I finished watching the three-and-a-half hour Netflix feature film The Irishman the other evening. I have tried to steer clear of reviews but I noted--and agree with--those who stated the film was a bit too long. Finding 30 minutes to cut should have been relatively easy. Cutting much more than 30 minutes, however, would have eviscerated the step-by-step descent into Hell of the leading characters.
The Irishman was in all cinematic respects well done. Notwithstanding the latest anti-aging computer technology, Robert De Niro (a fictionalized version of the historical (but historically unreliable) Frank Sheeran) and Joe Pesci (as the somewhat-more-historical accurate Russell Bufalino) are a bit old to play their younger selves over the course of the twenty years of the film 's long and sustained flash-back. Yet watching their performances as soul-mortifying Mafiosi was riveting. Al Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa--by turns bombastic and mournful--was superb.
So what's the movie about? There are plenty of plot summaries on the internet but in the morning one insight struck me--The Irishman is Scorsese's version of Dante's Inferno. In the ever-downward moral cycles of Sheeran and Bufalino, Scorsese--our Virgil--portrays the overwhelming power of sin unchecked by grace. Following Dante's path, Scorsese provides a hint of Purgatorio when, in the final scenes, Sheeran follows a priest in prayer but seems unable even to comprehend contrition. Still, even near the end of Sheeran's unrepentant life, Scorsese leaves open the door--literally and figuratively--for Sheeran's redemption but stops well short of Paradisio.
Make no mistake,The Irishman is a deeply spiritual and ultimately ambiguous film. A Catholic First Reformed in many respects. Highly recommended to those who are spiritually inclined but inured to a level of unrelenting hardness of life and language.
The Irishman was in all cinematic respects well done. Notwithstanding the latest anti-aging computer technology, Robert De Niro (a fictionalized version of the historical (but historically unreliable) Frank Sheeran) and Joe Pesci (as the somewhat-more-historical accurate Russell Bufalino) are a bit old to play their younger selves over the course of the twenty years of the film 's long and sustained flash-back. Yet watching their performances as soul-mortifying Mafiosi was riveting. Al Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa--by turns bombastic and mournful--was superb.
So what's the movie about? There are plenty of plot summaries on the internet but in the morning one insight struck me--The Irishman is Scorsese's version of Dante's Inferno. In the ever-downward moral cycles of Sheeran and Bufalino, Scorsese--our Virgil--portrays the overwhelming power of sin unchecked by grace. Following Dante's path, Scorsese provides a hint of Purgatorio when, in the final scenes, Sheeran follows a priest in prayer but seems unable even to comprehend contrition. Still, even near the end of Sheeran's unrepentant life, Scorsese leaves open the door--literally and figuratively--for Sheeran's redemption but stops well short of Paradisio.
Make no mistake,The Irishman is a deeply spiritual and ultimately ambiguous film. A Catholic First Reformed in many respects. Highly recommended to those who are spiritually inclined but inured to a level of unrelenting hardness of life and language.
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