In this year's Oscars, "The Irishman" in ten mentions, Martin Scorsese's complex expression sitting in the audience became a gimmick to burst the major social networks.
Speculation has been made about the reason for Martin's loss. One said that Hollywood bullied Martin for being old and had the right to speak; one said that this was a deliberate suppression of Netflix by the veteran cinema capital; and another said that the industry deliberately retaliated against the "Marvel theme park theory"...
These statements are inevitably biased. It is true that Martin Scorsese is highly respected in the American film industry, but it is also an objective fact that he is not welcomed by the Oscars. Since 1988, Martin has been nominated for the Oscars and has always been in a state of nomination + escort. In order to alleviate the anger, he also attacked the Oscar jury with a gun and a stick in "Casino Storm". It was not until 2006 that he finally won a small golden man with "Infernal Walker", but he was still ridiculed by many people as a "consolation award".
Stills from Casino Storm
Behind the grainlessness of "The Irishman", it reflects the continuous decline of the gangster genre. Although it has created glory in the 20th century, since entering the 21st century, the decline of gangster films has become more and more obvious, and it has gradually become unsustainable. After all, art comes from life, gangsters are in decline in reality, and movies cannot escape the fate of disappearing.
Gangster fate
The rise of any form of criminal organization is inseparable from the word "poor". The United States is a country of immigrants, in the early 1930s, Italians, Irish, Hispanics and other a large number of poor immigrants influx, their rights, income and even personal safety can not be guaranteed, huddled together to warm up, the formation of gangs is the only choice.
The essence of the gang is to establish an underground order different from the law, to briefly resist the chaos around it. However, this underground order is inherently unstable, and failure is its fate.
Art comes from life. Classic gangster films show this sense of fatalism. Specifically, there are three ways to do this: collapse, betrayal, and peace.
"Collapse" reflects the incompatibility between the protagonist's values and the external environment. This is true of Little Caesar and Scarface. In Scarface, the protagonist, although briefly successful, takes control of the drug market. However, because he could not find the meaning of life, he became moody, offended everyone, and was eventually assassinated.
"Betrayal" discusses the human weakness of "sharing hardships and not getting rich together", involving the tightening of laws and the collapse of the old value system of gangsters. Representative works include Martin Scorsese's "Good Guys", de Palma's "Dawn of the Mistress" and so on. In "The Dawn of the Lover", after the protagonist was released from prison, he wanted to live a small life with peace of mind, but he was framed by a lawyer friend, and there was a kind of sadness of "every time he slaughters more dogs, his negative heart is a reader"; "Good Guys" goes deeper and directly points out that "no one can be trusted, including myself".
"Good Guys" poster
"Zhao'an" is the highest form of betrayal. The betrayer is no longer a concrete individual, but a government and society, the most desperate and the most fatalistic. Therefore, whether chinese or foreign, the most classic gangster-themed works have the "Zhao'an" element in it.
In "Water Margin", the heroes and good men are seduced by the imperial court, made meritorious deeds, and are recruited, but at the end they are unloaded and killed by donkeys. In "Once Upon a Time in America", Max colludes with the police, betrays Fa Xiao, and changes his identity to start over. But the political struggle fails, the old story is turned over, and the only way to self-determination is self-determination; vito to Mike in "The Godfather" seeks refuge in politics and the church all the way. Although Mike finally succeeded in landing, his closest relatives were either assassinated or voluntarily left, and ended up alone, which was equivalent to negating his life's efforts.
Stills from The Godfather 3
This "Zhao'an" complex corresponds to the "institutionalization" in the ten major script categories. The implicit value is that no matter how hard the individuals at the bottom try, they cannot escape fate.
Micro and deconstructed
In the late 1980s, the decline of pure gangster films with criminals as the protagonists was due to the large-scale implementation of the RICO Act ("Anti-Organized Crime Act") in the United States; on the other hand, multinational corporations gradually integrated individual merchants, which seriously squeezed the living space of gangsters - Ridley Scott's "American Gangsters" Began, the old boss walked into an electrical chain business, sighed the world, and even shouted "Why did they cut down the middlemen". It seems to be complaining for the people, but the implication is that no one can be found to collect protection fees.
Stills from the opening of "Gangster America"
The individual fate in the movie has finally become the overall reality.
The image of the old gangster gradually withdrew from the stage of history, but violence was inevitably needed in the film. Thus the villain image of "the thug hired by the mysterious transnational capitalist" began to appear, and merged with the popular kung fu films at that time. This image is often found in the films of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Jason Statham and others. For example, in "Red Zone", in order to grab a bag of diamonds, the villain instructs a group of Russian killers in black suits to blow up the car in the street - this kind of image caters to the audience's panic about transnational capital, and the authenticity is negligible.
Because there is no need to consider authenticity, "Robber Movies" and "Killer Movies" such as "Thief Line", "Fast and Furious", "This Killer Is Not Too Cold" are also gradually popular. Compared with the old-school gangster films with accents, words, costumes, and factions, the audience is obviously much more tolerant of robbers and killers, as long as the characters are handsome enough, cool enough, and the scenes are big enough. The 007 series has no Cold War background blessing, and the more it is filmed, the more outrageous it is, and the logic is the same.
The film needs violence, so for the time being, the concept of gangsters is borrowed, and rationality is put aside first - in this sense, gangster films have gradually changed from a mainstream genre film to an embellishment of the plate.
Being marginalized is not the worst. When a class completely withdraws from the stage of history, but still occupies a place in popular culture, then the fate that awaits it can only be deconstructed.
The Coen brothers and Quentin are best at deconstructing. "Miller's Crossroads" is the beginning of this deconstruction, the protagonist's motivation is unclear, there is no long-term goal and worldview, and only passively responds to external stimuli - in fact, it is only borrowed from the skin of a gangster genre film, and the core explores existentialism.
The Cohen brothers love to joke with the audience. In the second season of the American drama "Ice Storm", which he supervised, the gangster boss did not show his image, appeared in the form of a black shadow on the wall, and gave orders slowly and methodically, which was quite mysterious and powerful.
At the end, when the rival gang is finally wiped out, and the omnipotent black killer is full of hopes that he can be promoted, the boss finally arrives late— a plain-looking middle-aged bald man — assigns the killer an office and a computer, and asks him to change his hairstyle and learn some accounting knowledge. After the boss leaves, the killer's confused expression constitutes a wonderful irony.
Stills from the end of season 2 of Ice Storm
The gangsters in the Coen brothers' lens still have a traditional sense of honor, and the reason why they appear funny is only because the times have changed and are incompatible with the surrounding environment. Quentin went further, not only did not give the slightest respect, but added a lot of insults, directly negating all the cultural foundations that maintained the gang.
In "True Romance", "Italians are the descendants of niggers" through the mouth of an old policeman, a prostitute kills the gang executive played by James Gandofini; in "Kill Bill", Uma Thurman destroys the entire Japanese gang with a Japanese knife like chopping melons and chopping vegetables; "Pulp Fiction" Is full of ridicule, the gangsters have no motives to speak of, and the behavior and words are almost idiotic...
Stills from True Romance
Deconstructing cultural phenomena in an insulting way, Quentin can be said to be unique in the world. For him, in addition to being jealous of the two bottom lines of Western political correctness, "discrimination against blacks" and "whitewashing Nazis", the rest can be insulted and deconstructed.
"Non-fiction"
"Deconstruction" requires a strange talent, not everyone can do. Quentin and the Coen brothers both won the Palme d'Or and are a rare film genius. After entering the 21st century, for most directors, gangster films have become completely chicken ribs and tasteless. But as one of the best themes to present the secret of "sex and violence" in commercial films, it is a pity to abandon it.
As a result, since the late 1990s, a number of non-fiction biopics have appeared, representative works such as "Pride in the World", "American Drug Lord", "American Gangster", "Kill the Irishman", "Gaudy Biography" and so on.
Promotional poster for "Pride In The World", the film tells the story of casino tycoon Ben Siegel of the last century
Literary and art practitioners always have a superstition that non-fiction works based on real events and characters will naturally surpass fictional films in terms of strength and criticism. But this is just an illusion. One of the greatest meanings of the story is to give life a regularity. Fiction, non-fiction or non-fiction, both involve the process of disrupting and reorganizing fragments of life, and there are no obvious boundaries. In contrast, nonfiction is only more restricted.
Take "American Gangster" as an example, which is based on the real life of African-American drug lord Frank Lucas, and the director's ambition can be glimpsed from the title. In order to create an epic sense, the film begins with the squeeze of multinational companies on individual merchants, and cuts to the Vietnamese battlefield in the middle. In order to show the destructive effect of the Vietnam War on american social morality, many shots also pay tribute to "Apocalypse Now".
The first half of the film is decent, and the biggest failure is at the end: the police arrest the drug dealer, and the drug dealer confesses to his accomplices. Years later, the drug dealer was released, and the policeman walked side by side through the colorful streets of New York with coffee in hand — a reality that was too harmonious. Gangster movies can actually shoot a happy ending, naturally it can't be great.
