This week @ the Byrd: The Departed
photo credit: Jake Lyell
I have never been a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, or Martin Scorsese. I’m sorry. The first two annoy me, and Gangs of New York got me a speeding ticket (well, it was really long and I was tired and irritated when we got out of the theater, so I drove home too fast and got pulled over). But even though Scorsese never reimbursed me for the ticket charges that I mailed to him, I reluctantly agreed to see The Departed anyway. I thought for sure that Scorsese’s latest vessel would be as overblown and empty as its own trailers made it seem, and I readied myself with lots of venomous words to spit out contemptuously as the credits rolled. You can see where this is going, can’t you? I ended up loving it so much that I can honestly say with all humility that this film is probably the best I’ve seen all year.
Not only did I love it, but every single person in the packed theater did also. How do I know? No one made a sound during the five thousand hours that passed from beginning to end. Everyone was too busy staring at the screen, afraid to look away in case they missed a plot twist, a jump cut, a text message, or a DiCaprio grimace. I was so tense that I felt a little embarrassed afterwards for being so easily manipulated into caring so much about what happens in a fictional world to fictional people.
I hid it well though, by focusing on how inappropriately and refreshingly comic the script is. Sakes alive, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg are funny, and they’re funny in a way that is really hard to pinpoint. So funny that you feel grateful to them for providing a distraction to the sickening violence and disregard for human life that comes with organized crime. There’s something about a frustrated, sweaty cop who feels so strongly about his job that he calls anyone a c-word who tries to get near his files.
I really wouldn’t have minded a little Daniel Day-Lewis, but the more I think about it, the more I can’t figure out where he would have fit in. He couldn’t have been the irreligious and revolting crime boss that Jack Nicholson was born to be*, and he couldn’t in a million years have played Matt Damon’s fresh-faced, cocky detective, assigned by his captain to find a rat and assigned by his real captain to be the rat. And I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t think of anybody who would have done a better (or more surprising) job than ol’ King of the World Leo, whose undeserved agony makes you forget The Aviator for a second and stop thinking of the guy as an adolescent. I’ve wondered what Scorsese was thinking, making Titanic Jack the main event in all of his operations lately, but if he was hoping that it would all be good practice for one big blowout performance, he was dead on.
But hands down, the best thing about The Departed is the direction. And it feels nice to be so strongly behind a director that receives Oscars for anything they do because, for the first time in a long time, Marty deserves it, and I finally won’t be spending my Academy Awards evening planning revenge.
*Though sometimes you gotta wonder if Jack Nicholson gets tired of playing Jack Nicholson.
