I Heard You Paint Houses

Well, it's official. I've spent a day of my life watching this, my (still can't believe I'm saying this) favorite movie of all time. I've written and talked about it a lot already, but for this entry, I want to hone in on the four things that make this so special to me.

The Performances
De Niro. Pesci. Pacino. 3 names that will never be forgotten as long as movies are made or even thought of. Seeing them come together for what will probably be the last (more on this later) true mob movie is just a gift. With De Niro and Pesci, you have two people who know how a Scorsese movie operates. They know how to stand, how to stare and the chemistry between them is as palpable as any cinematic pairing we've ever seen. Adding Pacino into the mix injects the movie with a manic energy usually provided by Pesci, that allows the latter to sink into a different kind of Mafioso.

The other part of that trio is De Niro, who essentially acts as a planet caught in the gravitational pull of two suns. An unsustainable state of being, that like so many stories, is bound to end in tragedy. With every scene he shares with Russell and Jimmy, the bonds deepen as both remind him he's really on their side and not on the others. In the very first shot we see the ring on Frank's finger and the watch on his wrist, the giveaway on where Frank's loyalty will ultimately lie. The next 209 minutes are Frank trying to understand where it all went wrong, if he did the right thing, realizing he didn't, and coming to terms with being beyond saving.

Intimacy
One of the things I was most taken by when I saw this for the first time was how quiet it is. Contrasting it with Goodfellas this is a much less busy film. It has pockets of business, but the emphasis is on the quiet moments. The way the movie was mixed confirms it, as they've said to have put a lot of effort into bringing the actors voices as close to the forefront as possible. You'll hear the occasional clinking of a glass, or the rustling of clothing, but that's it. It's all about the words the characters are speaking. If you're thinking, "uh, duh? all movies are that way." pay a little closer attention to the next drama you watch. While the noise of a room certainly puts you into the room, the way this movie handles the dialogue, you feel like you're at the table of the Villa del Roma.

There's another intimacy that strikes me about this: emotional. Really the only negative thing I can say about Scorsese's films as a whole (keeping in mind there are several I still have to see) is that he doesn't seem to focus on emotion that much. Not to say his movies should be melodramatic or anything like that, but the emotion just never gets to me, so it's not something I go to his movies looking for. The emotion in The Irishman on the other hand is so unbelievably potent it makes me wonder if I missed something in each of Scorsese's other 15ish movies I've seen. The relationships with Peggy and Jimmy, as well as the knowledge that this is the gang's last curtain call make me a mess when we hear In the Still of the Night for the 3rd and final time.

The Weight of Time
Time is something I spend a lot of, uh, time thinking about. Am I spending it well? What does it mean to waste it? Time plays a big part in this, as the main story takes place over roughly 20 years, but goes all the way back to Sheeran's 20's, ending in his early 80's.

Time in and of itself isn't much of a dramatic force if you don't do anything with it. The genius of The Irishman is that it approaches the ending you'd expect for a mob movie, and then goes on for another half hour. The weight of time sinks itself into Russell, Tony, Pro, and of course Frank. All of the years of collecting, killing, hustling, and scheming and the wiseguys are as broken down and defeated as anyone else, if not moreso. As the last man standing, the weight is able to sink into Frank most of all. He spends the remaining time he has left thinking about death and desperately trying to connect with Peggy, who like Hoffa, disappeared from his life in the summer of 1975. But there's no mystery about that, Frank and the rest of his family know exactly why that happened; Peggy saw him.

Looking at it from another perspective, my top 4 movies ever have a combined run-time of 742 minutes, which averages out to about 3 hours and 5 minutes. My attitude towards movie lengths is common; it's about how you pace the film and bad movies can't be short enough, while good movies can't be long enough. My favorites often end up being long because I think making a long movie that keeps me invested and intrigued is one of the hardest things to do, and the kind of stories that suck me in like that often take place over long periods of time.

Finality
This is the last mob movie.

We'll see others about organized crime, gangsters and the like but nothing is going to come close to the The Irishman. There just isn't a story as all-encompassing as this one, and no other actor/director combos can touch what Scorsese and co. are doing here.

And I'm honestly fine with that. New stories will be told by new people who can bring the same amount of care as Scorsese brings to this.

After all, a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts.