Movie Review

The Departed and Hollywood Land

A Movie Review By Susan Frome

If you find yourself feeling guilty because you're living a rather comfortable life, surrounded by people you love and trust in a lovely, peaceful setting, you might want to vicariously spend a few hours watching Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," his latest wallow in the depths of the underworld of cops and crime. In this case, the mayhem is centered in the Irish neighborhood of South Boston and features the numberless betrayals surrounding one, Frank Costello, a Southie crime lord played by none other than Jack Nicholson.

In this outing, Nicholson vacillates between doing his shtick (e.g.,--imitating a cartoon rat, cynically commenting on life in that slow drawl of his) and actually inhabiting the world of a thug who walks the streets, carries on his business in a grungy bar, and takes part in the action just for kicks. For instance, instead of merely questioning, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) a possible informant who allegedly broke his hand proving himself in a shakedown, Nicholson gleefully grabs Costigan by the arm, slams the cast against a table top in the back of the bar until it cracks open. Billy almost faints in excruciating pain as Nicholson tosses him a few bills and offhandedly says, "Hey, it's all right, you're gonna be okay."

By this point, if the violence and the scurrilous language of the thugs and creeps doesn't do you in, you're in for the same treat from the mouth and hands of the cops. Only Martin Sheen offers any respite as an undercover police captain, but with this kind of movie you know that anyone who speaks and acts decently doesn't have a chance for much screen time. Sooner or later he's going to have to meet some violently graphic end in order to earn his keep as a means of continually abusing viewers viscerally in one way or another. Which brings up a final point: the viewer watching this film to pay for a decent life, can not expect to root for anyone. In this Machiavellian world, the moment you find yourself caring for anyone, they are bound to have their head blown off at close range or something similar. Even Vera Farmiga, as a police psychiatrist who tries to come to the aid of neurotic or violent cops, has to pay the price for empathy and/or romantic involvement.

As a final thought, it may be that Scorsese has reached the point where he has to show that "Mean Streets"-- his thoughtful breakout film of 1973, rendering a world he knew so well in the streets of Little Italy - was too benign. Nowadays, in order to prove he has what it takes to keep up, he has to employ a constant in-your-face technique in order to send the patrons out of the Cineplex reeling. Again, for those who have led a cloistered life, he may have well performed this service. If they choose this dubious experience, they will be free to give themselves a long break before have to venture into the current mean streets again.

For an alternative, comparatively harmless foray into the world of murder, there is the somewhat dark British comedy "Keeping Mum." As a sweet mischievous murderess and the dotty, poor-man's Mary Poppins, Maggie Smith does one of her effortless tongue-in-cheek turns as Grace Hawkins who just happens to materialize in the village of Little Wallop, population 57. Here, and for the first time in living memory, Kristin Scott Thomas is not the bored, chilly, sexually promiscuous upper-class adulteress. Instead, she plays Gloria, a rather plain, put-upon wife of a stuffy vicar whose suffers from lack of attention, a nymphomaniac of a teenage daughter, an incessantly barking dog that keeps her awake half the night, and the tribulations of an adolescent son who is constantly harassed by school bullies.

In short, we should all be so lucky. However, whether we care or not, Grace feels she has a job to do, gets the vicar's juices flowing by acquainting him with the Song of Solomon and the joys of carnal knowledge, dispenses with the neighbor’s barking dog and the neighbor to boot, and on and on it goes. In the meantime, we learn of Grace's past—actually we rediscover that Grace is the sweet, loopy, adulterer-mutilating wife from years past from the opening of the movie—and her reason for visiting Little Wallop after all these years. This reason is as droll as all the rest of the goings-on and all the viewer can do is sit back and smile. And thank whatever Gods there be that Martin Scorsese will not push Maggie aside, remove her tongue from her cheek and make anyone truly suffer.

In "Hollywoodland," the new movie that is based on a true story and a fictional tale, we are invited to view the Hollywood of the 1940s and the 1950s, which in this case, appears mellow and dark at the same time. There are several problems with this script by Paul Bernbaum: one involves the two stories trying to blend in the editing room; another refers to a murder mystery that may not be a mystery at all; and a third has to do with who this movie is really about.

To begin with the true story is about George Reeves, the first actor to play Superman on television. We don't learn very much about him except that he was bit player who wanted to make it big. As played by Ben Affleck, who has gained several pounds for the part, George is a handsome young man with little talent who hangs around Hollywood parties trying to make the right connections. He is passive and is used to having the girls chase him instead of vice versa. He does happen to meet up with the wife of an executive at MGM, Mrs. Toni Mannix, played by Diane Lane with detailed focus and total knowledge of the character. Toni is almost over the hill but she says she has seven good years left and she looks great. George is younger, but they can offer each other what they need so the match is good - for a while. In earlier years, George did have a couple of small parts in two big movies: "Gone With the Wind," and "From Here to Eternity." But somehow, George didn't go anywhere after that. When Toni helps him get the job of Superman for TV, he takes it grudgingly, feeling that he could have done a lot better. However, Toni buys him a house and lots of gifts and all seems well.

Story #two is the fictional one. It is about a low-down private investigator, Louis Simo, played by Adrien Brody, who has left his nice wife and nice young son, to try to break the Big Story that will make him famous. Louis is living in a seedy motel room with a starlet wanna-be. He takes on cases of marital infidelity (the latest one turns out to have lethal consequences but he sloughs it off), and is a sort of pal with a police detective he may have worked with before whom he tries to glom throw-away cases from. One case has to do with the questionable suicide of George Reeves, alias Superman. So Louis is now on the track of a possible murder and the Big Story he's been looking for. Naturally he runs into all kinds of tough guys who are out to get him. Mr. Brody is fine in this role, very different from others he's had ("The Pianist"). He is the one we come to care for and whom the movie seems to be truly about. The extended screen time appears to be given to the fictional Simo (making actor Brody the actual star of the movie), and, as a result, the other story, starring Ben Affleck and Diane Lane, is not the main story even though it is the true one.

This is all put together like a patchwork quilt, hard for the viewer to follow and understand.

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