Review by Logan Kenny
The Irishman opens on simplicity. An old man talking to the camera. A group of husbands and wives embarking on a road trip together. A truck driver making deliveries to a meat factory. It is mundane and meditative, cutting between these time periods seemingly at random, purposefully removing the contexts from each space. As with every epic set across decades and ages, The Irishman reveals the secrets of its character and its meaning as the years progress and unravel in front of our eyes, but it never loses that quietness. The expectation of bombast – of dramatic amplifying of the situations that take place over 209 minutes – is never met.
It’s hard to talk about this film as anything less than a statement on death. It feels like the conclusion of everything. It will not be the last gangster film, but it feels like the end. After this, it feels like there’s no point to any more of these tales, they all fade into dust eventually. Everyone who crosses into the film’s peripheral end up either dead or broken in some unfixable way. One stylistic technique used throughout the runtime is the freeze frame, used mostly for minor criminals who are only notable for the text in front of their faces clarifying their names and the way they eventually die. With the exception of one, all of them are murdered, no matter their position of power or jublicance on their faces at these frozen points in time; they die and it happens in the most violent ways a life can be extinguished.
Frank Sheeran is a tortured man. Robert DeNiro plays him as a distanced person, a man silently walking with the weight of a lifetime of trauma and guilt, even before the narrative progression of the film amplifies those feelings. He is a war veteran, a supposed hero whose tenure is only shown once in an act of barbarism, and he carries himself like someone who doesn’t know how to operate outside of a battlefield. His shoulders are tight, his posture rigid, his movements clinical. Frank’s work, before finding purpose in the life of institutional corruption, was simple. We see plenty of his daily tasks, the way he unloads trucks day after day, the repetitive motions becoming burned into the brain. He operates like a man without any desires, someone who exists not because they want to but because they can’t see the point in killing themselves. Frank is immediately captivating whenever he chooses to showcase his inner charisma, but in silence, there’s nothing but empty stares.
He finds his momentary solace in the comfort of a father figure, Russell Bufalino, a gangster who helps alter the course of his future. Russell offers a job that won’t suddenly screw him over, the stability of protection in a dangerous time, and a new family who will provide him with grace and comfort. Eventually, life within those walls grants Frank a position of importance and faith from the higher ups, and he is trusted to be within the vicinity of controversial union leader Jimmy Hoffa. Jimmy is everything Frank is not: a man bursting with energy and radiance every second of the day. There are no lingering shots of his defeated eyes in the cold winter, Jimmy never slows down enough for melancholic contemplation. He is someone with a distinct purpose, a person with a gravitational pull that causes everyone around him to be swept away by his grandiosity. Frank is content to fade into the background until his services are needed, while Jimmy has an overwhelming fear about being forgotten and overlooked. Al Pacino plays him as tempestuous and angry, the kind of man who will have a strong opinion on every single minute detail of human consciousness. He is a person without shame, without a filter, yet with an extreme amount of loyalty and love in his heart. His entire existence is built around fighting for his values and the safety of the people who trust him; his ideology is forged around ensuring their rights. The coercive beast of capitalist hierarchy and the impossibility of ignoring the mob leave their toll on the organisation’s credibility and legality, but the principles he maintains are portrayed as sincere. He isn’t fighting these battles to get rich.
The Irishman is far from a conventional gangster film. There is limited violence, all of which is shot in a very simple and clinical manner. The colours lack panache, and the editing is stripped of any noticeable style. These sequences are framed as just incidents that happen in this line of work. Death is as complicated and as severe as picking up your laundry or organising a meeting. Scorsese has faced criticisms of sensationalising violence throughout his filmmaking career, particularly in the staples of the genre Goodfellas and Casino – critiques which are completely inapplicable here. The subject matter is a lot drier than might be expected, the content more explicitly focused on the machinations of systems than the glitz and glamour of being in a life of crime.
