked?” , Diaz “Yeah, you”) the romance still does feel a little tacked on, and perhaps unnecessary, accept for the fact that without it, the film would have no female characters at all. Also, there supposedly Irish accents come and go a little too often – sometimes they are both spot on, sometimes they sound no different than they normally do. Scorsese is also never quite able to fully integrate the subplots involving the people from “Uptown”, who look at the Five Points with a mixture of pity, fascinating and disgust. The same goes for the Draft Riots, which seem to come along a little too abruptly at the films climax. But more glaring, at least to me, than all of them is Amsterdam’s religious conversion which is never fully explained. He is a Catholic from beginning to end in the film, yet when he is given a bible when he leaves the orphanage, he dramatically throws it over the side of a bridge. Later, he will tell a Priest to “Go to Hell” when he asks him to attend services. But by the end of the film, he seems to have gone back to being a practicing Catholic, praying to Michael the Archangel, and the conversion back into the fold is never really explained. For Scorsese, for whom his own Catholicism has always played a role in his films, this seems odd.

And yet, while I acknowledge that Gangs of New York is a flawed film, I also have to admit that I don’t care. I love it now just as much as I did then. Who is interested in cinematic perfection anyway? Look at many of those old school Hollywood epics, and you find just as many, if not more, flaws than you will in Gangs of New York. And besides, when Gangs of New York works – and I would say that roughly 95% of the movie does – it is better than practically anything else out there. This is filmmaking at its most daring, most exciting, most ambitious. So if Scorsese was not quite able to pull off the film he had in his head for 30 years (he wanted to make the film every since 1978), we should be glad that he was able to make this film. Flaws and all, Gangs of New York is a masterpiece.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XXIV: The Neighborhood and My Life, My Card: Robert DeNiro

The Neighborhood (2001) ***
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.

My Life My Card: Robert DeNiro (2004) ***
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.

These two short films, one a segment for the Concert for New York, and one an ad for American Express run seven minutes in total, and yet express Scorsese’s deep love for the City of New York beautifully. They act as a reminder that sometimes, the short form can be powerful, and even TV commercials can have a deeper meaning.

The Neighborhood is a six minute piece that Scorsese did for the Concert for New York in 2001 after the attacks of 9/11. In it, Scorsese returns to Elizabeth Street in Lower Manhattan, the street he grew up on, and in a very brief amount of time traces the progression of the neighborhood – both what came before him, during his time there, and afterwards. His neighborhood has changed – what was once almost all Italian families are now almost all Chinese families. But the progression is natural. Before the Italians moved in, it was an Irish neighborhood.

While who lives there may have changed, there are some things that never do. When Scorsese was a kid, he wondered why the Cathedral in the neighborhood was named after St. Patrick, since it was an Italian neighborhood, not realizing the Irish were there before them. Now, some kids ask a local Italian cheese merchant, why he set up shop in a Chinese neighborhood, not realizing the store has been there for 75 years. Kids are never able to see the area they grow up as a changing environment.

Scorsese walks the streets of the old neighborhood, and still finds some people he knew growing up. They are all hugs and smiles – they adore his young daughter who he has brought with them, and it’s like he never left. One of the most quietly profound statements Scorsese says in the film is about how people’s perceptions of themselves change through the generations. His grandparents, who were born and raised is Sicily, considered themselves Italian, even though they spent many more years in America than in Italy. His parents considered themselves Italian-American. He considers himself American-Italian (switching the emphasis to the more important, dominant identity), and he suspects his kids will simply consider themselves American.

To Scorsese, New York represents all that is great about America. The America who flung their doors open to immigrants, who came here and built a better life for themselves, and for their children. New York is America, and America is New York.

In a strange way, Scorsese’s ad for American Express, featuring Robert DeNiro both in the commercial and narrating, does exactly what The Neighborhood does, but almost entirely through images and in only a minute. Juxtaposing images of New York’s past and present, together with DeNiro’s simple narration; the film is a hauntingly beautiful little piece that also expresses love for New York. In a minute, it becomes clear that the city means everything to Robert DeNiro – everything he cares about and loves is right here in this city. Although this is an ad, like so many other of American Express ads, it is one whose emphasis is not on the product, but on the city. It’s one of the best TV spots you will probably ever see.

