Martin Scorsese

I have a very strange dynamic at work when it comes to Martin Scorsese. Which is to say, I have a very great admiration and respect for him as a filmmaker! . . . Though I don’t really care for many of his movies. I respect him as a filmmaker because he pours his heart and soul into his movies, because they exemplify his passion, because they come from the heart. And I’ll go see a movie of his because . . . very simply, it’s a Martin Scorsese picture!

But his landmark films—Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Casino, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Gangs of New York—none of them really did anything for me. I did, however, like The Aviator (I thought that should have won Best Picture at the 2004 Academy Awards over Million Dollar Baby, which is another film that didn’t do anything for me) and really enjoyed Bringing Out the Dead, so I guess it’s kind of a hit-and-miss thing with Scorsese’s films. (For the record, I haven’t seen The Departed yet.)

To this day, I know many people are still outraged that Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, and Goodfellas didn’t take home the Best Picture Oscar (losing to Ordinary People, Rocky, and Dances with Wolves, respectively), and I personally am angered that Clint Eastwood beat out Scorsese for the directing Oscar in 2004, because The Aviator was a far more epic and ambitious picture than Million Dollar Baby, which I felt was a bit of a manipulative and overrated film. I’m guessing that Scorsese’s best hopes for an Oscar statuette will be an honorary Oscar, just like Robert Altman received. (Hell, Hitchcock only received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 1968 Oscars. He never took home a Best Director statuette, either.)

As to Scorsese’s movies, I’m firmly in the camp that The Godfather duet (you’ll note I didn’t say “trilogy”) was the quintessential Mafia story, and that Goodfellas will never hold a candle to it. That’s not to say that I felt Goodfellas was a bad movie; it just didn’t really do anything for me. Having said that, though, Joe Pesci seriously deserved his Oscar for this film. When I watched Casino, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if Scorsese was trying to somehow remake Goodfellas, because so many elements seemed to carry over (not the least of which was Joe Pesci essentially reprising his Oscar-winning role, only under a different character name).

Raging Bull, widely felt to the best movie of the 80s, was another movie I was kind of indifferent to. Again, not a bad movie by any means, and Robert De Niro richly deserved his Oscar (at the same time setting the gold standard for physical transformation for a film role; he looked like hell when 50 pounds overweight). Though I would say this was a well-made movie, rather than having a superior story (though I’m sure many many people would disagree with me on that). Filming in black and white was a clever touch, and De Niro and Joe Pesci made an excellent pairing as brothers (they do have good chemistry on screen). Though I also think it was a good choice to give Ordinary People the Best Picture Oscar that year over Raging Bull, because what made that film so powerful was that the story could literally happen to anyone, that the characters were indeed ordinary people going through ordinary life, and how such ordinary people deal with unimaginable tragedy. The only thing I would have changed was, I would have given Scorsese the Best Director Oscar instead of Robert Redford, because as I said, Raging Bull was a well-made movie (it even got an Oscar for film editing).

Taxi Driver kinda depressed me, and I had a hard time relating to De Niro’s Travis Bickle descending into madness. Though his trademark line, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?” couldn’t have been done by anyone else—just like nobody but Peter Finch could have cried out, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”

I personally would like to see Scorsese do another De Niro-Pesci pairing, but I must admit, I’m a little bothered by Leonardo DiCaprio becoming Scorsese’s golden boy now. I will admit, he was very very good in The Aviator, and it gave me newfound respect for DiCaprio as an actor, but I still can’t seem to shake his pretty-boy image from Titanic.

But all that said, I hope to go into The Departed and feel good about it afterwards, much like I felt good about The Aviator afterwards. I have such respect for this director, and I want to like more of his movies, but only time and further viewings can tell.