The Irishman: Ok, Boomer
“Would you like to be part of this history?”
The question is directed toward meat truck driver turned mob triggerman (so not really that far off), Frank Sheeran, played by a de-aged, present aged, and finally, hyper aged Robert De Niro. All three are very very good. On the giving end of the question is Al Pacino’s rendition of Jimmy Hoffa, the famed then quickly textbooked president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). What that is, and how that works, I’m still not entirely sure, but the film does a splendid job of selling me on thinking that I know exactly what they do (at least for the duration of my watch).
Such a grandiose proposal, delivered so gaudily by Hoffa, serves as a carat (and yes, I mean carat) on a stick to Sheehan’s everyman— an offer he can’t refuse, put in layman’s, as well as mobster’s, terms. It is another tantalizing instance of preying on, not the weak, not the poor, but the directionless. And perhaps those without direction are the most dangerous, the most susceptible to persuasion, to corruption. After all, Sheeran’s already dipped his toes in the red rivers of organized crime, courtesy of Russell Bufalino, the unnamed mob’s head hunter (both in the corporate and literal sense), brought to you by an out of hiatus Joe Pesci, whose little man with a big mouth schtick is replaced with a terrifying subtlety behind thick coke bottle lenses.
And of course, Sheeran responds with a dutiful “Yes, whatever you need” to Hoffa’s temptation. The Irishman has kicked into gear. Well, maybe nudged ever so gentley into motion, slightly over the speed limit, using turn signals to sideswipe other drivers on the road. This is not standard Scorsese gangster fare. All the elements are there, the power, the money, the infamy, but they have been diluted both in the quietness of its’ actors’ performances, and the flashback structure of the movie. Similarly to other films in the “old man reminisces” genre, Amadeus, Big Fish, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, to name a few, we are treated to a lifetime’s worth of anecdotes from a Frank Sheeran who is nearing death. The difference between these ramblings, and the ramblings of other deathbed characters is that the life that plays out on screen is devoid of joy, of pain, of emotion, of any sense of remorse or struggle. As the three and a half hour run time creeps by, it dawns on us that the lavishness, the bombastics, the thrill that tends to accompany a boy’s club mob movie, is simply not there. And if there was any at all, Sheeran can’t recall. On screen we witness a life devoid of meaning.
Contrary to the film’s subject matter, the film resembles more Silence than Goodfellas, more Last Temptation of Christ than Casino. It a deeply theological and spiritual film, where God has been replaced with a gun, an extension of man. Whether not a film this bleak is a story that someone wants to watch unfold for three and a half hours seems to be dependent of one’s worldview. It is an approach that is obvious at worst, and enlightening at best. If subscribed to the notion that the world is already less than ideal, the cold message that the film serves is less profound than if one sees the world through a more romantic, optimist lens. With The Irishman, we are not witnessing a new idea. We are witnessing and idea that exists, neglected in a vault; some people’s lives are meaningless. It’s a frigid truth that Scorsese encapsulates in his film, and when you connect it to his filmography consisting of shoot-outs, mob bosses, and organized crime, one has to wonder whether its message reflects at all on the film’s creator.
Now at age 76, with no digital enhancements to make him any younger, it feels as if Martin Scorsese is placing the staples of his filmography under a microscope. Examining his creations, characters that are near and dear to his work. The tough guys, the mob bosses, the hired guns— what happens when those guys, the wise crackers, the silent but deadlies, come face to face with their own mortality? What would they experience? What would they feel? At the end of The Irishman, his experiment of human condition, Marty gets his answer. Other than the promise of being part of a history, even a hollow one, they feel nothing.