"Scorsese's
Gangs Frustrating Epic of Confounding Brilliance"
For thirty
years Martin Scorsese has been trying to make Gangs of New
York. Unfortunately for him, he was never able to get the
script or cast to his liking, or the financing such an epic
would require. Based loosely on Herbert Asbury’s 1928 chronicle
of the same name, Gangs was Scorsese’s passion, and when
Miramax came calling willing to finance one of the director’s
more ambitious projects he knew exactly what that would be.
Thirty
years is an awful long time for a film to gestate. While I would
like to say I found Gangs of New York to be an
unadulterated masterpiece, it simply is not the case. Instead,
Scorsese’s epic is one of the more magisterial messes of recent
memory. At turns brilliant and ponderous, luminous and drab,
this is the type of ethereal feast only America’s greatest
living director could attempt. And while he comes tantalizingly
close to succeeding, Gangs just barely misses the mark.
But what a
mesmerizing near miss it is.
New York
of 1863 was a bristling powder keg of natives and immigrants
constantly jockeying for positions of power and legitimacy.
Gangs rose to protect the interests of the varying parties, and
they were all cradled together in the neighborhood of
Five-Points, a long since buried section of the city on the east
side of Manhattan strung together by cobblestone streets and
littered with crowded and dilapidated tenements.
Nativist
William Cutting (Day-Lewis making a welcome return to
movies – he’s been off cobbling shoes since 1997) AKA “Bill the
Butcher” is the merciless gang leader ruling the Five-Points
with an iron fist and a sharp tongue. Nothing happens without
his say, and if you’re not making sure he sees his cut of the
action be prepared to reap the devilish whirlwind.
Fresh from
16 long years in New York’s legendarily fiendish “House of
Refuge,” Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) has returned to
the Five-Points with the express purpose of making Bill’s
acquaintance. He’s not looking for a new friend or a leg up,
rather the young pug wants the Butcher’s blood for killing his
father Priest Vallon (Neeson) – the leader of the immigrant
Irish gang the Dead Rabbits – almost twenty years prior.
The
problem is, the closer Amsterdam – pretending to be an orphan as
to not reveal his true lineage – gets to Bill, the more he
starts to fall under the menacing man’s spell. Treating him like
the son he never had, Cutting takes Vallon under his wing
revealing to him just how deeply rooted the corruption in
Five-Points – and the whole of New York – really goes.
It is
during this time Vallon meets Jenny Everdean (Diaz –
miscast but valiantly trying to make the role her own all the
same), a pickpocket who arouses more than his interest. But when
Amsterdam’s secret agenda to bring Bill down is revealed by a
trusted friend, can this budding romance survive the Butcher’s
fury?
Filmed
almost entirely at the legendary Cinecitta Studios in Rome,
Scorsese and his talented group of artisans rebuilt New York of
the 1800’s from scratch. Dante Ferretti’s production design is
something to behold. Devoid of almost any CGI effects or
artifices, Gangs’ New York is dirty and brutally real in
every conceivable way; you can almost taste the blood-soaked
dirt dripping from its rafters. In fact, all of the technical
details in Gangs are top notch, and it is clear that
Scorsese really has a passion for the material and the period.
So why
doesn’t it quite come together? The answer to that might be in
the torturously long trek Gangs took to make it to the
screen. Originally planned to open in December of 2001, the film
was reportedly delayed due to worry about the reception it would
receive in a post-9/11 world. While that argument makes sense
considering the movie’s brutal structure and storyline, there
were also rumblings that Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein and
Martin Scorsese could not come to agreements in regards to
Gangs’ structure or length, almost coming to blows arguing
about the details.
Who knows
if any of this holds water – for the record, Scorsese and
Weinstein insist their arguments were cordial and the director
claims the Gangs hitting theaters is the one he wanted –
but either way it doesn’t distance the fact that Gangs of New
York is a highly flawed masterwork. Both too short and too
long, this is a movie that can’t decide what it wants to be. As
a revenge epic, this nearly three-hour opus strains to tell a
rather simple story. But as the story of New York dealing with
the repercussions of the Civil War, Irish immigration and
native-based resentment – culminating in the brutal 1863 draft
riots – Gangs could easily be a good thirty minutes
longer.
It is as
if Scorsese and his talented team of writers couldn’t decide
what story they best wanted to tell, so in the end tell neither
as successfully as they could. Even then, I still couldn’t take
my eyes off it. If nothing else, this director’s messes play a
heck of a lot better than most other one’s successes.
Credit for
much of this goes Day-Lewis. A sure bet for an Oscar nomination,
I’d personally hand him the statue right now. He towers above
the film, bringing pathos and majesty to scene after scene.
There is a moment where he explains to Vallon his love and
admiration has only fallen to one other, Amsterdam’s dead
father. Wrapped in a tattered and worn American flag, it is a
stirring speech that handled by a lesser actor could come across
as maudlin. But as performed by Day-Lewis, the moment is nothing
if not heartrending.
Always one
to cast his films impeccably, Scorsese has assembled a dream
supporting cast to cradle his leads. Chief amongst them are Jim
Broadbent as the notorious Boss Tweed, Brendan Gleeson as the
mysterious Monk McGinn and Neeson as Amsterdam’s fallen father.
Surprisingly good is Henry Thomas, playing Johnny, Amsterdam’s
friend and confidant. It’s a tortured performance of astonishing
breadth and depth I couldn’t help but be startled at just how
far this young actor has come since E.T. when he was
introduced to the world at the ripe age of ten.
What about
DiCaprio? It is nice to see him back on the screen, but he
unfortunately does not make the impression here as I felt he
should have. Maybe the most gifted rising star of his
generation, he looks uncomfortable to be sharing the screen with
Day-Lewis. Granted, the later blows everyone in Gangs off
the celluloid and the script is murky when dealing with
Amsterdam’s motivations and slow blossoming into a leader, so it
isn’t entirely DiCaprio’s fault. Still, he’s far more
self-assured and winning in Spielberg’s
Catch Me If You Can opening Christmas Day, and it would
have been nice to see a little of that charisma here.
I have to
recommend Gangs of New York, it is just too mesmerizing
on so many different levels not to, but I remain frustrated with
the epic all the same. Telling too much and too little story all
at the same time, Scorsese has structured a film of confounding
eloquence and aloofness that frustrates and annoys as much as it
startles and inspires.
At the
very least, Gangs ends with a scene of such expressive
beauty the likes of which I have not seen all year. A montage of
the ever-changing New York cityscape, I left the theater
reminded of the continuing human characteristic to endure and
overcome even in the face of the most daunting of obstacles. In
times like these, a reminder like that cannot come too often or
be said too loud.
