1
The New York Times published a long conversation between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, the two big men who said they were drawn to the sad tone of the film The Irishman, "these characters — the ones who survived anyway — entered their twilight years, largely in solitude, thinking about how history will remember them." This "sadness" is largely given by director Martin Scorsese. The film lasts three and a half hours, with hours looking back at the first half of the life of Robert De Niro's gangster Frank Sheeran, telling how he assassinated his friend, Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the American Transportation Union. The film tries to reveal the truth, but the truth is uncertain, more like the one who lives to the end to become the only narrator of the "truth", so it becomes a film about how people and time coexist. The film only takes half an hour to tell the second half of Sheeran's life, the times that belong to them are scattered, the former tyrants have to submit to the laws of aging and time one by one, and only the memories buried deep in their hearts become the only comfort for their existence.
The film is based on former U.S. attorney Charles Brandt's crime documentary work "I Heard You Painted house", and the Chinese version was changed to "The Irishman" in order to rub the movie's popularity. It's a book that Brandt spent more than five years conducting investigative interviews. Much of the content is an interview with gangster Frank Sheeran, interspersed with Brandt's investigative materials and inquiries from other sources, in genres that fall somewhere between documentary literature and detective fiction. Of course, we cannot seek the final truth of the facts, but only present a "one-sided word", and it is by no means the confession or mourning of a dying person. In fact, "grief" is the tone Scorsese gives to the film, and it doesn't belong to the original.
In the original work, Sheeran's narration is more like the defense of a gangster, showing off that he can serve many gangster godfathers with ease and can live a peaceful life. His narration is selective, his confession is hypocritical, his redemption is self-consoling, and he is unwilling to face aging—this is more prominent in the film than in the book, in which the murderous Sheeran chooses his own coffin, his own graveyard, which is somewhat ironic. He longed for a metal coffin, for a tombstone to leave writing, for an earthen burial rather than a cremation in ashes, as if his life had not ended until his death.
He finally understands why Russell went to church—the original and the film retain this vivid detail—and in prison, Sheeran asks Russell where he's going in a wheelchair. Russell said to go to church, and he said to Sheeran, "Don't laugh, sooner or later you'll go too." At this time, a narration of Sheeran was added to the film: "He went to the church first, then to the hospital, and finally to the cemetery." ”
This detail is full of irony and absurdity, and Sheeran also began to go to the priest to confess selectively—these details showed Sheeran's hypocrisy, that he would do whatever it took to keep alive, that he could accept Brandt's interview and revisit the glorious resume of his memory. This is his own secret memory, he does not want to repent, more to make people remember him.
2
On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa, a leading figure in the history of the American union, suddenly disappeared. The FBI dispatched more than two hundred agents to investigate the case, invested tens of billions of dollars, formed more than seventy volumes of files, and finally identified seven gangsters as suspects, including Sheeran. Hiran is Hoffa's close friend, assistant, bodyguard, close as family, but this is also suspicious, because Hoffa is very suspicious, outsiders are difficult to approach, and only familiar friends can hurt him. Over the years, countless books and studies have tried to confirm who the real culprit is, but it is only during Brandt's interviews and investigations of Sheeran that this deep-buried event begins to surface.
The interview began in 1991, shortly after Sheeran's release, and he was 75 years old. The interview lasted for several years until his death in December 2003. Brandt said in the book: "I spent a lot of time wandering around with this Irishman, meeting gangsters, driving to Detroit to find the scene where Hoffa was missing, traveling to Baltimore to find the scene of Sheeran's two underground deals, meeting With Sheeran's lawyers, family and friends. Gain insight into the man behind this story. In order to absorb the material, I made countless phone calls and traveled to countless places to collect information. ”
Sheeran not only confessed to killing Hoffa, but also recounted his gangster career: he was a World War II veteran, a war hero, a truck driver, a senior leader of the International Brotherhood of Truckers, a deputy of the Italian gangster family, a convicted felon, a gangster killer - a special "lacquer house man", a legendary figure who dared to be bold and never betrayed his friends, he was also the father of four daughters, a beloved grandfather, and so on. These complex identities combined are a complete person.
