"Do one more big vote!"
On November 27, Martin Scorsese officially launched Netflix with his nearly decade-long gangster movie "The Irishman" and declared, "Today, you are all covered by me." ”
Just the day before, Time magazine announced the list of the top ten films of 2019, and "The Irishman" ranked second. In the character poster released by Netflix, director Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel, five "old cannons" who participated in the friendship sat together, and the old-school elegance revealed a majesty, as if waiting for everyone to worship.
From this, you can get a sense of what kind of movie "The Irishman" will be.
Not surprisingly, "The Irishman" came down in its entirety, the camera was realistic, the scene was cold, the veins were warm and buried with ugly betrayals, and the blood was covered with iron morality. The whole movie-watching process makes people dare not look at it directly but can't look away, and finally leave a trace of melancholy.
This is also the biggest difference between the first two works of "The Irishman" and Martin's "Gangster Trilogy". In addition to the centuries-long story volume, the delicate and complex character relationships and the extremely neat and exquisite artistic expression, "The Irishman" is more like a sincere farewell to Martin's "gangster era". Just as Clint Eastwood paid homage to the Western with Unforgivable, he also ended his "journey to the west."
In addition, the 210-minute length of "The Irishman" has raised its viewing threshold by several notches. However, it is precisely because of the length that this "new bottle" can hold several "old wines", can achieve this melancholy gangster epic, and can let people pilgrimage to its glory after crossing the mountains.
Thanks to Netflix, the audience can watch and savor the movie repeatedly on streaming. Of course, you could have been, as Martin put it, "It would be better to spend an evening or an afternoon, when you wouldn't be answering the phone or being busy." ”
<h1>1. him again</h1>
In the Douban score, Martin's highest-rated and most highly reviewed work in the past two decades is "Forbidden Island"; on IMDb, "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Infernal Affairs" have become the audience's favorites. Audiences are always enthusiastic about works that have a full entertainment element and are closer to commercial genre films.
But Martin scoffed at them, as he said the other day when he explained to the world what cinema is. This refusal to compromise with mainstream aesthetics has accompanied Martin through more than half a century of his artistic career.
50 years ago, Martin was a stunned young man who had just come out of the academy. A graduate of the Film Department at New York University, he has been baptized by new ideas such as Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and Japanese New Cinema. Therefore, he is also bent on shooting his own style.
However, he has returned from early works such as "Who Is Knocking on My Door" and "Shaving", and his self-confidence has been hit. In desperation, Martin could only make a concerted effort to shoot "Cold-Blooded Thunderbolt Fire" and "Once the Sea was Shipwrecked as Water". On the other hand, the newcomers who debuted with him have already achieved fame at this time:
Francis Coppola attracted attention with "General Patton" and made a name for himself with the "Godfather" series; Steven Spielberg broke the box office record of that year with "Jaws" and became the new favorite of major commercial films; George Lucas pioneered the "Star Wars" series, which became the vane of American cinema to the era of special effects.
I remember that in the movie "Old Cannon", the reason why the sixth master dared to challenge the young rich second generation was because of the morality in his heart, and the second was the brothers who had shared his many years of suffering. Fortunately, Martin also has such a group of old guys who can understand and accompany him.
Robert De Niro, Martin's most famous confidant. Under the introduction of their mutual friend, director Parma, these two young people who are less than thirty years old "tie the knot" and lay down the country with a "poor street and dark alley".
In the film, the story is set in the violent New York "Little Italy", where Martin and De Niro grew up together. De Niro's gangster image in the film set the stage for his future performances, and Martin let go for the first time, setting the tone of the "Mars" gangster film with chaotic times, dirty environments, and savage youth.
At this point, de Niro's cooperation with Martin has hardly been lost. "Taxi Driver", "King of Comedy", "Angry Bull", etc., have become masterpieces in film history. An interesting fact is that De Niro seems to have a better set of scripts than director Martin, and he always finds treasure by chance and then goes to Martin to discuss the next feasibility.
So is "Raging Bull," so is "The King of Comedy," and this time it's the same with "The Irishman."
Joe Percy, another member of the "Mars Iron Triangle". Due to her short stature, Percy's early acting career was bumpy, and he managed to get a role in 1976's "Death Collector", which resulted in the film's dismal box office once again making him despair of his stardom.
It's hard to imagine how this now-imposing big guy felt after playing one of the stupid thieves in "Little Devil Is Home". Later, in "Good Guys," the line "Do you think I'm funny?" "Not only is It a highlight of Pesci's acting career, but it's also more like a portrayal of him in reality."
