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A Week at the Movies II
3 years ago
General
THE IRISHMAN (2019)
A fictionalized account of Frank "the Irishman" Sheerhan's (Robert De Niro) rise from side-hustling truck driver to made man in the Philadelphia mob, taking place in a world where the Mafia, the Teamsters, City Hall, and the cops are all working more or less together, and where De Niro's hired killer has to act as the voice of reason between capo Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). It's a doomed effort, of course -- father figure Bufalino calmly informs Frank what has to be done, and the look on Sheerhan's face as his friend Hoffa arrogantly signs his own death warrant is devastating.
At three and a half hours, it's a riveting story...well, up until the final half hour in which Frank outlives everyone except his estranged daughters, but it's exactly the ending this picture needed. An ending that provides no sense of finality or moral reckoning, but only the feeling of a life, none too free to begin with, reduced to its bare minimum, the quiet inevitability of its own extinguishment.
GILDA (1946)
"This isn't what it looks like," the movie insists. "It's not about a young drifter pimping himself out to a rich, queer Nazi only to have their happiness together destroyed because they're in love with the same woman."
Well, yeah it is, but love in this movie is toxic -- it's all about control, manipulation, and cruel payback, and by the time the two leads go off to begin a "normal" life together what we're looking at is more of a sick joke than a plausible outcome. (Ah, but the incandescent Rita Hayworth's "Put the Blame on Mame" nightclub number showed Jessica Rabbit and Red Hot Riding Hood how it's done.)
A fictionalized account of Frank "the Irishman" Sheerhan's (Robert De Niro) rise from side-hustling truck driver to made man in the Philadelphia mob, taking place in a world where the Mafia, the Teamsters, City Hall, and the cops are all working more or less together, and where De Niro's hired killer has to act as the voice of reason between capo Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). It's a doomed effort, of course -- father figure Bufalino calmly informs Frank what has to be done, and the look on Sheerhan's face as his friend Hoffa arrogantly signs his own death warrant is devastating.
At three and a half hours, it's a riveting story...well, up until the final half hour in which Frank outlives everyone except his estranged daughters, but it's exactly the ending this picture needed. An ending that provides no sense of finality or moral reckoning, but only the feeling of a life, none too free to begin with, reduced to its bare minimum, the quiet inevitability of its own extinguishment.
GILDA (1946)
"This isn't what it looks like," the movie insists. "It's not about a young drifter pimping himself out to a rich, queer Nazi only to have their happiness together destroyed because they're in love with the same woman."
Well, yeah it is, but love in this movie is toxic -- it's all about control, manipulation, and cruel payback, and by the time the two leads go off to begin a "normal" life together what we're looking at is more of a sick joke than a plausible outcome. (Ah, but the incandescent Rita Hayworth's "Put the Blame on Mame" nightclub number showed Jessica Rabbit and Red Hot Riding Hood how it's done.)
