I love it!
When I began writing for this site it was my hope to be able to cover current Oscar material and reach back into the past to perhaps gain insight into how the Academy has thought, how that impacts today’s voting, and pay tribute to the films both honored and snubbed. Mr. Rutherford’s comments about 1973 got me to thinking about the best year in film, and while 1939 was a terrific year, as well as 1956, for me the finest year, with great films that hold up equally today is 1974.
After writing my piece on the recent Best Actor winners and non-winners I was rather shocked at the number of comments on Sean Penn’s astounding performance in “Mystic River,” a performance I believe to rank with the best of Brando, Duvall, Nicholson and De Niro.
I love debate, I love to talk film, and best of all I love debating the merit of performance as I studied method acting in the hopes of becoming an actor before I fell in love with film criticism.
For the record, I was terrible, but remained fascinated by those who could do it, and Mr. Penn might just be the very best at what he does. Far too often his off-screen antics have over-shadowed his brilliant work as an actor, and while he has mellowed in his later years, he is still every bit as surly and rebellious as he ever was, though as a father and husband perhaps he understands the need for boundaries these days. I had the pleasure of interviewing Penn at the Toronto International Film Festival a few years back, and always believe that there should be no trace of the characters he portrays in his films for him to be judged a great actor. There were none. The person sitting across from me, relaxing when he seemed to know I was here to discuss acting as an art and craft, was not anyone I had seen on film, nor the hot-tempered photography beater of his youth.
We all became aware of Penn in “Taps” back in the early 80s, but it was his hysterical turn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” that made him a star. I find it difficult sometimes to connect the actor who portrayed the doomed killer in “Dead Man Walking” and the deeply distrubed man in “The Assassination of Richard Nixon” to the actor who portrayed the goofy, sunny, surf-loving Jeff Spicoli. Pauline Kael said Penn had the sort of talent that bites you on the nose and she was not off the mark at all.
Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Frank Langella seem to be the names bandied about for Oscar consideration this year, which would place them in some impressive company of nominees and winners these last 20 years. Of course, that said, there have also been some bizarre choices for the Best Actor award, which has often left me shaking my head in disgust and wondering what these voters were actually seeing.
Since 1988, there have been 10 winners that perhaps should not have been, the award arguably deserved by another of the nominees, or worse, an actor not nominated! Consider Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” a widely acclaimed performance that asked that he not connect with anyone in the film, never make eye contact, rock back and forth and speak in a nasally voice.
Stop what you are doing right now and try what he did in the film, and trust me it is very easy to do. Now do you deserve an Oscar for doing what Hoffman did in that film? The real perfortmance in “Rain Man” was that of Tom Cruise, who we watched evolve over the course of the film, and of course the best performance of that year was Gene Hackman as the tough investigator in “Mississippi Burning.” Hackman was nominated, but he stood no chance in the wake of the juggernaut of support for Hoffman, who in fact should have won years before for his miraculous work in “Tootsie!”
Of course not. Quite often the Academy gets behind an actor for the simple reason they pulled of the film without screwing too much up.
How else can one explain Mel Gibson’s win for “Braveheart” but failure to be nominated for his masterpiece “The Passion of the Christ” and “Apocalypto,” easily two of the finest directed films of the last ten years? Somewhere along the road, the Academy fell in love with actors who try their hand at directing (unless your name is Sean Penn or Barbara Streisand) and began giving away Oscars, quite often over more deserving directors.
Poor Martin Scorsese has watched actors win the Best Director prize over his work three times. In 1980, of course, Robert Redford won for his drama “Ordinary People” over Scorsese’s searing “Raging Bull,” while ten years later Kevin Costner won the Oscar for “Dances with Wolves,” besting Scorsese for “Goodfellas.” But hey — this is the Academy…right? Clint Eastwood also bested Scorsese’s “The Aviator” in 2004 with a win for “Million Dollar Baby.”
One year after Redford won his Academy Award for Best Director, Warren Beatty took home the award, much deserved for his criminally under-appreciated epic “Reds.” But he would watch in shock as “Chariots of Fire” ran to the Best Picture award over his film. The following year, a minor British actor, Richard Attenborough directed “Gandhi,” which the Academy fell in love with, honoring the achievements of the film’s subject rather than the effort itself, which even at the time seemed old-fashioned and rather ordinary. Attenborough himself, on the way to accept the Directors Guild Award for the film, stopped to chat with Steven Spielberg to make clear what everyone in the room seemed to know: that Spielberg should have won the award for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial!”
One of the most artistically ruthless films to be produced in decades, “The Departed” is a spike of adrenaline straight to the heart of an audience desperately in need of such rambunctious filmmaking. A loose but paradoxically loyal remake of the Hong Kong thriller “Infernal Affairs,” the film is doused with a cast of familiar faces, each performer offering portrayals unique to anything in their respective repertoires.
The script, tuned down to deafening perfection by screenwriter William Monahan, is as frenetic as director Martin Scorsese’s visual vernacular. And the atmosphere, molded by Scorsese as if he were twenty years younger, is as saturating and penetrating as one could hope for out of a freewheeling, balls-to-the-wall entry in the cops and robbers genre.
This is truly one of the best films of the year.
Scorsese fell off his throne in the eyes of many when he began tackling epics like “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator” in recent years. Some felt the fixture of 1970s cinema was chasing awards glory in earnest and therefore watering down his artistic capabilities.
Still, those films have much more to offer than most viewers allow, affording dense portraits of 19th century America and the unraveling world of Howard Hughes respectively. But it admittedly goes without saying the director hasn’t been near the top of his game in well over a decade, and the worry was he might be slowing down. With “The Departed,” that line of thinking flies right out the window.
