Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Double
Down in Beantown
(The
Departed, 10/23/06)
By Nicholas Nicastro
A
few years ago Time magazine named Ang Lee the best living American
director—a pronouncement that seemed more than a little absurd
given that Martin Scorsese is still very much alive. Scorsese should
rank at or near the top on the strength of several undisputed classics
(Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) and a few depends-on-who-you-ask
near-misses (Goodfellas, Casino, After Hours, The Last Temptation
of Christ). If his last two efforts have failed to impress, it is
against the background of his own brilliance: Gangs of New York
tied him to a elaborate, stationary set of old Gotham when his instinct
is to send the camera hurtling, while his Howard Hughes biopic The
Aviator hurtled well enough but straight into the empty blue yonder
(think about it—there's never much sky visible in any of Scorsese's
best films).
The Departed is not typical
Scorsese fare. For one thing, it's set not among Italian or Jewish mobsters
in New York, but with the Irish in Boston at a time "some years
ago." For another, the story is neatly divided between the cops
and the mob. Based on the 2002 Hong Kong policier Infernal Affairs,
it's the story of two young police academy graduates with mirror-image
careers. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio—not much of an Irish
name, that) has shady family connections that get him selected for undercover
duty, seemingly before his diploma is dry. His target is Frank Costello
(Jack Nicholson), a mob kingpin who seems to be in business for the
sheer, blood-splattered fun of it, but with none of the humanizing insecurities
of Tony Soprano. Costello sponsors his own neighborhood protégé,
Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), through the academy; he, in turn, turns
informant from inside the police department.
The fun of The Departed is
watching the chess match between two accomplished liars, both facing
exposure by an unseen counterpart whose attacks come in small, discreet
betrayals. DiCaprio hulks and glowers through the ordeal, hating himself
for his duplicity, yet still manages to come off as blearily appealing.
Damon has played the seamless dissembler before, most notably in Anthony
Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley. Flashing his crooked smile,
he's very good at it. Yet there's clearly no moral equivalence suggested
between him and DiCaprio. This, one supposes, is the implicit answer
to the question posed by Nicholson: "Cops or criminals…when
you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" In Scorsese's
universe, the difference appears to come down to that between a contented
liar and a troubled one.
But the script by William Monahan
is a letdown. Scorsese's films are well known for their spasmodic eruptions
of violence, but I can't recall any other occasion where these outbursts
sufficed for an ending. Nor is it clear what is gained by the Boston
Irish setting: while the names and the accents change from Scorsese's
mafia epics, the behavior of the characters—the beatin' and swaggerin'—is
more or less the same.
Incredibly, The Departed
marks the director's first collaboration with Jack Nicholson. Alas,
there's plenty of strut to the role but little else for Nicholson to
make memorable about it. At the other end of the stardom scale, Vera
Farmiga is an enormously talented actress whose career has stalled in
a Hollywood that can't imagine what to do with half the human race,
apart from bimbos and grande dames. Scorsese deserves credit
for casting her, and for finding a quicksilver vulnerability in her
face, but her subplot goes nowhere.
The fact that The Departed shares the identical services of Matt Damon
with The Talented Mr. Ripley is perhaps the fundamental statement on
the film. To be sure, Scorsese's vision comes off more authentic and
muscular. But Anthony Mingella on steroids still isn't vintage Scorsese.
©2006 Nicholas Nicastro
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