The film is ostensibly about the ways in which capitalists embed themselves within labour disputes in order to profit off of the faith that workers put in these organisations. The majority of the film is built around meetings, trials and behind-the-scenes dealings of running a trade union. The Irishman is one of the most essential modern American films in the way it reckons with the appropriation of radical ideas to further exploit and profit off of the working class. The union is operated like a business, explicitly about the intensely rigid and exploitative structure of American finance, and the challenges that having a concrete ideology brings to the table in a marketplace built upon having none of it.
Being a gangster means putting your morals to the side; being a businessman means having none to begin with. Both Frank and Jimmy have to reckon personally with what their morality means, whether or not that it’s more important to live as a vessel of what you used to be and used to represent, or dying for something you believe in, even if the inevitable happens anyway. Frank manages to maintain a sense of his reputation by being quiet, by carrying out the necessary assassinations, by keeping the right people’s mouths shut, by being a vessel for structures that don’t give a fuck about him. He gave himself over to the devil and ends up in the same house, the same life that he would have lived if he kept driving a truck. A life that might have been better if he had painted those houses for real.
The Irishman’s closest comparison is not of the previous gangster works of Scorsese’s career, but his most recent narrative film before this: Silence. In both films, Scorsese is grappling with the idea of living life in a way that doesn’t live up to your your theological and philosophical concepts of what a satisfying life should be. Silence ends with the portrait of a priest, committed to a permanent existence of rejecting his faith in exchange for a pitiful pointless life, clinging onto the image of the cross as his body is burned. After all the suffering and failings of his mortal life, he allows himself to embrace his faith once more as he journeys towards whatever comes next. The Irishman is about faith in a different way. Catholicism is not handled as directly as it has been in Silence and many of Scorsese’s previous works, but the lingering shadow of what faith and religion represents is persuasive, particularly as the film works its way to its conclusion. Frank is left lingering alone in a life that is a shadow of all the illusions that crime and status were supposed to be. He is bitter and old and his life seemingly has lost all purpose, only clinging onto the ideas of protection in an era where everyone who needs protecting is already dead because without it, what would he be? Silence concludes with hope in the face of flames, suggesting that a man who has acknowledged his faults and suffered for his transgressions can be allowed a rebirth by way of belief that he’ll wake up in heaven after everything. The Irishman doesn’t allow Frank that decency. He has not repented, he has let life slip through his fingers until it’s too late to fix anything, he ends up more silent than anyone, a purpose sustained by telling his stories to an audience of no one.
Anna Paquin’s character is the perfect representation of the way Scorsese’s filmmaking conveys the idea of things just disappearing from a person’s life without them even recognising it until it’s already gone. As his daughter in a film not committed in really showing the majority of Frank’s family life, we see only glimpses of her – tiny fragments of a woman growing up over decades. She sees him as a figure of unflinching brutality and savagery and as a smiling politician absent from the home, but never as a father. The perspective keeps her mostly silent, someone who is not listened to, never let truly into his life. He distances her, rarely communicates and eventually destroys the source of her childhood joy. The presence between the two is taken for granted by Frank, a man who believes that he can always rely on his family to take care of him no matter the brutality and callousness of his decisions, and then she’s gone. There will never be another time to repair those broken connections, a do-over granted to alter her childhood trauma or repair a relationship that never truly existed. She was never a part of his life, so when she slips out of it entirely, it’s barely noticed until there’s no one else left.
One of the penultimate sequences involves an old Frank, with Robert DeNiro coated in old age makeup and walking as if every bone in his body has been shattered to pieces, trying to finally reconnect with her. He walks into her workplace, asks to see her and lumbers over with complete instability as she rejects the idea of even talking to him. The camera shoots the end of the sequence in a wide shot, so we see how small this man looks in front of the muted lights – a towering figure now reduced to dust. This moment is endemic of Scorsese’s portrayal of hell, a place where a father has fucked up beyond belief and will never get to hear his daughter whisper in his ear again, will never be able to listen to her stories and see the woman he helped raise grow and live her life. She is gone. Looking at his personal life, the clear love that Scorsese shares with his daughter – how essential her presence is to his own happiness and completeness as a person and artist – makes this pain seem more palpable. How many choices did it take to end up here, alone? How easily could this have been him? How easily could it be any of us?