The story is one of deception and lies, the hardships of undercover life and the effect such particulars have on a human being. The heights Michael Mann was aiming for in “Miami Vice” in this regard are cleared with considerable comfort by Scorsese’s effort.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as William Costigan, a good kid from a working class family who hopes to make a difference in the Massachusetts State Police. But his superiors, Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), see through him immediately as just a kid playing the role of cop more so than living it.
Undercover work in the Irish mafia, however, might be something up his alley. After all, deception seems to be one of his outstanding qualities.
Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), meanwhile, is a young buck who was introduced to organized crime at an early age. Presented as a surrogate son to Irish crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), Sullivan also rises quickly through the ranks of the Boston Police Academy. He is soon positioned as Costello’s mole on the inside, greasing the rails for the mob boss to live his evil and criminal life as he sees fit, without recourse or precaution.
As the film pushes forward at an unforgivable pace, each respective mole becomes cognizant of the other’s existence. The drama therefore introduces itself in the form of a race against odds (and in the most hair-raising of environments) for each to discover the other before their rapidly evaporating time expires.
These are roles most actors spend a lifetime hoping to nail, but in “The Departed,” even the supporting elements are tough enough to chew and find significant flavor.
Alec Baldwin, for instance, continues to tap into a post-Kim Basinger era of confident, sleazy, yet somehow appealing portrayals as Ellerby, an officer in charge of the building case against Costello. Martin Sheen commands a father figure for DiCaprio’s Costigan with relative ease, while Mark Wahlberg sparks a curious foil to Sheen’s Queenan as a sharp-tongued Sergeant overseeing undercover operatives.
Vera Farmiga adds another delicate and layered performance this year (along with work in Anthony Minghella’s “Breaking and Entering”) as Madolyn, a department psychiatrist who becomes involved with both Costigan and Sullivan. And Ray Winstone fits comfortably into the mold as Costello’s right-hand man Mr. French.
But DiCaprio and Damon’s front-and-center portrayals are what the film hinges on.
Damon’s is a specific and moderately callous turn, one less merely villainous than it is antagonistic by necessity. DiCaprio’s performance as Costigan, meanwhile, might be his most accomplished to date, or at least closely rivaling his work in “The Aviator” two years ago.
An actor consistently relegated to the “pretty boy” column, DiCaprio proves time and again that he is a performer capable of reaching certain emotional depths that others in his generation can’t quite claim for themselves. And though both of these performances are showcases for each actor, it’s still not enough to steal the show.
If there is one thing audiences will be talking about regarding “The Departed” for years to come, it will be Jack Nicholson’s flagrant bloodlust and vicious insanity as Frank Costello.
Costello is the vilest of human occurrences, a truly despicable creature whose sole purpose in the world is to rail against the status quo and push his own boundaries as far as he can to get the maximum stretch out of life. As the character admits later on, “I haven’t needed the money since I took Archie’s milk money in the third grade. I haven’t needed p***y either, but I like it.”
Indeed, Costello is one of the true villains of the modern cinema, as morally filthy as he is fascinating. And Nicholson wallows in the role like he was born to wear it, savoring every feral gaze and relishing every blood-splattered grin. It might be his best work since “The Shining” 26 years ago, and a performance Academy voters are likely to eat right up like Ben Kingsely’s Don Logan in 2001’s “Sexy Beast.”
William Monahan’s erratic screenplay is enough to give anyone an anxiety attack, but Scorsese plays the thing like a fiddle. Utilizing a crew of usual suspects, the filmmaker finds the pulse of the tale in a hurry and never relents.
Thelma Schoonmaker deserves awards consideration for piecing together parallel narratives while still implementing the greatest of techniques scene after scene. Michael Ballhaus’s camera glides through each sequence and constructs time and space in a manner reminiscent of his work on “Goodfellas,” and most recently, Janusz Kaminski’s underappreciated efforts on Steven Spielberg’s “Munich.”
And I can only hope theaters across the globe crank the volume up to the level it was at in the screening room on the Warner Bros. lot, because the soundscape of the film is as much a character in the tale as Costigan, Sullivan or Costello.
But the real story of “The Departed” has to be Scorsese’s reclamation of his former relentless ways. This is an effort that fills out a trilogy of sorts with “Mean Streets” and “Goodfellas,” further securing the director’s status as the greatest of urban film artists.
What makes the accomplishment all the more appealing is the sense that Scorsese is a beast awakened, done with a slumber that appealed to some and still puzzled others. “The Departed” is crafted like he just recently discovered the medium of cinema and all its wondrous possibilities, fresh out of film school and desperate to express himself.
It’s energizing just thinking about it.
And, like the best of Scorsese cinema, I expect “The Departed” could be largely ignored by the awards season outside of performance respect and potential craft consideration. But it really doesn’t matter what happens to the film in the approaching Oscar derby, does it?
This is as hard boiled as filmmaking can get, and it proves a talented director still has more finesse and spirited determination than half the industry around him. So take note. An old dog can teach as many new tricks as he can learn.
Today is my birthday. I’m 24 years old.
I’ve been following the Oscar race with some notable level of attention for 8 years. It is by no means a lengthy tenure, as there are others in the game who have been observing this outlandish span of time much longer than that. Even still, in these recent years – the height of the race’s popularity amongst the film-going community – I’ve noticed a number of intriguing things as a witness to its modern evolution.
My first season was the 1997 season. The big films in play were James Cameron’s Titanic, Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential and Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting. It would be a rather poignant introductory year into the process for me.
I knew my favorite films of the year were As Good As It Gets (from director James L. Brooks) and L.A. Confidential. The former struck the right chord at a time in my life where I was truly head-over-hills in love, while the latter was part of a brief progression of cinema – along with Michael Mann’s Heat and Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects – that was greatly sparking my interest and leaning me toward a profession chosen in the filmmaking arena.