Note: I’m doing these two short “films” together, even though it means breaking chronology slightly, because neither are really short films unto themselves. The Neighborhood was a segment that Scorsese did for The Concert for New York in 2001, and My Life, My Card was an American Express ad Scorsese did in 2004 for his friend Robert DeNiro, who was putting on the Tribecca Film Festival, in part to try and revive the city after 9/11. They are connected in that way, so I put them together. Also, neither is really worth a post by themselves. I did not include the several ads Scorsese has done for American Express since then, because I am not sure he actually directed them. But the one where he picks up his photos at the drugstore, and rants and raves about the framing is hilarious, as are his spots with Tina Fey, where she thinks he is going to offer her a role, but he wants to sell her a timeshare. There is also a great ad with Scorsese by the way, for a phone company where a little boy is saying goodnight to his father over the phone because he’s away on a business trip, and Scorsese barges in because he doesn’t believe the boys performance. All of them are great, but I left them out of this series for obvious reasons.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XXVIII: Bringing Out the Dead

Bringing Out the Dead (1999) ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Paul Schrader based on the novel by Joe Connelly.
Starring: Nicolas Cage (Frank Pierce), Patricia Arquette (Mary Burke), John Goodman (Larry), Ving Rhames (Marcus), Tom Sizemore (Tom Wolls), Marc Anthony (Noel), Mary Beth Hurt (Nurse Constance), Cliff Curtis (Cy Coates), Nestor Serrano (Dr. Hazmat), Aida Turturro (Nurse Crupp).

Nicolas Cage has two of the best eyes I have ever seen on an actor. In Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, there are numerous close-ups on Cage eyes, and even when there’s not, he has a haunted look in them. He is a paramedic who cruises the streets of New York at night, seeing the worst the city has to offer on a daily basis, much like Travis Bickle, the “hero” of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. But unlike Bickle, Cage’s Frank Pierce does not see human filth that he must purge the streets of, but victims and ghosts. People who need him to either save their lives, or at least bear witness to their deaths. He says at one point that he is a “grief mop”, and that’s a pretty good description.

The film follows Pierce over a three day period. Pierce has long since burnt out, and every day he hopes that by showing up late for work that his boss will fire him. When the Captain tells Pierce he has been told to fire him, Pierce assures him that it’s okay. But they need him. They are understaffed. Why doesn’t Pierce just not show up at all? He couldn’t do that.

The three nightshifts represent Pierce go through hell, each day getting a little worse than the one before it. His normal partner is Larry (John Goodman), who he works with on the first day. Larry is overweight, and has dreams of moving up the ladder, and distracts himself from the horror that he sees by concentrating on his next meal. Nothing seems to faze Larry. Everything affects Pierce. Their first call brings them to the Burkes, where the elderly patriarch has suffered a heart attack. He has been without air for nearly 10 minutes, but miraculously they bring him back around. But he’s going to be a vegetable for the rest of his short life. Pierce bonds with Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), his daughter. A lesser movie would have them fall in love, or at least into bed, but this movie doesn’t really do that. These two people are both too wounded to do that. But Pierce will return time and again to Mary over the three days, trying his best to help her through the tough time, although since he cannot get himself through, what good is he really?

During the second night, Pierce is teamed up with Marcus (Ving Rhames), a veteran who isn’t supposed to work too often. He tells Pierce he’s been where he’s at now, but then the Lord Jesus spoke to him, and now he’s okay. Some people live, some people die, and it’s all God’s will. There is a scene resembling the resurrection of Lazarus when Pierce and Marcus go to a nightclub, and find a kid who is ODing on heroin, and Marcus has his friends gather in a circle and pray to God, as Pierce gives the kid the drug that will pull him out of it. Later they will be called to an apartment of two “virgins”, although the girl is pregnant and giving birth – and breach birth at that – to twins. Each paramedic takes one of the babies – guess which one doesn’t make it?

The third day Pierce is teamed up with his old partner Tom (Tom Sizemore), who was just too crazy for Pierce to stay with. Tom takes the crazy people on the street, all the scum and vermin he sees around him, as a personal insult to him and his job. His latest mission is to try and get Noel (Marc Anthony), a man with some obvious mental problems, because he is a drain on society, and every night they have to pick him up and bring him to the hospital, just so he can run away before anything can be done to help him.