With the help of Martin and De Niro, Pesci had plenty of room to play in Raging Bull. In the "Top Ten Acting Moments in Film History" selected by YouTube, the first place is the bridge between De Niro and Pesci in the film, which makes the film and himself more legendary.
Al Pacino, a well-known "gangster" professional. Unexpectedly, "The Irishman" was actually his first collaboration with Martin. Perhaps because Pacino was so young that he established himself early with gangster films such as the "Godfather" series and "Scarface", Martin was still struggling with his personal style.
However, Pacino was also one of the few people who appreciated Martin's talent early on. Although the two had never cooperated before, they had long known and admired each other.
For The Irishman, Martin had finalized the cast of union president Jimmy Hoffa as early as the project was inception — only Al Pacino. In The Godfather 2, Pacino superbly portrays a calm and introverted Michael Corleone. In addition to being an authentic gangster, Martin also liked Pacino's irritability and obedience in "Smelling Women" and "The Thread of Fire", which has too many similarities with Jimmy Hoffa.
Some people have compared De Niro and Percy to Martin's "Crouching Dragon Phoenix", and one person can get the world. Today, Martin relies on "The Irishman" to collect "Tsukasa Tiger". This time, how can it be unstable?
We can even clearly imagine how Martin declared war on commercial films and launched a rally order at a time when art films were not friendly to art films: "Brothers, let's do the big tickets again!" ”
"Let them see, we're still alive!"
<h1>2, go back to the jianghu</h1>
The significance of "The Irishman" to Martin is special, and the impact on the aesthetics of the film in 2019 is undoubtedly huge. As a product of the "art of directing", in addition to the gimmicks of "recreating the gangster epic" and "two generations of 'godfathers' gathered together", "The Irishman" is also full of Martin's examination and emotion of his own past, which makes the temperament of the film more distinctive.
First of all, "The Irishman" has a Martinish "exodus".
The film is based on Charles Brandt's 2003 gangster semi-autobiographical novel "I Heard You've Brushed the House", and the protagonist, Frank Sheran, is not only a real person in history, but also a well-known "whitewasher" in the mafia.
What is a "whitewasher"? It refers to the fact that during the killer's murder, blood splashed all over the wall, as if the house had been repainted. From this interpretation, it can be understood that "The Irishman" is indispensable to all kinds of blood and killing.
In the film, Robert De Niro plays Frank, a veteran who fought in World War II and is tasked with secretly handling prisoners of war. The film does not shy away from showing Frank's ruthlessness at work. "It's really unbelievable, I never understood how they could keep digging... Their own graves. Maybe they thought that as long as they did things obediently, the people with guns would not kill them. ”
The film is interspersed with three timelines, presenting the career trajectory of the Irish killer from different stages of Frank's life. After inadvertently meeting gangster Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci), Frank finds the thrill of his old days of killing, and thus becomes the most efficient and composed killer in the gang, nicknamed "The Irishman".
As a professional killer, the assassination scene is naturally a topic that cannot be avoided, especially under Martin's lens, where every shot of the "Irishman" is so uncomfortable. In addition to the bloody scenes, Martin's depiction of "cold blood" is full of weight:
Frank greeted the target of the assassination one second without incident, and the next second he shot out neatly. Ten steps to kill a person, thousands of miles do not stay, eternally frozen only the face of the dead bullet pierced by the bullet and the frightened eyes.
During the half century of "Irishman" gangsterism, Martin did not forget to combine the story with the major events in American society. From the "barbershop shooting case" that shocked the United States, to the "Bay of Pigs Incident" that made the United States lose face, to the well-known "Kennedy Assassination" and Nixon's "Watergate Incident", "The Irishman" presented the turbulent social situation in the United States at that time, and made the gangsters who acted behind the scenes in the film have a legendary color.
However, The Irishman is also "introverted".
The film will not let Kennedy, Nixon and other well-known historical figures come to the front of the stage for ridicule, but with a large number of news materials and dialogue to explain. This can not only give the audience a sense of realism in life, but also through various major events, the panic of ordinary people, the secrecy of gangsters, the raising of the flag and the lowering of the flag to half-mast and other details are portrayed, which invisibly expands the film pattern.
Even when depicting the assassination of one of the founders of the mafia, Anastasia, in a barbershop, the film only focuses on a cluster of flowers outside the barbershop, recreating the tragic scene through gunshots and screams, and incidentally satirizing the seemingly beautiful and splendid social appearance, which is actually full of violence and panic.
