Some oddsmakers wagered that The Irishman stood a good chance at the 2020 Academy Awards. It did receive 10 nominations but in the end it won none. Although there were no clean sweeps for trophies this year, all eyes fell onto a newcomer on the Oscar stage, director Bong Joon-ho for Parasite.
Many bytes of text were spent on wondering whether The Irishman’s shutout in favor of the Korean represented a rise in cinematic globalism or the triumph of a younger generation over such no-longer young, long-ago mavericks as Martin Scorsese and his cast of Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.
Maybe so. But one also suspects it was the Academy’s snub of Netflix, whose original productions (along with those of Amazon Prime) are threatening the movie industry’s shaky hold over audiences. Why spend all that money (movie nights aren’t cheap dates anymore) when you can make your own popcorn and watch high quality new motion pictures in the comfort of home?
Of course, most of us are seeing more of home than we’d like these days. In that context, I watched The Irishman for a second time and… found it to be the greatest three-hour film in many years and the most entertaining Scorsese production in a long while. I know it would have held my attention at a cinema, where pause isn’t an option.
The Irishman begins in bravura fashion with a long dolly through the winding corridors of a nursing home until the camera halts at the wheelchair occupied by Frank Sheeran (De Niro). The old man is in a reflective mood and through masterful transitions, Scorsese takes him through his story in flashbacks within flashbacks.
Boiled down to basic points, The Irishman is a based-on-true story whose title points to the real-life protagonist—Sheeran, a Teamster looking to make extra bucks who fell in with Mobsters who introduced him to Teamsters’ president Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). Sheehan became the union boss’ bodyguard-enforcer. The Irishman portrays Hoffa as a fiery orator for organized labor ready to use violence, a willful man who enriched himself from his work and whose ego grew too large for the dangerous company he kept. In 1975 Hoffa famously disappeared. No trace of his remains has ever been unearthed.
It’s an old story and some would say no one under 55 has given much thought to how one of America’s most infamous public figures could vanish in broad daylight. To them, I’d respond that it doesn’t matter what you know going into The Irishman. Scorsese tells the story well through smart, believable dialogue and a pack of memorable characters, distinct and fully developed by the cast.
Better than Parasite? No, just as good in a different way but having said that, I’ll add that Bong’s story addresses the present-day condition of the widening gap between haves and have-nots. Scorsese’s is a reminder of a time when unions, for all their many faults, drove up living standards for everyone, unionized or not, in developed nations across the world.