The film is full of Catholic imagery and symbolism, starting with the three day story arc which resembles the three days before Christ’s resurrection. The haunting final shot of the movie certainly brings this into sharp focus (do you think it’s a coincidence that he ends up in the arms of a woman named Mary with sunlight streaming in on him? I don’t.). There is also a smooth talking, calm drug dealer (Cliff Curtis), who offers Frank a stay at his oasis, and who through saving his life, Frank may in fact be saving his own. This is counterbalanced in a scene where Frank lets Mr. Burke die, and yet the two scenes show Pierce at his most merciful. Saving one man’s life, and ending another’s suffering. Wisely Scorsese, and writer Paul Schrader, downplay some of the more obvious symbolic choices made in Joe Connelly’s novel, on which the film is based, because it would have been too much on screen. Here, everything is obvious, but in a subtle way.

The filmmaking is electrifying. Scorsese shoots almost the entire film at night, and Robert Richardson’s brilliant cinematography and Thelma Schoonmaker’s equally wonderful editing brings to mind Scorsese’s own After Hours. Another thing that connects the two movies is the sense of surrealism that permeates the two films. These films are not meant to be realistic, but rather to evoke the main characters state of mind during the bizarre proceedings.

All the performances in the film are great, but it is Nicolas Cage who anchors the movie. I mentioned his eyes before, and they are the key to the movie. Filled with a sadness throughout most of the movie, Cage’s eyes go crazy on that last night when he’s out with his crazy old partner again, before returning to a kind of calmness by the end of the movie. Sure, there are moments when Cage goes over the top in the movie, but they are all necessary. Sometimes events are so bizarre, you have to go that far over the top to deal with them. Cage knows what every scene in the film needs, and in one of his best performances ever, he provides that.

Out of all of Martin Scorsese’s films, I think Bringing Out the Dead is the most in need of a rediscovery. All of his other films, even the ones that were reviled or dismissed upon their initial release, have either gathered the group of supporters they deserve, or else remain dismissed for a reason. But Bringing Out the Dead, which was greeted with little enthusiasm either by critics or audiences, and in the decade since, the film hasn’t seemed to grow in reputation. I loved the film then, and watching it again, I loved it even more this time around. It is perhaps the most hopeful of Scorsese’s films in that Pierce doesn’t need to violently release his pent up feelings of hostility in order to cure himself, like Bickle, LaMotta or even Pupkin did in earlier films. Pierce is a man who is driven to the breaking point because he cannot help enough. He cannot save enough lives, and it’s starting to wear on him. He wants to save them all, but he’s at a point where he’ll settle for one. Anyone. By the end of the film, I think Pierce has found some semblance of peace. I hope for his sake, it lasts.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XXVII: My Voyage to Italy

My Voyage to Italy (1999) ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Raffaele Donato, Kent Jones & Martin Scorsese.

Four years after Martin Scorsese took us on a journey through American films, in the excellent documentary A Personal Journey Through American Movies with Martin Scorsese, he decided to do the same thing with Italian films in My Voyage to Italy. The film is a four hour documentary about the Italian films that Scorsese watched growing up that influenced his life and career as much as the American films he saw. Growing up Italian in New York, he saw many of these films on TV the first time, with his friends and family – many of whom were born in Italy – and the films left a lasting impact on the young man who would become American’s finest filmmaker.

The key difference between A Personal Journey and My Voyage to Italy, is that the later is more narrowly defined, concentrating on fewer films and filmmakers, but making up for it by going into much greater detail about the films under discussion. While A Personal Journey tried to give you a little taste of all the different genres and filmmakers in America’s studio age, My Voyage to Italy concentrates on just five filmmakers – Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. And while not even all of their films are covered (strangely, Scorsese doesn’t even mention Visconti’s The Leopard at all), the films he does choose to into detail about are masterworks, and Scorsese brings them to life, whether or not you’ve seen the films in question.

