dranonyme

I am an admirer of Mr. Scorsese's work as a filmmaker and cultural documentarian, so it was perhaps with heightened expectations destined to fall short of the mark that I went to see The Departed. Scorsese is an actor's director, and with a cast that includes the abundance of great players assembled for this project, it was hard to imagine how this film could be anything less than exceptional. In my view -- which is evidently a minority view -- it was quite a bit less, and I left the theater frustrated to have endured such a spectacular waste of talent and resources, signifying nothing -- or at least nothing we haven't previously seen from the director in Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and Gangs of New York, echoing a Jenny Holzer truism from the '70's,"killing is unavoidable, but nothing to be proud of."

Against the emerging vogue for "Indie" films, Scorsese has been one to embrace their antithesis, and he has the clout to summon the financial resources to do whatever he pleases, which has resulted in recent films that aspire to be large, almost as an end in itself. The Gangs of New York and The Aviatior epitomized this trend, exploiting successfully the wonderment that historical films can bring to the imagined past with figures larger than life. Viva Visconti. However, this inflated sensibility falls flat on the mean streets of South Boston in this interminable playing out of double-subterfuge, in which characters (more like caricatures) play out their appointed roles with a noticeable absence of subtlety or nuance. Nicholson is a parody of himself (though wonderful to watch even at his most absurd), Matt Damon seems unintentionally oblivious to the darkness of Colin Sullivan's soul--we have no idea of what makes him tick beyond the small favors offered in the opening scene, while Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, and Martin Sheen--wonderful actors all--play out their stereotypes with little psychological resonance. Leonardo DiCaprio shows yet again that he is one of the finest dramatic actors of his generation, but there is no catharsis in the inevitable outcome, which takes an impossibly long time to occur. The big surprise is Vera Farmiga, who displays exquisite emotional range and complexity, and should emerge as a formidable female lead worthy of serious dramatic roles, which are sure to come to her (with some help from the NY Times Magazine, which extolled her talents last month -- legitimately, it appears -- in a cover story.) The film also includes a great supporting cast of colorful thugs. But you sit through all the twists and turns of this interminably complex narrative feeling that you're looking at the work of a masterful technician whose infatuation with his cinematic virtuosity has become an end in itself, trumping his capacity, in spite of this film's pretentious title, to tell a meaningful or compelling story, which is easy enough to forget once you have exited the theater.

I remember when I saw Taxi Driver for the first time, not having a clue what it was about in advance. I left the theater rattled, irate, and a bit unhinged, wondering how anybody make a move that was such an assault on my expectations and sensibilities. It was unnerving, politically disturbing, and ultimately a profound expression of the Nixon years--certainly one of the best films of its time. I was fairly unnerved also when I waked out of the Departed, feeling that it was much ado about nothing, a waste of fissionable talent, wishing that I could have departed sooner. Perhaps like Bunuel's Exterminating Angel, Scorsese wanted to see how much misery he could put the viewer through while keeping him squirming in his seat.

The premise set in large type on the gallery wall of Evelyn's art school installation,"moralists have no place in an art gallery," seems such a blatant contradiction to her stated intentions (and by extension to Neil LaBute's) that it is hard not to suspect that there is some irony (or self-delusion) intended by its conspicuous signing as the backdrop for LaBute's compelling and open-ended denouement. (The quote is attributed to Han Suyin, pen name of the Chinese-born Elizabeth Comber, whose fascinating career, for those interested, is summarized on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Suyin). LaBute's thinly veiled allusion to the Fall played out by Adam and Evelyn, noted by many commentators, is perhaps the most fundamental and complex of morality tales, with Adam and Eve each owning their proper share of responsibility for the outcome. (The premonition of Original Sin is played out in the opening scene, when Evelyn, in her hubristic pursuit of "truth" prepares to spray paint a penis on the monumental, fig-leafed Hercules in the art gallery, to which Adam, by walking away, symptomatically acquiesces). It is difficult, as such, to find in this morality play a clear expression of LaBute's misogyny or misandry. Adam and Evelyn are fundamentally co-conspirators, perhaps true to their fallible, gender-determined natures, who in LaBute's canny postmodern twist on Original Sin, are left to contemplate the harsh realities of their hard-won knowledge. If the ostensible purpose of Evelyn's sophomoric MFA project is to rail against "indifference," surely in the metamorphosis of Adam, who hurls the painful, "potty-mouthed" expletive at Evelyn in the final scene ("F**k you, you heartless c**t"), we find that a greater knowledge has been won, as much about his own weakness as about the putative nature of women. Evelyn, for her part, played with complex ambiguity by Rachel Weisz in this final scene, exits conspicuously diminished by her "triumph." She no longer displays the confidence, and barely a shadow of the former diffidence that is her signature throughout the play. She has sacrificed all for her "art," which is laid bare as a dubious conceit regarding art's moral purposes. If her purpose was to expose Adam's lack of a center, she no less exposed her own. The gallery is empty -- none of the large audience that attended her performance (save Adam) is inspired to explore the installation, and she stands pathetically alone and forsaken, it seems, vulnerably clutching herself in the gallery (the body language seems to acknowledge representations of Eve handed down by Masaccio, Michelangelo, and Rodin). Paradoxically, she asks Adam as she makes her exit: "Are you coming?" The presumption is that in spite of the travesty she has vested upon Adam, they are inexorably linked to each other, each the fulfillment in their way of each other's worst nature. Adam demurs, of course (there is much to be said for knowledge, in spite of its costs). In this morality play, LaBute leaves it to us to sort out the consequences of fallible human behavior, and whether or not we find either of the principal players redeemable, he nevertheless leaves no doubt regarding our need to acknowledge the moral deficiencies of our archetypal ancestors. He is fundamentally a moralist in this regard, deeply rooted in the vague hope that art (in this case his, not Evelyn's) may transform us. In the last analysis, this is a humanistic impulse that transcends the superficial misanthropy suggested by the weaknesses of his all-too human characters.