REGRETS, THEY HAVE A FEW Yes, you’ve seen Martin Scorsese’s Mafia world before, but never in this mournful mode. ‘The Irishman’ is a triumph
Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” sounds like more of the same from a director we know well, someone we’ve been on a cinematic journey with for our entire viewing lives.
Yes, at 31⁄2 hours, it’s arguably longer than it needs to be. Yes, its possibly true story of the life and crimes of a Mafia hit man who claimed he killed labor leader Jimmy Hoffa has been called not credible and worse. And yes, it’s the umpteenth revisiting of the Italian American organized-crime milieu starring actors Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, all directed by a man who also has been there before.
But, astonishingly, instead of business as usual, “The Irishman” is a revelation, as intoxicating a film as the year has seen, allowing Scorsese to use his expected mastery of all elements of filmmaking to ends we did not see coming.
Instead of the high-energy, borderline celebratory atmosphere that clung to films like “Goodfellas” and “Casino,” this is an elegiac, brooding gangster film that casts a mournful spell, that intentionally drains its gangland doings of glamour just as Rodrigo Prieto’s exceptional cinematography gradually drains the color out of its look.
A Mafia story that has more in common tonally with Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” than his “Gangs of New York,” “Irishman” brings to mind another late-career classic, John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” where the great director of westerns used icons he created to undermine a mythology he’d brought into being.
“When you get to my age,” the 76-year-old Scorsese said in a DGA Quarterly conversation, “you get a little slower, a little more contemplative and meditative,” and this turns out to be all to the good.
Rather than highlight the high life, “Irishman” focuses on regrets, on the confusion and even despair of a man near the end of his days trying to make sense of how he ended up where he did, trying to understand how he betrayed the people he cared about, all set against a broader tapestry of the dark side of 20th century American history.
The story of that man, Frank Sheeran (De Niro), the rare Irishman in La Cosa Nostra’s employ, and his relationship with the mentors in his life, Mafia don
Rated: R, for pervasive language and strong violence Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Playing: Egyptian Theater, Hollywood; Regency Village Theater, Westwood; Laemmle’s Monica, Santa Monica. On Netflix Nov. 27.