“Families are always rising and falling in America” am I right?” This is the central ideology in Scorsese’s modern masterpiece. What makes America inherently American? And why has our obsession with the gangster genre as a nation been upheld for nearly a century?
Sourced from the excellent Hong Kong film “Infernal Affairs”, and brilliantly reimagined through the lense of Whitey Bulger’s reign of gangster terror in Boston during the 70’s in America, the film follows Billy Costigan, played feverishly by DeCaprio, who is both dichotomies of Irish life in Boston due to his poor gutter trash father and upper class mother, was forced to live two lives simultaneously growing up.
Enter Frank Costello, in one of Jack Nicholson’s most memorable roles in his modern Era. Much like Costigan, is also two fractured people. Part ultra violent gangster tryant, yet acutely intelligent mastermind. “You do well in school Collie?” Asking a young Colin Sullivan( played by Matt Damon as an adult), who nods yes, “Me too, they call that a paradox.” In a brief preamble to begin the film, Costello recruits young Colin, giving him comic books, groceries and odd jobs purely because he knows his family. “You wanna go for all that catholic sit and stand I don’t know what to do for ya.. if you want something outta life, you gotta take it…Non Servium.”
Getting into the plot in detail here would be unfair for those who haven’t experienced it, suffice it to say it’s a delicious and salacious cork screw turn events that lead to the inevitable end of almost all gangster films. It should be experienced not read.
What makes “The Departed” a truly modern masterpiece is Scorsese’s affection for film and the genre itself. His directorial vision is on full display here. The many references to other films, most notably Howard Hawke’s 1932 classic “Scarface”( note the X’s in the frame for every character who dies) and his own autuer filmography in this genre. The immense amount of detail in his direction of its characters and the fate that becomes them in the end (watch it twice, all the signs are right in front of you) makes it a movie watching delight. His mastery of the camera is one of the most unique in all of Hollywood and he shines again here. Even thirty plus years after his triumphant start, he still finds ways to stay relevant and yet familiar, like a restaurant you’ve been to a hundred times but never lets go.
“The Departed” is filled to the brim with mostly unredeemable characters. This isn’t a story of good vs evil. There is no bad guy, there is no hero. It’s a convoluted tale of convoluted people doing what’s best for them to survive by any means necessary. And by God isn’t that the story of America right from the start?
4 out of 4 stars
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