Oh boy. This has been a long time coming. Martin Scorsese is one of my all-time heroes, and the fact that I'm even talking about The Irishman makes me so, so happy. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this film is even here. But it is, and my god, it's beautiful. The Irishman feels like the culmination of Scorsese's career, an absolute epic detailing the slow deterioration of the American gangster. In many ways, this is the other side of GoodFellas: a multi-decade spanning story about a man, a gang, a country and ultimately, the slow, quiet death that all of those things are doomed to. This is a quiet tragedy, spanning an entire lifetime of politics, violence and crime before a final act that is without a doubt one of the most sobering things I've seen this decade. This is absolutely, without a doubt one of Scorsese's best films, and it's just such an honour to be able to witness this. I knew very little about Jimmy Hoffa going in, apart from his involvement with the union, and the fact that nobody actually knows what happened to him.
The Irishman is a pretty notable film this year, and a huge part of that is the cast. De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano, Stephen Graham. Safe to say that a lineup like this is special, and they're all special in their own ways here. De Niro is sensational as Frank, who's as steely and stoic as his other tough guys, but with a tragic gravitas that I've never seen from him before. We see everything from his perspective, and watching as he comes to terms with his numbingly tragic fate. He does so much with so little, every glare saying a thousand words. The final third especially features some absolutely stunning, deeply moving acting from a man who consistently gives some of the best performances ever. Pesci is also incredible, uncharacteristically quiet but like de Niro, that's what gives him such an edge. The supporting cast also give it socks, especially Anna Paquin, who's silence is absolutely intentional and truly damning. Stephen Graham is also rounding off a great year (WATCH THE VIRTUES) as a character who's so incendiary and thrillingly unpredictable. But somehow, somehow in a cast like this, there is a standout and it's Al Pacino, the absolute first among equals as Jimmy Hoffa. He's as exuberant and full of energy as he ever has been, a firecracker of a man whose actually ambiguous fate, less so in the film, is made so tragic because he's so damn likeable.
Scorsese is also firing on all cylinders, moving very slowly and deliberately, keeping his flourishes for very specific moments. His scope is incredibly wide here, capturing everything here, the big and the small, from the forces that shape a nation all the way down to one man's horrifying journey into a quietly unremarkable fate. There's no doubt here that he's 100% in control, and the thrill here comes from the fact that it's clear that he knows exactly what he's doing. For a filmmaker of his status, that might seem obvious, and for the uninitiated, it might just seem like more of the same, but this feels monumental, even for him, maybe in a way that his other films aren't. Particularly towards the home stretch, it feels that Scorsese is reflecting on some seriously bone deep stuff, carried off in a way that's so delicate but all the more powerful because of it. The length of this film seems to be a bit of a contentious issue in certain circles, but it really is necessary, and it cannot be watched in instalments. The Irishman takes its time getting where it needs to go, using every single minute and making those decades feel like they're going by. It takes a serious level of skill to make three and a half hours feel short, especially with a tone that's as dour as this film is. The level of control on display is absolutely crazy, and it's something that could only come from Scorsese and only at this point in his career, and the fact that this movie is made in this way with this cast is absolutely unbelievable, and it's without a doubt one of the best movies of the year
So yeah, I've actually been sitting on this review for a while now, because The Irishman is overwhelming cinema, and I definitely did not absorb everything in it on the first viewing, because how the hell can you? Much like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it puts you in this moment in time, reflecting everything in the era in one fell swoop, and tackling what matters now by covering the past. The Irishman touches on some timeless themes and ideas, and like the best films, it balances specific and universal elements, done in a way that only Scorsese can. The Irishman is not my favourite film of the year, but it does feel like an event in the way nothing else has in 2019. It's the kind of film that comes around very, very rarely. It's long, slow, and devastatingly quiet. It's a beautiful, beautiful tragedy and simply one of the most unmissable pieces of film in 2019
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