A Master Reflects
What’s a life and career worth when the people you’re most loyal to wouldn’t hesitate to have you killed? What does it leave you with?
These are just a couple of the questions Martin Scorsese is wrestling with in The Irishman. An adaptation of the book I Heard You Paint Houses, the story follows the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) a labor official who claimed to have been a hitman for the Bufalino crime family and personally involved in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. This film has been in development for years, with Scorsese aiming to reteam with De Niro for the first time since Casino, as well as bring frequent collaborator Joe Pesci out of retirement, and recruit Al Pacino for his first role directed by Marty.
The premise and the starry cast of gangster film legends would make The Irishman seem like a no-brained to bankroll, but the major hiccup came from Scorsese’s insistence that his lead actors play the same characters over as many as 50 years. DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino are all on the doorstep of 80, so makeup wouldn’t cut it to shave 40 years off.
Digital de-aging has become a common tool, though not for such extensive use. Scorsese collaborated with the digital wizards at Industrial Light & Magic to develop a system to track his actors’ faces that wouldn’t be intrusive for their performances, and a posture coach was recruited to help the 70-something men move a little more like 40 and 50 year olds.
The results are mostly seamless. There’s an uncanny valley quality early on in which De Niro looks convincingly younger, but not like the young De Niro we know from decades of work onscreen. Pesci and Pacino’s effects are more seamless, as their characters are more firmly middle-ages and older throughout. Pacino in particular looks almost exactly as he did in the 1990s; he’s one of those actors, unlike De Niro, who has a distinct look and sound in his older years.
Years ago, I read a review in which Roger Ebert describes Harrison Ford as an actor who, like Robert Mitchum, doesn’t age so much as his face just gets a bit longer. De Niro is like this, as is Pesci, but Pacino is one of those people, like Sean Connery, who has an early look and a distinct later look, and there’s no mistaking one for the other. In The Irishman, he looks eerily like his Scent of a Woman self.
Whatever you find lacking in the actors’ physical transformations is more than made up for in their exquisite performances. De Niro is the best he’s been in years, and though he’s playing a mafia tough guy, there’s a hidden gentleness and quiet that make him the perfect anchor for this story. He makes Frank both a natural for the world of high class crime and an unassuming individual to be at the center of conflicts between the mafia, labor and the government.
Pacino is also the best he’s been in quite some time, doing his requisite best of approaching the line of too much ham but never crossing it. He’s a big personality, and a perfect choice for Hoffa because of that; Pacino makes the infamous labor leader funny, fierce and professional. He’s the most legitimate man in the film, despite his mafia ties and vitriolic hatred of the Kennedys. Pacino imbues enough warmth into Hoffa so as to make his personal corruption seem like a necessary evil to protect his people. He may be criminal, but he has standards, which makes his ultimate hubris and downfall so sad to watch.
Quietly stealing the film from everyone else is Pesci, who is not only excellent, but playing so very against the fiery, vulgar and violent type he did so well in Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino. As Russell Bufalino, head of the Bufalino crime family, Pesci is a calm sage, willing to do dirty work but never letting his emotions get the better of him. He reminded me of Brando in The Godfather; Pesci doesn’t mumble or pace like Don Corleone, but he makes Russell a man you don’t want to cross.
One of the best through lines Pesci plays across the years in the film is his desire for approval from Frank’s daughter Peggy. Russell comes across as a kind uncle or grandpa, and he delights in spending time with Frank’s family. When he fails to earn as much as a smile from Peggy, even after a generous Christmas morning gift of ice skates and $100, you expect him to slap her or yell, but that never comes. He’s polite about her brush off, just accepting that she’s a kid who’s kinda scared of him.
Peggy is perhaps the most important character in the film outside of the lead trio. Her behavior around her father and his cohorts has that kind of sixth sense quality that dogs seem to have around bad people. She’s seen her father do some bad things, though never to her, and she just knows that no matter how many smiles or gifts are thrown her way, that doesn’t change the bad things these men do for a living.
This is at the heart of what Scorsese is interrogating in The Irishman; the toxic masculinity that’s central to the kinds of characters he’s given us in his crime films for decades. These guys may not be beating their chests, but they’re playing a part that alienates the loved ones in their lives. Hoffa is a fascinating example of this, as his own standards (punctuality and style) are part of what give him class and ultimately make him too stubborn to resolve bad blood that leads to his death.
Whether or not any of this sells you on The Irishman’s excellence, you may be hesitant to sit down for its nearly three and a half hour runtime, but I assure you it’s worth it. The film is always entertaining, even if in small, conversational ways, but the full impact of every act that’s come before falls into place in the last 30 minutes. More an epilogue to the prior three hours than a conclusion, we understand the point driven home by the various happenings in Frank’s life. Frank is old, with no one to reward him for his loyalty or silence. The relationships that lasted the longest for him were ultimately pointless, because he drove away his real family, the only people who could actually give a damn about him without being given something in return.
The journey makes the ending worth the wait, and it’s a strikingly sober way for Scorsese to reflect on the genre and archetypes he helped to put in the annals of film history. The Irishman won’t be Scorsese’s last film, nor likely his final collaboration with De Niro, but as a collective swan song for the four Italian men who defined this genre, it’s a bittersweet goodbye to the kinds of films they used to make, and the import (real or fabricated) their subjects once projected.
Though The Irishman will be available on Netflix by Thanksgiving, I hope you seek it out during its very limited theatrical run. This film deserves the theatrical experience, and the undivided attention that goes with it. This filmmaker and this cast would make for a unique movie on their own, but having them recount a kind of history of their lives makes it all the more special.