Scorsese starts his journey with Rossellini, particularly concentrating on his post war Trilogy, Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero, before also covering The Miracle, The Flowers of St. Francis, Stromboli, Europa ’51 and Journey to Italy. Scorsese covers Rossellini’s journey from one of the fathers of neo-realism, through his bigger movies with Ingrid Bergman, who would later become his wife. He concentrates on the sacrifice evident in his post-war trilogy, and about how each film moved further away from God and faith – culminating in the end of Germany Year Zero, where it seems like all faith has been lost. Rossellini was hardly an atheist director however, as proven in his next two films. In The Miracle, we initially think that he is going further into the absence of faith, as the one religious person in the movie is portrayed as so dimwitted that she believes a drifter who gets her so drunk that she passes out so he can rape her is St. Peter. When she wakes up and discovers she is pregnant, she believes she is carrying the return of Jesus, only to be mocked by everyone around her. Yet, the movie does indeed end in a miracle – the miracle of life when her baby is born. The Flowers of St. Francis is about also about faith, in a simple yet profound way. When Rossellini started to make movies with Ingrid Bergman, he was decried by his critics, who thought he had sold out, but the films are all great in their own way – and were really a continuation of what he had done before, culminating with the awesome power of Journey to Italy, a simple film about a couple who cannot stand each other.

From Rossellini, Scorsese moves onto Vittorio DeSica, concentrating on his three most famous films – Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D., and also covering Golden Age in Naples. DeSica started out as an actor – an Italian Cary Grant, full of suave charm, but as the war was coming to an end, he decided he wanted to director, and he did a wonderful job at capturing the reality of the working class in his films. Shoeshine was a simple story of young boys who go through hell. The Bicycle Thief is even more simple – a man who needs his bike to do his job gets it stolen, and goes searching for it. But for Scorsese, and me, DeSica’s best film was Umberto D., the emotional story about an old man and his dog Flag, which has a great emotional power to it. Although DeSica moved on to make a lot of comedies in his later career, he always maintained his great filmmaking ability.

Next up is Luchino Visconti, who was different from both Rossellini and DeSica in a number of important ways. First of all, Visconti was an Italian aristocrat, who was also a communist, so his films concentrated on the hollowness of upper society. They were also heavily stylized, and pretty far away from the neo-realism on display in the films of Rossellini and DeSica, with the notable exception of La Terra Trema, one of the key neo realist films of all time. While Scorsese covers La Terra Trema along with Visconti’s brilliant debut film, Ossessione, his saves his most in depth review of Visconti’s work for Senso, Visconti operatic epic. This is one of the few films he covers in depth that I have never seen – but I will now try and track it down.

Although Scorsese covered Fellini next, he also circles back and ends with him, so I will as well, and instead move on Antonioni. This is the shortest segment, as Scorsese only concentrates on two of his films – L’Aventurra and Eclipse – but his love of the two films is certainly profound. In L’Aventurra, Scorsese concentrates on the emptiness of the film – how the people do not care about anything, and their lives are hollow. Antonioni took this even further with Eclipse, ending his film with a seven minute segment of shots of empty places as they are now missing the two main characters who have gone their own ways. The emptiness of the films is haunting.

Finally, Scorsese digs into Fellini, and you can tell that Fellini is his favorite. He concentrates most of his analysis of I Vetteloni, a film that inspired Scorsese in Mean Streets, La Dolce Vita, which like L’Aventurra thought that life was hollow, but unlike it, still thought it mattered. Poor Marcello the celebrity reporter who tries to hold himself above the people he writes about, although he is dragged down into the muck with the rest of them by the end. Finally, Scorsese spends a lot of time on 8 ½, Fellini’s masterpiece about a director in search of his muse. Scorsese’s love of the film is contagious, and makes me want to go out and see it again.

And that in effect is what My Voyage to Italy is about. Scorsese’s love of Italian cinema, especially the work of these five masters, and Scorsese’s desire for others to watch these same films. No one is this more evident than in the film’s final scene when Scorsese says that he knows that film history, especially foreign film history, can seem like homework to budding film buffs, but how these films are worth watching, because the effected him, and they could affect you as well. I have seen most of the films he talks about, and yet I want to go back and watch them again. In Scorsese’s words, at one point it seemed like nearly every week, someone, somewhere in the world was breaking boundaries. Now, it’s become so few and far between, we don’t even notice anymore. That’s sad, and while Scorsese may be tilting at windmills in his desire to get people to watch these films, I will glad tilt around alongside him