Rant - The Departed - Best Director???

Did I see the same movie everyone else saw? The Departed? The Martin Scorsese film that is supposed to be a return to form for the director, and is now the film that, after his win at the Directors Guild, 86% ensures that he will win the Oscar for it?

Huh?

Don’t get me wrong, I liked The Departed, but this is the man who gave the world Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. Up against those flicks, The Departed is the younger brother who gets beat up constantly by his stronger older siblings. Hell, even Gangs of New York and especially The Aviator (while less revolutionary) could kick The Departed’s ass!!!

At his best Scorsese brings a level of emotional and visual intensity to American cinema that is remarkably kinetic. Sure he can be subtle, but I love the Scorsese films that still feel like the chaotic work of that wild, independent twenty year old. His greatest movies have scenes that are legendary. I can’t shake the experience of watching Taxi Driver for the first time, and don’t get me started on how amazing that first shot of Raging Bull is.

I saw The Departed during its first weekend, and I got a kick out it. It’s fun, and could have been great, but it starts taking all sorts of stupid twists and turns, and suddenly the last half hour is this emotionless, clinical epilogue. Again, like Little Miss Sunshine *** out of 4 stars. I just didn’t feel any passion in the movie. For the first time in a long, long time (not since The Color of Money) I felt like Scorsese was kind of phoning it in.

There are great moments to be sure: Dropkick Murphy’s I’m Shipping Up to Boston playing over the opening credits, a great cat and mouse chase between Leo and Matt, and Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb advancing the unspoken sexual tension between Leo and Vera Farmiga. And it’s positively criminal to me that Matt Damon’s performance has been virtually forgotten come awards season (especially with all the strange love given to co-star Mark Wahlberg).

But for all its wonderful setup, the ending is amazingly flat, and even the best scenes aren’t going to be remembered when people talk of great Scorsese moments.

I want Scorsese to win an Oscar as much as the next fan, but it shouldn’t be a pity award given because he lost (unfairly..sure) several times in the past. There were some astonishingly well directed movies this year that have been tossed aside thanks to the Scorsese juggernaut. Both Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men have the energy and passion sadly missing from The Departed.

I suppose it’s just representative of the cautious thinking of the Academy. Back when Scorsese should have won for Taxi Driver, he wasn’t even nominated (John G. Avildsen won that year for Rocky), and he lost the Raging Bull award to Robert Redford for Ordinary People.

I suppose that means that whoever deserves it this year will end up winning ten or twenty years from now taking the award away from someone who deserves it more than them. Oh, awards.