THE IRISHMAN, A Martin Scorsese Picture with de Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel

Don't people from Philly come out the womb looking 40

― master of nuggets (Neanderthal),

https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/dem-debate-112019-40.jpg?fit=789%2C460&ssl=1

Lol touche

feel responsible for this change argument cuz i glossed dc's "tragedy" remark as meaning "unchanging characters", which was bad. "what kind of man makes a call like that?" is as much as to ask "what kind of man am i?" but then since the answer is right there (the kind who makes a call like that) maybe he does understand (see) himself at the end-- that is, learn something. this is a kind of change. however i do think the movie believes character is destiny, which is also why it works that its image of aging is of fully human faces emerging over decades from beneath layers of mask.

oh he said "nobody changes" too actually, whatever

understanding certainly feels like a change but you are still the same suspended quantum string ykno?

since its idea of damning yourself is about surrendering the will-- to orders and jargon (the orwellian pairing)-- it is a particularly cruel universe the movie makes for us in which we never see him be any other person than this one, unless you count the one who wonders if he has been this one. but the priest does offer him redemption of the will (redemption rendered impressively precise and mechanical-- "seeing yourself" as the last action available to take for yourself) and at the end the door is literally open to it, so i suppose it is a catholic movie and not a tragedy.

what if you believe people never change -- instead, people discover or suppress virtues/flaws?

then there is the nietzschean nurse, who's gonna have to put him through all of this again. is self-knowledge the first step out of recurrence? idk xp2self

Saw this a second time for something I'm working on--would not have otherwise. Nothing much to add to what I posted above: it's good, and it's also careful and kind of forgettable. I did confirm something that I noticed the first time and forgot to check: Hoffa's wife is played by Welker White, Lois the babysitter in Goodfellas.

oh word? very cool

Yea i recognized her immediately. Made me happy

forgettable? no, that's HEAT.

It's yr mom

Enjoying having conversations with people whose opinions differ from mine pic.twitter.com/7o2ui1aBpn

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) December 3, 2019

Btw Morbs yr the dude whose opinion I'm most interested in ITT

No sarc. I'm drunk and oversharing

Tbh I’m sympathetic to Scorsese’s take that we accept makeup even when we know it’s fake and might not look 100% real, we should be able to get over digital makeup the same way. It looked weird in some parts but w/e, I get it.

On the other hand I heard Pacino say in an interview that he saw a full cut of the movie without any of the cgi, I can only imagine how weird and funny that must have been

not as weird as you think. they show some of the making-of footage in the Netflix extra - they just really just pancaked on the physical makeup before doing the digital work

There's an absolute army of digital artists in the end credits, probably the most for any movie that doesn't involve spaceships and/or superheroes.

but there's *some* of this in all studio films by now, surely

np Neand, just havin fun

I think I read that they did it in the new Pee Wee movie a couple years ago. I wonder if its much more common that we realize, and & only noticed when it's particularly clunky and/or publicized.

I had a few things to say about it.

I mean you've got people making fairly convincing deepfakes in order to get likes on Twitter, not surprising that this would happen in an actual for-profit movie

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/media/irishman-scorsese-netflix-ratings.html

... 18 percent of audiences watched the movie in its entirety on the first day of streaming.

or fell asleep and left it running, or the numbers are completely made up, no way to know. but heartening if true!

Yeah Netflix “ratings” are in the category of data we Brits call “chinny reckon”

Pretty prime release date for it. Lot of people bored with their relatives.

And thinking about murdering them/putting them in a home?

the one time of year when you go to church

My inlaws came arrived the night before thanksgiving and were p much immediately like “should we out on that Irishman movie?”

Here are 2 things I *never* thought I’d say (and that will soon land me on many “check out this dumb tweet” threads): I think it’s fantastic that everybody is now arguing about MARRIAGE STORY & THE IRISHMAN. And I think their widespread availability on Netflix made that possible.

— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) December 7, 2019

Speaking of Adam Driver, "The Report" is up on Amazon as well. For sure I'm more able/likely to see all three of these movies at home.

