#18
Post
by therewillbeblus » Sun Feb 11, 2024 5:58 pm
Revisited this for the first time since I was a kid, and have to echo RV's sentiments - Scorsese's filmmaking skills are already so distinctively-formed, openly borrowing from his influences (a barfight shot like Drunken Angel; playful romantic flirtation inspired directly by Breathless) yet filtered through the voice and eyes of someone who knows it's real because he's lived it. De Niro's entrance no longer comes across as romanticized. He's an attractive loser because he gives a strong performance, but far less attractive when seeing this movie as an adult. He's established as irresponsible, trouble, dangerous, ignorant, all before we see him enter - and so the Stones' entrance carries an irony immediately alongside the shiny success of walking into a room with money and women and booze and smiles, like you've "arrived" - though as soon as the song stops, we realize the names are unknown, and nobody really cares who does what with who. I didn't realize until now just how early Scorsese started holding the attractive and dangerous sides of a trait of a character, or the promises of entering into a certain lifestyle or milieu.
Keitel is the opposite of De Niro - a man who wrestles in constant inner conflict between his shapeless, enigmatic, neglectful faith and his tactile, urgent, active milieu, where stimulation and commerce are too boisterous to hold space for the consideration of conscience. Does Keitel hold onto a relationship with his Higher Power because he's afraid he'd end up like Johnny Boy if he didn't, because he's not as sold on this lifestyle as his complacent peers and wants to maintain some space between himself and it, because he's self-flagellating in a way, or because he just cannot help but have that conscience and relate to it and engage with it? I love Tony's character. I think he's the heart of the film, in many respects. Keitel may be the most direct "Scorsese" stand-in we've gotten from the man, but it's all of the keen observances in Tony's behavior that enrich the world and demonstrate Scorsese's understanding of the tragedy of how males relate to one another. Tony's inhibitions wavering as he lashes out, sometimes with a spicy verbal or nonverbal expression, or soft bouts of aggression, communicate so much and yet so little. He's angry with his friend for fucking up, for the lack of reciprocity, or at others for the situations affecting him, or just frustrated with what he's observing. I think he represents Scorsese's own relationship with where he's humbly 'at' during this film. He has a part of him that's like Keitel, conflicted, knowing he always will be, somewhat okay with that and even prideful of it as the optimal way to consciously engage with the world, but suffering. He's got a De Niro part too, sure. But I think that immature part looks more like drunk Tony (who is arguably the most "mature" character in the film, not engaging too far to put himself in a dangerous position but always active and showing up in small ways for who he cares about around him), who at times feels like he's doing little kicks under the table to just try to connect a little bit more intimately with his male friends, or asking to be respected or considered or asked about more in reciprocity, or pleading his less mature friends to see the light he sees. And of course, when everything blows up, he's the only one not there. Is that a winner or a loser? The Streets-side would say winner, but Keitel is there, because his Faith-side won't let him not be. Scorsese will spend the rest of his career never lucidly answering for us what he sees as right or wrong there, because the only honesty is in showing the conflict.
Keitel's own keen observances - of the party while Johnny takes a rest on a gravestone, of the lady lighting a cigarette in a cafe as we end the film - signify a lot of Scorsese's own experience perceiving, and I think, underneath but never outright stated, wondering what the meaning of it all is. As he's aged, Scorsese has clarified for himself and us all that it's a path of constant evolution, including one's own meaning-making journey. Which is I think how Scorsese has viewed his peers all along, through a humanistic outlook of people locked in a concrete jungle social nightmare of prosperity and indulgence and competition, just reacting against so much stimulation all the time, primarily with fear masked as stoicism. Now looking back at this after watching him return to making films with increasingly clever self-reflexivity in older age, it feels like the completion of a circle of life rather than a simple evolution. I'm not looking at a filmography list at the moment, but I think Scorsese was closer to doing what he is now all the way back then, in more intimate ways he was in his most active, celebrated period of the 80s and 90s. This is a flavourful work, and I wish I'd revisited it earlier, as it'd've made my 70s list (I don't even know where it placed on my '73 list, but not high enough). I'm glad I'm back to considering this one of his best, as the impression had somehow faded over time.
Also, it's fun to realize that Scorsese's first use of the clever 'zoom-out to tonal-change/thematic reveal' was the inverse of the incredible "drug physical comedy/horror crawl to the car"s set piece in Wolf of Wall Street: When Keitel prays to God in the climax only for his companions to laugh at him for talking to himself as they face active threats overwhelming any presence God may have - and yet deflating any gravitas in favor of protective levity
