Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro in “The Irishman.” credit: collider.com
An autumnal, almost Ingmar Bergman-ish reflection on aging, personal burdens, loyalty and memory, The Irishman (USA, 2019) is, nevertheless, unmistakably Martin Scorsese’s film. The epic length, the seamlessly narrative (both scripted and visual), the profoundly high moral stakes and the bedrock commitment of the performances are what consistently put Scorsese’s films into a whole other rarified league. But he’s also game to test himself in the process, and The Irishman contains a few problem-solving challenges.
The story follows Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro), a Philadelphia truck driver delivering meat and food to suppliers in the early fifties. After starting a sideline hustle, skimming inventories and making his own in-pocket sales, he’s sued by one of the suppliers. But union lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) gets Sheeran off the hook, and introduces Frank to his brother Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), a straight-up mob boss who takes a shine to Frank and uses him for increasingly urgent, and violent, errands. Over a few years later, Russell entrusts Frank with becoming Jimmy Hoffa’s personal assistant and bodyguard; Hoffa has mixed feelings about the Mob’s influence on his business, but accepts them as a necessary evil considering the opportunistic capitalists he’s contending against. Hoffa (Al Pacino) is always bigger-than-life, has an ego the size of Nebraska, and is constantly being challenged as union leader by other local labor strongmen, most notably Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano (Stephen Graham); but, like Russell, Hoffa eventually comes to trust Frank, and they become fast family friends.
And that’s just the fifties.
The unions of America, the Kennedy administration and powerful capitalist interests all converge and do battle in the sixties, and the film’s narrative spreads out and ferments accordingly. I think Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian, adapting Charles Brandt’s true-crime memoir I Heard You Paint Houses, were ultimately happy with giving viewers the choice of big-screen theaters and streaming television. The 209-minute running time can be daunting, but no less rewarding than stalwarts like The Godfather films, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, or any number of prestige releases from the late fifties or early sixties like Doctor Zhivago (1965). Rodrigo Prieto’s visuals are lush and impressive, but doing the whole film in two or three segments, at your own pace, can be just as rewarding. The film also uses digital effects to de-age the faces of the main characters here. Most people seem to adjust to it after a half-hour or so, and think nothing of it, but I must admit to finding it consistently distracting; scenes featuring the older versions of the characters were like little oases amidst the hard outlining and tinted eyes. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’ll all look alarmingly primitive in five years or so.
Even with reservations, it’s still his best film since The Departed (2006). I myself put it in fourth place here, but any of the top five could win.
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