Martin Scorsese
The Irishman

Legendary. Unreachable. Fundamental. Absolute. Essential. The golden and scarlet crown placed on the head of Martin Scorsese's monstrous cinematography.

With The Departed, I thought that the refined and unreachable genius of Scorsese had surpassed every limit.

I have read good things about this season’s films, truly. Many people have hit the mark. I mean, they’ve nailed it with a Kalashnikov. They have grasped the unsettling greatness of Martin Scorsese, his being hopelessly himself, between mythology and reality, sordid esoteric boundaries and pure and tireless cinematic workaholism. Too many years passed between Raging Bull and Goodfellas, the same happened between the latter and the sumptuous, vindictive revelation of The Departed. Too long. About twelve years and a sack full of near-masterpieces... and something was expected that, punctually, was not delivered. Because each time Scorsese created a work different from the previous. “The real Scorsese is Taxi Driver.” Or rather, “There is no Scorsese more genuine and authentic than Goodfellas.” And again: “The Departed is the Martin Scorsese we’ve always been waiting for, it’s a damn gangster-movie!”, promptly followed by “But why, what do you have against Casino?”

Honestly, I’ve read reviews by a couple of people on Martin Scorsese’s 26th and they are both exceptionally impeccable. More so than some industry magazines, especially domestic ones, more than the flaunted websites, the pantomime of official pages, and the personal columns of YouTubers with 650 likes and thousands of views going around saying nothing. Saying nothing.

Because something has been neglected. Left aside due to the deafening noise stirred by the social nature of the event, the profitable and dazzling bacchanalia of celebration, and the bubbly “social life” that such a grand event can spark.

In reality, we are faced with something unique. Perhaps, unrepeatable.

Let’s set aside the main aspects of Entertainment for a moment. Let’s overlook the cold arithmetic logic of business. Let’s ignore, for an instant, the viscous and brutal dynamics of the entertainment industry. The collective hypnosis. The trends. The rise and fall of the cursed angels of New Hollywood. The film that many are desperately searching for on Netflix is not just a cinematic work. The Irishman is our time.

Robert De Niro. Al Pacino. One personifies the cold and fractured Frank Sheeran, the other carves out a visceral Jimmy Hoffa. They are the greatest actors of our time. Astonishing. Memorable. You realize it, once again, because you watched the entire first part of the film with your mouth agape. Joe Pesci. You understand that there’s no story. Russell Bufalino is him. He always has been.

Could we have countered the mad Jimmy Hoffa as he rambled about the blood-soaked murderous teachings of organized crime and the dire social consequences that the post-war generations would soon experience at the margins of the third millennium and the same American dream? No. The answer is no. Martin Scorsese is American. And like every American who made it, he knows that the wild frontier separating paradise from hell is as thin as a shimmering rivulet of blood.

Scorsese creates his most touching work, the most complex, certainly, even the most extreme, but above all, the most melancholy and desperate. Because those last minutes, so soft and placid, sketch a somber and painful epilogue, without hope. What could have been and was not.

The condemnation comes precisely at the hands of the director who more than any other has stirred the slick and messy insides of the audience, the artist who never shied away from slamming the wild violence of his magnificent and ruthless characters into the faces of the eager public, the animalistic violence of a rapacious and insatiable society, which is an identifying mark of an era and a world perfectly set in the genetics of horror.

Scorsese’s new effort is a story based on opportunism. Frank Sheeran and Jimmy Hoffa are companions in life and work, together forming the crumbling mosaic of what over the course of three and a half hours becomes a tempestuous and loyal brotherhood between a boss and a bodyguard, a dichotomy that winds its illogical thread even in ordinary life, with the two trying to complete each other outside the world of work, away from the gruesome business.

Before examining The Irishman, it is essential to scrutinize the time gap dividing the central era of the narrative, the seventies (the time when Hoffa disappeared), from the year the film was released, which is the one we live in, the teens of the new millennium. Almost half a century. More than fifty years of contemporaneity, whose advancement we could compare to the granular flow that whistles between the two parts of an hourglass. The time marked by glory and blood, the silent and stormy epic of Frank Sheeran.

What was the world back then? What is America today? The head of the decaying sphinx. The intact and visible part atop a body in disarray. Despite the flickering glimmer of light chains and the magnificence of pharaonic structures. In spite of the river of money winding and bouncing off the putrid walls of the gigantic labyrinths of the Empire.

They teach to kill.

Martin Scorsese knows it. He has always known it.

Authorities are demolished in this film, just as they came out of Mean Streets and Casino, from Goodfellas and Gangs Of New York. Authority felt as an enemy. We perceive it from the calculated recklessness of Frank Sheeran, calm and staggering protagonist of this majestic and bloody American novel: war hero and hitman, staunch and dishonest worker, assistant, factotum, bruiser, mafia soldier, career man.

Authority is the same target of the men of honor, those to whom Martin Scorsese has always entrusted the ungrateful task of bearing the weight of original sin in the underworld. Because in the puddle of History, authority Jimmy Hoffa drowned. In Scorsese’s film, he was shot in the back of the head. The blood painted the wall. And no stain or paint will ever conceal that reddish stain.

Having the courage to show one's version of events should motivate us to reflect. It was also done in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, by Quentin Tarantino, but with a completely different spirit and outcome.

Scorsese doesn’t play at being God.

No god exists in postmodernity. It is a fictitious and inconsistent world. The realm of appearance.

The Irishman is legendary. The ultimate masterpiece of the little guy from Little Italy, the eternal bad boy of Cinema. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci have returned to the top after insipid years spent resting on their laurels. It’s not hard to predict the carnage of statuettes. But the true genius is him, Marty.

The umpteenth lesson of anthropology applied to crime, because the history of men is nothing but an unrelenting struggle for survival, a deadly race to the massacre to reign over a pile of corpses.

Frank Sheeran was a killer by birthright, and Robert De Niro, the only artist capable of portraying him. Beyond the techniques employed and the discussions on the effects of digital rejuvenation, one can say they are faced with something historic. Monumental. A crucial moment of the twentieth century, when a simple laborer of organized crime came to impose a mark on the strong back of events. The killings as seen in The Irishman have never been seen before or since in any other film. Two headshots that sound like a single shot. Closed. Without preludes, musical crescendos, and slow motion or similar things.

Thus ends an era. Flames, shots, blood... and then silence.