One of those days where there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interesting stuff out there. So, I turn film critic. Look how clever and profound I am!
I am currently watching The Departed in stages, due to the fact that I can't watch it while the kids are awake. The latest Martin Scorcese gangster film, based upon a Japanese film, The Departed examines the parallel lives of a corrupt Massachusetts State Police officer in hack to southie gangster Frank Costello and an undercover cop who is so far inside Costello's organization that, in the end, he's the only one Costello trusts. One thing to note about this film is the prevalence of death - from family and friends of the main characters to anonymous bloody corpses to, in the end, just about everyone (the ending is like Hamlet or Macbeth with everyone dying off). There isn't a single weak performance in the film; even Leonardo DiCaprio, whom I thought was channeling Ray Liotta's performance in Goodfellas the first time I saw The Departed, gives an outstanding performance as a fundamentally good man caught through his dedication to his job in a situation that leaves his judgment and sense of himself impaired. Matt Damon, playing the corrupt cop, is so sleazy I always wonder how his girlfriend, played by Vera Farmiga, can't see through him.
Of course, she does in a way. In an intersection of lives that seems far-fetched but only because we don't realize how close both men are to one another, DiCaprio sleeps with Farmiga - a state-employed psychiatrist who counsels both police officers and convicts on probation - in a scene using as background music Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". I told Lisa last night how clever Scorcese was in doing that because it is the one moment in the lives of both these characters filled with unabashed honesty. Each does so, I think, for his and her own reasons, but they are each as far from numb, for those brief moments, as can be. They are making love because they are each feeling too much, and face lives in which they cannot let their feelings show - DiCaprio cannot let his real identity or feelings show if he wants to live; Farmiga cannot let Damon know she is disappointed in Damon's sexual inadequacy, or the fleeting thought (confirmed later in the movie) that he isn't the superstar cop he pretends. Each wounded - DiCaprio forces Farmiga to admit she not only does lie, but would continue to do so (not the characteristics one would want in a psychotherapist) - and trapped, they find a few minutes of honest emotional and physical solace in each other.
Subsequent to this particular scene, Dicaprio learns that the levels of deception and subterfuge run even deeper than was previously imagined. The web of lies, and the inexorable flow of events toward what can only be understood as the inevitable result of all the lies and betrayal, creates a situation in which the choices open to the characters become limited. DiCaprio faces the possibility of redemption through the ultimate heroic act; Damon faces not just death, which he would welcome, but humiliation, which he does not wish to face. In a turn of events, Damon becomes the hero, while Dicaprio dies, his identity (but not his suffering) acknowledged only post mortem, only to face his own death not with courage (which he does not have) but resignation.
One question the film does not answer is this - at what point do we untangle the webs of deceit that ensnare our lives? Is it even possible? While using the extreme circumstances of mob life and the necessary deception of undercover police work as a context, like Goodfellas and Bringing Out The Dead, Scorcese uses unusual circumstances to force us to look at the ways all the qualities and virtues we hold in high esteem, and the vices we abhor, are far more complex than we think, and exist within contexts in which they can look exactly like their opposite. Do any of us truly live lives of virtue and integrity, so unsullied by the necessary restrictions and limits of all the larger forces and contexts of our lives that we can look ourselves and our loved ones in the eye without fear or a sense of our own viciousness? Both Damon and DiCaprio display loyalty, betrayal, a tendency towards violence and a desire to not be sullied by violence, love for a woman while not being able to fully consummate that love (Damon physically, DiCaprio by not being present), and a desire to have the webs of deceit and all the tangled threads of lies and betrayal torn off, so each can be who they see themselves as - DiCaprio as just another state police officer, Damon as the hero wunderkind who saves the day for everyone. Of course, that great equalizer, the star of this movie - death - is the only real truth, the only thing that unwinds all those knots and cords and leave all the characters the same - a bloody corpse whose final identity is nothing more than the sum total of other people's stories about them.
Our identity, it seems, no matter how hard we try, is in the hands of those who recall us after we become the departed.
Virtual Tin Cup
