In the career of almost every large director who managed to step over the threshold of old age, there is a picture that can be considered a kind of summary. And if you want, an epitaph of your own creativity (sometimes premature). Lars von Trier has this "The house that Jack built", Gloomy satire about creation and destruction. Roman Polanski has – coming out in January "Officer and Spy", a belated response to rape accusations. 77-year-old Martin Scorsese released as many as two such “reconciliations of the results”: at first there was through and through religious "Silence", And now – "Irishman" , in which the master says goodbye to an almost dead, but still respected genre – a gangster saga.
In the center of the plot, Frank Shiran (Robert de Niro) is Betmaster Casino a veteran of the Second World War and a former trucker who, thanks to a successful coincidence, makes friendship with Russell Bufalino (Joe Peshi), the head of one of the most influential families “Goat Nostra”. The executive and reliable hard worker is first offered to fulfill a couple of minor instructions, and then “paint at home” – that is, to knock out of the revolver the brains of objectionable people. Shiran is accepted for the performance of duties with all responsibility (“as in war”), and after a series of successful things, he will be introduced to Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the leader of the trucker trade union and almost the most influential person in the States.
"Irish" seems to be an ideological continuation of all the "mafia" films of the director at once: here and there the references are scattered "Evil streets", then to "Glorious guys" And "Casino" (Especially the presence of Joe Peshi recalls in the frame of shooting once every six to eight years), then even to a debut “Who knocks on the door to me?". And this is quite logical, because Scorsese after Coppola with his "The godfather" determined the appearance of a gangster cinema. And for him, the “Irish” is a farewell ode to his beloved genre, which Scorsese sings for three and a half hours: sweeping, leisurely, wisely, but in an old manner.
Of course, the artists tried, but the frame is still taken from a trailer for some new Battlefield
The characters in the film are completely archetypal. The same Frank Shiran is a classic careerist. Once on the bottom of the criminal world, he gradually, a corpse of a corpse, achieves recognition from his owners, balancing between relatively legal activity and absolute crime. He is cynical enough to reflect on the murder of a person, as about cooking a steak, but move love to his own family, from which he nevertheless gradually moved away. Jimmy Hoff is an equally curious figure: a sneaking manager who does not climb into his pocket for a word (the most interesting moments are his touching attempts to make friends with Shiran's daughter), temperamental, fundamental, stubbornly darling. But still, the most spectacular character is Russell Bufalino performed by Joe Pesha – a stately, venerable gentleman with a soft voice and snake eyes. So equally politely asks to give a steak and cut someone's family.
In these three cinema, in fact, it is built. There are other anti -heroes played by the troupe of his favorite actors Scorsese, including relatively young stars from his own serial projects (Stephen Graham and Bobby Cannavale from "Underground Empire", Ray Romano from "Vinyl"). It is noteworthy that among the listed actors there is not a single woman – as there are no them in almost the whole film; The performer of the role of the adult daughter Shiran, Anna Pacuin, generally pronounces exactly one remark for the whole film, for which the director had already been reproached by lovers of fashionable feminist sentiments. Actually, this is not surprising: in the world of "Irish", as in the films of Scorsese with rare exceptions ( "Alice does not live here anymore"), women, as a rule, perform a purely applied function.
Hoff – perhaps the most interesting character in history. No wonder the film was already made about him, and already with Jack Nicholson in the title role
This may seem frank unwillingness to follow the fashion, which, frankly, near the truth: Scorsese film is amazingly old -fashioned. All these attacks of the director-retireor on Marvel, the lack of mandatory “strong female images”, a somewhat childish desire to rejuvenate his favorite actors at all costs-all this gives out the creator of the old hardening, who, in general, frankly spit, as a spectator perceive his creation. It seems to him it doesn’t care if you will stretch the film longer than the latter "Avengers". He most likely doesn’t matter if you will like that Robert de Niro, who has a slightly plastic mask of himself a young, hidden from still not so perfect technologies, walks like an old man.
"Irish" – a movie about not very pleasant people who do not very pleasant things and who are frankly unpleasant to empathize, but have to – at least in the first two -thirds of the film. And to the openly protracted finale Scorsese weaves a web from semi -thought events and real history. He gives his version of the murder of John F. Kennedy mentions the Caribbean crisis, raises the theme of the Watergate scandal and the NATO bombing of Serbia, and everything to show: the mafia in the USA exists because the existing system of power is initially vicious.
Hoff becomes the personification of this very power, Bufalino – the face of the mafia as a whole, acting hand in hand with those who cover it, but shyran – a stupid and slightly faceless executor of the will of both, a kind of executioner on a guard of a criminal order. So closer to the end of the already aged Irish, they are waiting for suffering about a senseless life in which there was nothing but blood and murders. Well, if Skorsze wanted to defend and deprive any meaning of the work of an employee of the mafia – he did it quite: more than a three -hour film is extremely tiring to watch. It impressively scattered with long driveways, the emotion of the details and faces of the characters, long plans and endless sophisticated conversations “according to concepts”. And all this is perfectly done. If not for the feeling that you watch the unbearably long series of the same “underground empire” and “vinyl”.
Episode with Sheptun is one of the best in the whole film: at such moments you regret that the film was not shot by the Cohen brothers. So they would have where to walk on the material of the film about the gangstere loser and strange people around him
But the problems of the film are not only at the pace. No matter how hard the creators try, they could not hide the real age of their stars. And everything would be nothing, but only because of this the feeling of time is lost: that young, that elderly, that the elderly Frank Shiran moves, looks and speaks approximately the same, and sometimes it is really difficult to determine how much screen time has passed: one day or decade. Why was it in a pose and demanding all these artificial rejuvenations instead of casting of similar actors and classical makeup (remember how Christian Baile made up in the recent "Authorities") – categorically incomprehensible.
Although, if you think about it, there is an explanation of this, and very simple: this is the will of the Creator. Skorsze gathered his favorite actors (even Harvey Keitel lit up in Camo; it is strange that DiCaprio did not fit), adding Al Pachino to them, which had long been awarded to his films, and talked to them for life for his life. I talked about how terrible old age was, how sad it was to remain alone at the end, having a load on his shoulders of meaningless years, how sad, in the end, not to be heroically shot, but to spend the rest of his life in a nursing, gray -haired, haggard and no one needed by anyone. Therefore, the whole film is a retrospective paraphrarian of Shiran's life with his own lips. He saw with his own eyes that the work of the mafia is devoid of romance, and at the end of her soldier, death and oblivion are waiting. I would like to believe that the same does not threaten the film itself. But with all his undoubted advantages, watch three and a half hours of the old man's reflection is mortally boring.