Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Sprawling, untidy inspiration
Martin Scorsese's latest film, which I saw a couple of nights ago, doesn't leave me with the impression that it was a crap film. I remember parts of it with pleasure, and others with the sort of wincing, guilty pleasure you feel at the end of a particularly nasty horror film. But I remember it. I am interested about the characters. If it had been substandard work, as so many people are saying, why do I feel this way?

Gangs of New York is undoubtedly sprawling and untidy. Salon points out that it's as if Scorsese had become lost in the grime-stained playground of his imagination for too long, wanting to revel in the multiplicity of characters (there are no computer-generated crowds, and the cast is huge) and the length of time it takes (nearly three hours). But I incline more towards the New York Times's review. To my way of thinking, the general epic scope is indeed akin to the films of DW Griffith, and there was definitely a feeling throughout the film that, while perhaps the shooting and scripting didn't always mould to a satisfying story like plasticwrap over glass, the style and scope was there to provide a spectacle in and of itself.

Many critics will disagree with me, I know. But I didn't even find Amsterdam, Leonardo Di Caprio's character, awful. Of course, he wasn't impressive. But then, he wasn't meant to be. Amsterdam, the son of the gang leader Priest Vallon (solidly and calmly played by Liam Neeson) who is murdered nastily at the start, only returns vengefully to the Five Points district after some years, and as such is like a fish half-in, half-out of the water at a time when he most needs to glide, silent and deadly, towards his intended victim.


William Cutting
His intended victim, William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting, is where the film really starts to fall apart and cohere at the same time. Dealing with the falling-apart first, Di Caprio can't stand up against older actors too well anyway, and Amsterdam isn't scripted to confront him. Instead, he woos him, scared, rather than waiting to reveal his hand. This isn't bad acting but rather a bad situation. (The worst most obvious slips Di Caprio makes during the film's entire length are slips of accent only.)

Now, to the coherence. Daniel Day-Lewis returns with one eye of porceain and one of glare and twinkle, and a voice which has been marinaded in bourbon, tobacco and grit for at least a few months. Standing so tall his character seems precarious, tottering badly at the end as intended, Day-Lewis is the true nucleus of the plot. Around his sun orbit Jim Broadbent, acting well as corrupt local politician William Tweed in his first Hollywood outing since Moulin Rouge, and John C. Reilly (of Magnolia fame). Cameron Diaz slips around tartly, thieving from the plush neighbourhoods before subsiding disappointingly into the story's love-interest, Jenny Everdeane.

All in all, it's sprawling, some characterisation is untidy, but it's not bad. People are used to thinking of Scorsese as a god who can do no wrong - or if not that, exactly, then at least as someone who is higher up there than most. So what if he wants to sprawl occasionally? Does that make this film bad, simply because of that? No. It's absolutely no worse than, for example, Gladiator. It's a lot better than The Two Towers, purely in terms of plot, characterisation and acting. And cinematographically, it's a dream. Before you buy into what the critics are all saying, go see for yourself. This is a big-screen must-see.

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