At 209 minutes, audiences and their bladders may be reluctant to see The Irishman in the cinema. Well that’s lucky for them, because from November 27, Scorsese’s latest will be on Netflix. If, however, you want to see the film on the big screen, it is indeed worthy of the endurance watching it in the cinema demands. 

 

As with many films, the budget for The Irishman isn’t available to the public, but industry insiders have suggested that it could have cost Netflix from $170 million to over $200 million. Scorsese has been attempting to make this film for quite some time, and it is very artistically promising  that Netflix (and perhaps the other streamer giants) are willing to invest in auteur passion projects that studios are beginning to snub. Why did it cost so much to make? 

 

Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino play the same characters across different decades, and this is not shown via stand-ins or make-up, but through digital re-aging. After watching the first two trailers, I was very worried about how this would look, as the effects didn’t seem finished, with De Niro’s skin looking a little too shiny and his eyes a little too lifeless—think old Arnie fighting young Arnie in Terminator Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015), or if you have good taste, think baby-faced Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War (the Russo Brothers, 2016). Then the running time was released: 3 hours and 29 minutes. If they couldn’t get it right in the trailers, how on earth could they keep it consistent for such a long film?!

 

The visual effects are perfect. Not once did I feel like I was watching a digital re-visualisation of these actors. Instead, The Irishman looks as if it has been filmed over the space of decades, à la Linklater, with Scorsese sneaking time and actors from his other projects over the span of his career to gradually piece together what would become The Irishman. The visual re-aging is that good. So good in fact, that I want to draw your attention to it; it’s not that noticeable and the fact that it’s not noticeable just shows how successful this digital artistry is.

 

The story of The Irishman is about Frank Sheeran (De Niro), a truck driver who is introduced to the world of gangsters through middle-man, Russell Bufalino (Pesci). It doesn’t take long for Frank to become a mob enforcer after making this acquaintance, originally seduced by the world of violence during his time served in Italy in WWII. Frank becomes integral to mob operations, not just around his home in Philly, but nationwide, cosying up to a labour union leader with connections, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). The film depicts the rise and fall of this mob world, the various characters that come in and out of it, and the actions and behaviours that define where Frank ends up.

 

The direction is exquisite; Scorsese is on top form balancing the different time periods to tell Frank’s story. The film begins with the camera moving in a manner evocative of the Copacabana dynamic long-take in Goodfellas (1990), but in this film, the audience travels through a care home and towards the elderly figure of Frank, sat in a wheelchair, alone and talking to himself. No matter how often the film can appear to glorify the thrilling violence of the mob, this opening scene shows us that this is the bleak, lonely end for a man like Frank. There is no closure for him, and Scorsese instead spends the closing section of the film meditating on guilt, aging, and the consequences of Frank’s lifelong behaviour on those closest to him, and how ultimately that neglect of emotional attention will always end in loneliness. If at times, this part of the film seems like it drags, I believe it is meant to; Frank’s final days are rambling, empty whispers of a life previously occupied by thrilling decadence and energy. It makes sense that this energy fatigues.

 

An issue I do have with the film, however, is that the women of the film are voiceless. They stay on the periphery of frames and scenes, merely passive onlookers to the violence and action of the film, which is always shown through the men. Russell’s wife, Carrie (Kathrine Narducci), is referred to as a “mob queen” by Frank, but we see no evidence of this other than as a consequence of her progeny, and her seemingly passive acceptance of her husband’s life choices. Frank’s daughter, Peggy (Anna Paquin) says a lot with her eyes, as does the child version of the same character, excellently played by Lucy Gallina, but neither actors are given the opportunity to perform with any dialogue. When the film is filled with such smart, witty dialogue and only gives it to the men, the women become secondary, almost, reductively, a decorative part of the set. The film is about Frank, the Irishman, and thus you can argue that the focus should almost entirely be on him, but other peripheral characters such as Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel) and Felix ‘Skinny Razor’ DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale) are given more attention than the women. This lack of development for the female characters is in spite of the fact that Frank believes the women in his life are very important to him. At one point, the elderly Frank says to one of his daughters that he did everything, all of it, to protect them. She isn’t convinced, and neither should we be, but we should be able to see evidence that the girls meant so much to Frank that he would believe this to be true, which, because of their underdevelopment as characters, we don’t.

 

Nevertheless, The Irishman is an excellent film, that is paced with the expert precision we have come to expect from Scorsese’s gangster films. He shows us the thrills and beauty of this dangerous world, but never neglects to communicate the obliterative destruction and tragedy it creates for the people who live within and around it.