There's also an interesting detail in the film: From the first time he committed murder, Frank would throw the murder weapon into a river. As the number of killings increases, the film does not repeat the whole process of murder, but only records every scene of Frank's "throwing gun", which is even more chilling.
The bottom of the river buried by firearms
Martin explained in the interview, "When the killing happened, we didn't do any spectacular angles or movements. The camera moves as he approaches a person, maybe he kills someone, maybe moves back again. Sometimes the camera just stands still, sometimes even extends to the car. All the cars, we showed the perfect silhouette. Shoot in a smart, simple, organized way. ”
In addition to "some convergence" in narrative techniques, Martin's portrayal of the characters in the film is also "anti-genre convention". For example, when introducing Russell to the character, the audience can see an old man with a kind face and a gentle tone directing his men to get busy, but what he clearly says is "kill him".
And when Frank, on behalf of the Mafia, gives an ultimatum to his long-time friend Jimmy Hoffa, his eyes are full of reluctance, sympathy and pity. He hoped that his friend would turn back to the shore, but frank did not say a word of digression except for a "please".
Until the end, the dying Frank will learn russell to go to church to repent, and will also find his daughter to explain why he went astray. In Frank's eyes, those days of licking blood on the tip of the knife were his golden age. Now, he could only tremble and choose his own grave alone in the cemetery.
Watching him rise up the Zhu Lou, watching him entertain guests, watching him collapse the building.
Fifty years of rise and fall are enough.
The last 30 minutes of the film are no longer as bloody as the first three hours. A generation of tyrants have passed away, and the film only stingily gives a few statements. But it is these dialogues that make the end of "The Irishman" known as "the saddest movie ending of 2019".
"Do you know Jimmy Hoffa?" Frank asked his nurse.
"I don't know, I've never heard of it."
"You don't even know Jimmy Hoffa, he was the Elvis Presley of our time."
There are two kinds of human death, one is clinical death, and the other is forgotten by the world. At this moment, Frank is like a microcosm of Martin's "underworld" career, ending in loneliness and wandering.
In the final scene of the film, Frank asks the priest to leave a slit before going out, as if Martin's last souvenir of his golden age.
"Don't close the door, let me see you one more time, one last time."
After all, Martin is 77 years old.
The Irishman is not only the 26th film in his long directorial career, but also the most difficult for him to produce. In the nearly ten years from the establishment of the project to the present, Martin has encountered various budget overruns and funding ruptures, so that the film that was originally scheduled to be released last year even missed a number of authoritative events in the industry, but instead achieved the grand event of this year's New York Film Festival as the opening film.
At the beginning of the project, the Irishman's budget of 125 million made Paramount, who had a close relationship with Martin, frown. After Netflix took over the film, it generously gave $160 million, and even in the end, the total cost reached 200 million, and Netflix also supported it.
Thanks to this, the audience can appreciate the old guns' faces when they are 80, 40, or even in their 20s through the "anti-aging technology" given by Industrial Light and Magic (the special effects company of "The Irishman"). "I think my career is expected to be extended for another 30 years." De Niro said this when he saw a demo of the film.
In addition to the financial and technical issues, Martin also talked about the reasons for choosing Netflix, "I got some benefits from the Netflix platform. If I feel like I can add something to the film, no one here will interject and say, 'This part is going to be cut out for 15 minutes', and that's my life..."
In addition, just as last year's grand-winning film "Roma" chose Netflix, the length of "The Irishman" will undoubtedly bring difficulties to its distribution in traditional theaters. Martin said, "It's always been a thorny issue and it's a war. But we're still wondering, what would happen if we took a risk? ”
In 2019, the year of film controversy, the emergence of "The Irishman" undoubtedly has a summative significance. The dispute between streaming and traditional theaters no longer exists here, and without streaming, this epic gangster film does not know which year it will be difficult to give birth to.
And what is the art of cinema that Martin has always emphasized? After writing a response to the Marvel film controversy", Martin justified the art of cinema with the visual charm of The Irishman, "Film is about the truth — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual; it's about people — human complexity and their contradictions."
Sure enough, Martin Scorsese is still the most emotional stubborn old man in the film industry, and only he can end the "gangster era" with a work that is full of anger.
-END-
Author 丨 Ren Shi
Edited by 丨 月浦
(Some of the information and pictures come from the Internet)