Bilge isn’t wrong there

i finally saw this, had to do it over two nights. next time i'll do it in one since it's a pretty swift 209 minutes. at the moment not much to add, i'll have more to say another time. but i thought it was fascinating in how it was less a "at the end of your life you're going to be alone and abandoned if you make certain choices" as much as "you'll be alone your whole life if you do this." there are so many scenes where Frank is on the outside looking in, not privy to information regarding jobs he'll be tasked with carrying out, watching people talk to one another or make phone calls, just completely powerless and only knowing about something when it's time to get an order, such a passive pawn being pushed around the board that some low-level nobody gangster approaches him on some minor thing and he just shrugs and says ok, and it almost gets him killed for reasons he barely understands. Only an intervention from Russell and some mercy from Angelo Bruno let him live another day. and his allegiance to Hoffa is also something that almost gets him killed, or it's heavily implied that it would, if he himself doesn't handle this thing in Michigan. also near the end when Russell tells him he chose "us over him", that is basically Frank's life: he chose his way of life over anyone else who really cared about him, or who ever could have at one point. After he gets into this life he only survives because other people find him useful vs any of them actually really giving much of a shit about him. Maybe Russell does, but in fairly empty and quietly destructive way.

also Anna Paquin's almost mute role didn't bother me, her presence was palpable in all of her scenes, and someone of her particular charisma and recognizability for that type of role is required.

the same goes for Keitel as well; he's the most fearsome guy in the room, even just as a background figure who periodically makes decisions about jobs Frank carries out, or periodically decides if Frank lives or dies.

there are so many scenes where Frank is on the outside looking in, not privy to information regarding jobs he'll be tasked with carrying out

this movie repeatedly does this weirdly disorienting thing where *something* happens first and then it's only explained later. see the whole "little guy" conversation that happens before we know who the little guy is and the broad daylight assassination scored to Sleep Walk.

I'd have to check, but isn't who the little guy is clarified in voice-over within a minute of his first mention--two at the most? There's a gap, but I don't remember it as being very significant.

The little guy is Joey Pro, and we are introduced to him relatively early in the film, but not as "the little guy." The back-and-forth Frank and Hoffa have in the hotel room about "the little guy" goes on long enough to make you think they might in fact be talking about Russell.

dunno if it's been discussed earlier (i think it was?) but the actor playing joey pro does a great job with a mostly throwaway character

Yeah Stephen Graham, he’s very very good in the Pesci-type role here.

Speaking if which, that scene had one of a handful of Pacino jewels, namely the whole "Ohh, I can breathe now! I can breathe again! Ohh boy." Then nods right off. Not as memorable as "A knife, you charge; a gun, you run" or "What do you know about cleaning up a fish? You ever caught a fucking fish? Didn't think so" but not far behind.

The weirdest coincidence for me was that I saw this the first time on Nov. 11, the day Don Cherry was fired for his reference to "you people"--the exact phrase that gets Joey Pro so agitated.

Ha! I thought the same thing too, when I saw it.

Neither apologized, either.

i think Russell Bufalino's only pseudonym in the film is "McGee" (used regularly in the book)

one of the low-key funniest things about this film was the use of allusive language, like when Frank keeps telling Hoffa, "they're concerned" and later "they're very concerned", the escalation within that is just hilarious to me. "No you don't understand they're really, really concerned" etc etc. I think it was said earlier but no one wants to say anything explicitly and no one ever does, which perhaps IRL is for plausible deniability but for the film works in a very chilling but poetic way, everyone wants to keep the dirty business as far away from their conscience as possible. So even Frank when he pulls the trigger on Hoffa it's almost like he can act like it was outside himself, a separate act which he was witnessing more than actually committing.

frank mentioned something about what mob guys really mean when they say they're "concerned" in that scene in the diner.

He did - it was the scene with Beansie from The Sopranos.

I'd have been such a lousy mobster. That shit needs to be spelled out for me, and maybe even confirmed by email.

i think even then though it's more like "concerned" means "really concerned" and "really concerned" means "desperate"

the clearest it gets is when they say "he's gotta go"

To Australia.

I'd have been such a lousy mobster. That shit needs to be spelled out for me, and maybe even confirmed by email.

"they're really concerned... they turned on their read-receipt notification..."