THE IRISHMAN, A Martin Scorsese Picture with de Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel

I resented after several hours how Scorsese cast Anna Paquin only to restrain her to scowling for a total of 12 minutes running time.

weirdly I found her lack of dialogue quite affecting

like, these guys do nothing but talk all fucking day, and here's this quiet person who can see through it all without a word. her affection for Hoffa (purely because, we assume, she'd never *seen* him do anything crooked) just made it even more painful!

Ive seen Paquin in just one movie in the last 10 years and that sucks. I'm not gonna watch True Blood, thanks

Scorcese's lack of engagement women here (and, in general unfortunately)

He kinda went off on this in a recent interview. He's given signature roles to Burstyn (Oscar!), Liza (likely her second-best film role), Sharon Stone, Sandra Bernhard, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, a few others. In this story, women are not at the center, so whaddya want?

how about "(and, in general as of late, unfortunately)"? Like say the last eight years.

and it's not that they're not in the center, it's that they exist only to be placate, protected and avoided.

Well except for Silence, those movies didn't have any good roles for men either.

Maybe he could give a woman in a mob picture the equivalent of what Coppola wrote for Diane Keaton in Godfather II -- "IT WAS AN ABORTION, MICHAEL, BECAUSE ALL OF THIS MUST END" -- and it'd be the biggest false note in the movie.

(obv there weren't any Portuguese female monks in the 17th century)

xp maybe he could make a point of having a female character with any sort of defining or interesting characteristics? just spitballing here.

"why should we care about the death of hoffa" is really less the meaning of the film than "watch this brute sell the last of his scruples and kill his hero in the name of meaningless, sexless power"

I didn't care because Scorsese didn't show what exactly Hoffa sold out except endless references to The Pension Fund or whatever. But how did it affect Hoffa's supporters?

"only to be placated, protected and avoided" seems like a decent summary of the way women are treated by men who lead these lives. I haven't seen the movie's treatment of Sheeran's divorce, but in the book it's clear he chose the Family over his family.

like, these guys do nothing but talk all fucking day, and here's this quiet person who can see through it all without a word. her affection for Hoffa (purely because, we assume, she'd never *seen* him do anything crooked) just made it even more painful!

― Simon H.,

That's not what you cast an actor of her stature to do, but whatever.

yeah Hoffa made the pension fund a Mafia bank, and then he made blustering noises about ratting. Finito.

xxp to alfred: I think you're confusing my point: the "brute" there isn't pacino, it's deniro.

Morbs otm. Scorsese's created many indelible female characters. My complaint about this film is the unrewarding familiarity stretched out to Netflix series length.

The road sequences with the cig-smoking wives, Pesci, and De Niro played, like the early bits of Lynch's Mulholland Drive, as if written for hour-long TV segments.

morbs: the divorce is given a single line.
alfred, you clearly found the road trip sequences exhausting by attenuation; i thought they sufficiently encapsulated how these powerful violent men have no real interests or depth of any variety to their life. their failure of imagination is amongst their most damning qualities and they kill people for a living.
i will say that all the back of the car "fish schtick" dialogue got a little exhausting but hey, nothing's ever gonna beat "whattayawant from me"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlyXZG2dupo

That's not what you cast an actor of her stature to do, but whatever.

iirc Keitel is in this for like three minutes?

he also throws away jesse plemons, bobby cannavale, jim norton... Steve Van Zandt does some blink and you miss it lip synching!

but paquin is REALLY egregious.

BTW, Van Morrison is in the closing music and you can't even hear him until after the music credits roll and he starts mumbling "I hear you paint houses..."
i wish i was kidding!

iirc Keitel is in this for like three minutes?

― Simon H.,

yeah!

i will say that all the back of the car "fish schtick" dialogue got a little exhausting but hey, nothing's ever gonna beat "whattayawant from me"

I still couldn't figure out why it was moist, but I didn't care because the movie didn't make me care. This is HOUR THREE.

maybe Fran Lebowitz coulda played a Teamster

Woody Allen usta cast names for 2-minute roles alla time, so Marty has received the baton

Sotosyn, just think of it as his Sandinista!

*shudder*

it was moist because there was a fish in the back seat! This is not complicated. It just ran on a bit too long.

See? The running time made an obvious joke flaccid

It clearly did for you, yes. I am not blaming the film’s run time, just the length of that particular pre-murder shaggy dog story and its particular obviousness as such.

Was someone trying to fuck the fish

but paquin is REALLY egregious

I have bad news for you about basically every post-Margaret Paquin film role

Again though: the film’s air of preordained outcome and mad lib gangster dialogue made for pleasant but valid page turning; the decision to keep the camera running much longer than it had to implicates the viewer in a way I thought made the movie matter. “Hey, you wanted the tough guy bullshit; here’s how it actually resolves.”

Separately, this could’ve lost a half an hour in its belly with zero impact and I wouldn’t argue otherwise. But everyone’s enjoying themselves so much onscreen and behind the camera (and not incidentally, in my audience at least), it seems churlish to bitch.

xxp
didn't realise Captain Birdseye was a teamster. i'm learning new things from this movie before i've even seen it.

Valid=vapid in that post

I'm not gonna get to see this before the 27th

tbh I didn't mind the shaggy bits cause I knew he was setting Netflix's money on fire

On the contrary: it'll play well on Netflix, just not in the cinema.

I saw it in the cinema fwiw and was not bored or annoyed at any point (the last post was a joke; setting Netflix's money on fire was merely a bonus)

I like Anthony Lane's remark: structurally it's Wild Strawberries with guns. And I appreciated its fascination with geriatric crime. But by the time it got to the third hour and the film was figuring out how to kill Hoffa I felt a quiet soul death.

On the contrary to YOUR contrary!
I love discussing le cinema

and the film was figuring out how to kill Hoffa

It's not doing this.

Anyway, KJB and I both liked. I think the phone call to Hoffa's widow is late-career peak for de Niro -- it's like the whispery equivalent of cut-up poetry.

(of course I haven't seen Bad Grandpa)

I think the phone call to Hoffa's widow is late-career peak for de Niro -- it's like the whispery equivalent of cut-up poetry.

yes that is an absolutely staggering moment

it's the best thing he does in the film; thought he mostly just wandered through otherwise but that's a good moment of a man losing his soul

there's now a mini controversy about Paquin's role in this because of course there is

It's not doing this.

It is.

With the distance of several days, it's fine second-tier Scorsese, his An Autumn Afternoon: the material isn't fresh but the 'autumnal' notes are.

De Nro and Pesci are at their peak, Pacino less so. These Method hams like him and Nicholson have to imitate him when the surest way would've been to evoke Hoffa without bothering with the accent and hairline.

People grousing about Paquin's low number of lines (I assume that's the 'controversy' bcz I don't give a flying shitto) would not have understood the power of silent cinema. She's there to haunt her father -- words are mostly superfluous -- and that's why you need an actor of "her stature" to pull that off.

(frankly I had forgotten she was the lead in Margaret)

and she's actually *named* Margaret in this one

"evoking Hoffa" doesn't sound fun... guy was a bellowing steamroller. (I bet that Robert Blake miniseries from the '80s has some ham too.)

You're missing my point. Few actors in the last 30 years bother looking or sounding like RFK besides a broad Bahston Braaahmin accent, so why try for "truth" with Hoffa? It freezes the actors.