The Departed Arrives on DVD Tuesday!
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FlickChick.
By comparison with some of my recent DVD Tuesday selections, this week's pick is an obvious one:
Martin Scorsese's
The Departed. But sometimes obvious is the way to go - it's a terrific crime movie, and I think there's a good chance it's going to earn Scorsese the Oscar he so richly deserves.
The Departed is the first remake of Scorsese's career, something that was downplayed aggressively before the film's opening. I was, frankly, shocked by how deep into the film's on-screen credits the names of Alan Mak and Felix Chong were buried. Mak and Chong wrote the screenplay for
Infernal Affairs (2002),
The Departed's source material. This is
especially shocking since William Monahan's screenplay, for which he got an Oscar nomination, hews so closely to the original. The action is moved from Hong Kong to South Boston and the language changed from Mandarin to English, but scene-for-scene, the two screenplays are incredibly close.
None of which reflects badly on Scorsese, who made the material his own while making a point of acknowledging the original in glowing terms, whenever the opportunity arose. And since the film has been nominated for multiple awards by pretty much every award-giving body out there, the opportunity has arisen often.
The Departed tackles familiar Scorsese themes: Young men torn between the criminal path of least resistance and struggling to succeed in law-abiding societies that have little use for them. Also addressed are the corrosive effects of violence, especially as it escalates; the price of family loyalty; and the bond that can exist between men whose destinies have diverged - as much through luck as planning - to the point where they're forced into an opposition they don't feel. It features his trademark use of popular music to set a tone, define eras, color relationships and register subtle changes in attitude - remember, Quentin Tarantino learned from Scorsese, not the other way around. Scorsese's sense of the rhythm of urban life is there, as is his vivid visual understanding of city landscapes and the spasms of violence that sunder his characters' lives. It isn't
Taxi Driver or
Raging Bull - they're the
crème de la crème and
The Departed is only good by comparison. But Scorsese's good is better than many filmmakers' best. Believe me, its two and a half hours fly by.
The extras include a featurette about the Irish mafia in Boston, focusing on notorious boss James Whitey Bulger, that's short but worth watching. Bulger was by all accounts a world-class bastard who controlled "Southie" during the 1970s/1980s, and details of Bulger's career - especially his links to the FBI - and the culture of tough, working-class Boston helped bridge the worlds of
Infernal Affairs and Scorsese's film.
THINGS TO CONSIDER:
Scorsese is part of the generation of upstart writers and directors of the late 1960s and '70s who include
Francis Ford Coppola,
Terrence Malick,
Brian De Palma,
Peter Bogdanovich,
Paul Schrader,
Bob Rafelson,
William Friedkin,
George Lucas,
Robert Towne,
Jonathan Demme and
Monte Hellman. With the exception of Demme, Scorsese has been the most successful in weathering the changes in mainstream movie tastes, financing, executive personnel, and models of marketing and distribution, while also remaining true to the vision that made his early films so groundbreaking.
Can an actor like
Jack Nicholson give an effective performance even after he (or she) has developed a set of on-screen mannerisms that are carried over consistently from role to role?
Many people feel that Scorsese will get the best-directing Oscar for
The Departed, even though it's not his best film. Do you feel a win would redress a wrong or be a little embarrassing, like giving
Alfred Hitchcock (who never won a competitive Oscar) an award for the good-not-great
Frenzy?
More U.S. filmmakers are remaking foreign-language films: The
Zach Braff vehicle
The Last Kiss; assorted J-horror (including
The Ring,
The Grudge,
Pulse and the upcoming
The Eye);
Shall We Dance;
Vanilla Sky (from the Spanish
Open Your Eyes);
Insomnia; the upcoming
The Invisible, a remake of a 2002 Danish film called
Den Osynlige;
I Love My Wife, a Chris Rock version of
Chloe in the Afternoon; and another Braff picture called
Open Hearts, from
Elsker dig for evigt. At the same time, the theatrical market for foreign-language films is at an all-time low. Thoughts?
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