Stills from the end of "Gangster America"
Not only that, but most non-fiction gangster movies also have the problem of "greed". For example, "American Drug Lord" and "Kill that Irishman" want to talk about childhood shadows, and want to explore broken family relationships, and show the successful fall history of the protagonist. The journal is generally pulled down the timeline and has no focus.
The reason why "The Godfather" and "Once Upon a Time in America" are classics is that they use the technique of suspense films, focusing on one question throughout: Who is our enemy? Who betrayed us? The audience's attention is drawn to a point, but inadvertently accepts the details of the era behind it.
In the early years of Hong Kong gangster movies, once also loved to use real people as the model, such as "Lame Hao", "Leiluo Biography", "Dragon Brother and Tiger Brother of the Four Families" and other films are quite popular. But the key to its common success is "fast.". It has only been a decade since the real events occurred to be put on the screen, and the fundamentals of society have not changed. The audience enters the cinema and empathizes with the hero and good man in the film, but also completes a memorial to his life.
After entering the 21st century, the times have changed, and the audience has also changed a stubble. At this time, remake "Tree Trick" and "Chasing Dragons", the taste is not quite right. After all, society is no longer the society it once was.
The Irishman
Martin Scorsese also likes to find inspiration from non-fiction in gangster films, but finally caught up with the late 70s-90s bus of gangster culture from boom to decline (the RICO Act was introduced in 1970), which is also a manifestation of "fast".
But now that it's 2020, the union fights, the assassination of Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs are just a few empty symbols in the textbook for most viewers. The sense of substitution is almost impossible to talk about.
Stills from The Irishman
In addition, although the Irishman is three and a half hours long, it is quite cramped for the amount of information carried by the original book (almost the entire contemporary political history of the United States). The genre of this book is probably more suitable for dramas than movies.
However, Martin loves to use voiceovers to advance the narrative when making films. Films such as "Good Guys" and "Casino Storm" are handled in this way. This technique can greatly "expand" the film and increase the amount of information. But the disadvantages are also obvious: the audience's sense of substitution is seriously weakened, and it is impossible to follow the emotions of the protagonist all the time, and can only passively observe this strange world with the protagonist's line of sight.
In this way, the audience's direct perception is that the protagonist himself has a weak sense of motivation, has been pushed forward by external forces, and what choice to do is "no way" until the final collapse. It's like the famous sentence at the end of "The Great Gatsby":
So, we fought hard, like a boat against the current, constantly being swept back by the waves and returning to the past.
This kind of regret is very different from "Once Upon a Time in America" and "The Godfather". Whether it is recruitment or betrayal, after all, it is a defeat after hard work. Everyone has something they want but can't get, so they can understand this complex. But "The Irishman" is full of a kind of regret to see through the red dust, almost from the philosophical level to deny the meaning of life and struggle - anyway, people live a lifetime, after all, the dust returns to dust, the soil returns to the soil.
In fact, this negative energy sign was also shown in "Good Guys" 30 years ago, but Ray Lyota's exuberance still masked the frustration of the whole film. But in "The Irishman", Martin insists on using Joe Percy, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino, three veterans who are nearly 240 years old and have problems with their actions, and do not hesitate to use the costly "facial age reduction" technology - this persistence is actually to make the technology intertextual with the film's ideas.
It is true that this may be the truth of life, but the audience watches the movie more or less to seek the meaning of life, not to be poured a basin of cold water on the hood. This is probably why Martin Scorsese has been less popular with oscars with strong commercial attributes.
Not to mention that the original Irishman is self-narrated—the journalist would only do so when the means of cross-validation were lacking. In the face of reporters, Frank Sheeran blurs his selfish desires and pushes everything into the environment, with a clear element of excusing himself in it.
As a whole genre of back-to-light, "The Irishman" has been pinned high hopes on countless nostalgic fans. But outdated, frustrated, and limited in genre. These are the three major hard wounds that "The Irishman" can't get around. The jury did not give any face, although it was unexpected, but it was also reasonable.
However, whether it wins the award or not, the appearance of this film is the luck of the audience. Since the emergence of the film industry, there have been films made specifically for children, young people, and middle-aged people, but few people have made movies from the perspective of the elderly.
The most valuable thing about "The Irishman" is that it fills this gap and reproduces an era. Netflix paid nearly $200 million for this — a loss-making deal that no one will ever do again.