The Irishman dir. by Martin Scorsese

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Irishman dir. by Martin Scorsese Christopher B. Barnett The Irishman, Directed by Martin Scorsese . New York: TriBeCa Productions, 2019. 210 minutes. The Irishman , Directed by Martin Scorsese. New York: TriBeCa Productions, 2019. 210 minutes. In a recent essay, Gerard Loughlin argues that Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead (1999) exemplifies the filmmaker's tendency to revisit and to rework previous concepts. Just as earlier Scorsese films—especially Taxi Driver (1976) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)—centered on a "lonely man, obsessed with the suffering of both himself and others," so does Bringing Out the Dead feature the trials and tribulations of Frank Pierce, a paramedic working the graveyard shift in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. 1 In fact, as Loughlin explains, the cinematic and thematic parallels are so striking that Bringing Out the [End Page 58] Dead is best thought of as "a palimpsest, a text written upon another, partly erased text, where some of the first still shows through." 2 In this way, the film engages both past and present. It both remembers and reveals. Thus, Loughlin quotes the English essayist Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), who first developed the concept of the palimpsest: "Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished." 3 One might take a similar approach to Scorsese's latest release, The Irishman (2019). On the surface, it is a new film, based on Charles Brandt's book, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (2004). A Delawarebased attorney, Brandt came to befriend Frank Sheeran, an aging mobster with links to the Bufalino crime family as well as to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Prior to his death in December 2003, Sheeran confessed a number of crimes to Brandt, including the alleged murder of Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. Brandt's subsequent tell-all eventually made its way to Scorsese, who was already revered for gangster films such as Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), and Casino (1995). After a number of logistical snags, Netflix agreed to finance the film in 2017, and shooting began later that year. Retitled The Irishman, and featuring longtime Scorsese collaborator Robert De Niro as the title character, the film premiered in September 2019 to wide critical acclaim. So, if The Irishman is a palimpsest whose surface can be abraded to reveal deposits underneath, what exactly do we find? A number of suggestions might be tendered here, though the faded yet still recognizable textures of Goodfellas are most clear. Not only are both films narrated by midlevel mafiosos—Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) in Goodfellas, Frank Sheeran in The Irishman—but their stories trace the rise and fall of their respective criminal families. Moreover, The Irishman reprises some of Goodfellas' most distinctive cinematic techniques. Scorsese announces this intention with The Irishman's opening scene. Backed by a vintage doo-wop hit ("In the Still of the Night" by The Five Satins), a Steadicam tracking shot slowly winds its way through the Pennsylvania nursing home where Frank is living out his final years. Nurses move in and out of the picture; residents sit quietly, drinking coffee or playing cards; a statue of Thérèse of Lisieux [End Page 59] looks on with detached serenity. This is a quiet place, where the past is recollected and the future all too certain. In and of itself, the nursing home scene is a striking preamble to The Irishman, but it is also a facsimile of arguably the most famous sequence in Scorsese's oeuvre. Relatively early in Goodfellas, Henry takes his date Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan. A Steadicam tracking shot follows the couple as they make a VIP entrance through the club's winding corridors and kitchen. Scorsese sets the scene to "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals—a song that conveys Karen's attraction to Henry's influence and standing. Here, it seems, is the good life, where the past is irrelevant and the future whatever one wants it...