Many of the details in the book are worth pondering. For example, Sheeran recalls the moment he participated in World War II and liberated the Dachau concentration camp: "We are not deaf to the heinous crimes of the concentration camp, but we are still shocked by everything in front of us and the pungent stench. Its tragic horror is deeply imprinted in the mind, and its bloody and rotten smell lingers in the memory from time to time... Over the years, this past often evokes my memories, dreams and tragic wars. It's just that these dreams are intertwined with what I did after the war." In addition to the killings of the war, Sheeran assassinated more than twenty people after the war, including his friend Hoffa.
Brandt gave it to him for correction when the manuscript was about to be completed. Sheeran specifically asked to point out that he was single when he was intimate with women other than his wife. He wanted to tell others that he was a good man who traditionally cared for his family and never picked flowers and weeds outside. He cares a lot about what others say about him, such as his loyalty to his feelings, his knife in his friend's ribs, never betraying his friends, and assassination is just a way for him to prove his ability and reliability. During his life, he prided himself on meeting two noble friends, Russell Buffalino, the leader of the Mafia family, and Jimmy Hoffa. The former gave him a sense of honor and underworld status, while the latter gave him a proper job and income, guaranteeing him a way to support his family. But when Hoffa eventually stumbled upon the mafia, Russell was uncompromising to let Sheeran take out "our friends."
Both in the film and in the original book, the details of Sheeran's shooting of Hoffa are in place, and Hoffa does not realize that he was the closest friend to him who had always been loyal to him when he was shot. The book also mentions that someone had already made preparations before luring Hoffa into the room, such as the front hall of the room was laid with linoleum so as not to leave blood. Sheeran shot from behind, at just the right distance, and the blood didn't splash on his body. While cleaning up the body, he took off the jewelry from Hoffa's body, packed up the linoleum and the corpse gun, and sent it to a nearby meat processing plant for unloading eight pieces, and finally sent to an industrial incineration plant to burn it. In Sheeran's recollection, you can feel how fascinated he was by his mastery of these details, and he can still remember so many details twenty years later. For him, it meant professionalism and effectiveness, and he did his job meticulously. Or rather, he remains loyal to his friends, but only to his only friend and boss, Russell.
3
For me, reading the original "The Irishman", I admired Scorsese's adaptation even more, reaffirming the greatness of the film version. De Niro's insight into the idea that he was the first to recommend the work to Scorsese, coupled with the clever writing of Steven Zerian, who won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for "Schindler's List", reinforces the conviction that this is a great gangster movie that can be proven without time. It may be strange to summarize it this way, but I would like to say that it is the film that confirms the literary nature of the original work.
I've always had a point of view that great films have a literary character, and this literary nature is reflected in the director's control of the narrative and the creation of details. The film's details are more prominent than the original, in the original Sheeran recalled that after Hoffa's disappearance, he returned home to see his second daughter Peggy watching the report on the disappearance on TV, "From her eyes, I saw a certain disgust ... It was August 3, 1975, and I haven't seen Peggy or spoken to her since." This detail becomes a stroke of genius in the film, and the Peggy, who has almost no lines, becomes the eye of conscience that Sheeran cannot escape. Sheeran has no remorse for anything he has done, he gives interviews, reveals secrets, but just wants to confirm his life's achievements, he does not want to repent, he wants to get salvation, to find a good head in the afterlife. But Peggy's presence became a huge black hole in his conscience.
The original "The Irishman" is nothing more than a gangster's own glorious resume, and it is impossible to verify whether it is true or false. But Scorsese turned it into a cinematic legend about time, aging and memory. At the time of filming the film, Martin Scorsese was 77, Robert De Niro was 76, Al Pacino was 79, Joe Pesci was 76 and Harvey Keitel was 80. Whoever these people are, they can be called the first-hand witnesses of the history of Hollywood's golden age films. Looking back at the photos of these old men in the same frame, you will have a different taste, real life and movie stories can almost be said to be intertextual. At the end of the movie, the lonely killer recalls the past in the nursing home, fearing getting old, afraid of loneliness, longing for family companionship, longing for the sun, in fact, it is also a portrayal of their reality: in the movie, no matter how good the killer is, no matter how great the actor and director in reality, the golden age that belongs to you will eventually pass.
Time is the most ruthless killer.