His vision of hell isn’t contained simply within biological family, but the emptiness of losing the attachments you have with other people, those folks without your blood who are so close to your soul that they’re a part of you. Throughout the film, Frank’s genuine connections with other people are limited; he is mostly in a position of distanced apathy, a figurehead for agendas without the need to actively engage with other people. Even as a political figure, he is seemingly the spokesman for another – a decoy to be used to push Hoffa’s agenda further. He doesn’t make many long-lasting connections and most of the ones that are alluded to are barely depicted on screen and end up burning to ash alongside his youth. He is almost reminiscent of the titular character in John Williams’s classic novel Stoner, a man who made all the wrong choices, loses the truest connections that he has, and is scrambling to find meaning in them by the end.
The relationship that Frank has with Russell is something that creeps up throughout the film, something haunting and unmistakably present but that doesn’t truly sink in until hours later. The Irishman’s non linear approach to editing incorporates sequences of Russell and Frank on a road trip with their wives interlaced throughout a more straightforward path through history. At first, they occur as seemingly random deviations, incredibly enjoyable and interesting segues into a life beyond this drama. They would pull over the car to let their wives smoke at the side of the road, engage in quiet banter in the midst of sunlight, wistfully reminisce about times long since past. These abrasive cuts culminate in anguish as quietly delivered as every other little moment they’ve shared together. Russell reveals that there’s no way that Jimmy can be allowed to live, that Frank is the only person Jimmy trusts enough, and that Frank is the only man who could kill him without havoc breaking out. Pesci delivers each line with the simplicity of an everyday business deal at first, his eyes trying to maintain connection with Frank as he breaks the news. His cadence never changes throughout the scene, even as the acknowledgement of what Frank is being tasked to sinks into his chest, but the look in his eyes is unforgettable. There is such clear sadness of being the person to divide Frank’s psyche forever, to position the ultimatum of staying alive or keeping your soul. There is no glamour or beauty in this scene, nothing more dramatic than two old men talking in an empty diner, with glimpses of sun pouring through the curtains. However, it aches with history and agony, as the normalcy that we’ve become accustomed to is here transformed and shattered as the inevitability of tragedy sets in. It was impossible for Jimmy to make it out alive; history isn’t being changed by cinema here, but the subtle desperation present in Frank’s voice makes you wish it could be.
The central dynamic between Frank and Jimmy becomes the focus of the majority of the second act. Their relationship develops and deepens across the years, as the much talked about de-aging technology begins to seamlessly transition into their real faces. There is a tangible sensation of watching two men grow together, like they are members of your own family you watch grow from a distance, observing the little details of how they interact in each other’s company. There is a silent trust between them. By the time their relationship ends, there is reliance from Jimmy towards Frank. He has lost so much over the years: the power he once had, the respect he commanded, and the reputation that held him above the rest of the morality stricken officials. Frank is the one person who stood by him all these years and provided weight and support when it seemed impossible for anyone else to care. Pacino embeds Jimmy in his final scenes with such naive sincerity. He approaches certain doom with the familiarity of an old friend. Those last moments – the journey through hell with Frank and Jimmy together, leading towards the inevitability of death – are soul-crushing in their sadness. Jimmy still believes that he’s safe with his friend, the man he loves like family.
After his death, there is nothing left. Everyone left to die does, and those who remain alive drift away completely. The memory of Hoffa fades from the cultural consciousness, remembered only as a lost body. For a while, there is the slight consolation that Russell and Frank are together, both men aging rapidly within concrete walls as two men who should be in retirement homes but are instead lingering together in a prison courtyard, wondering if things could have been different. Eventually, it becomes Russell’s time too, a death as simple as the way he always talked. Russell tells Frank that he’s “going to church” before fading out of frame, rolling away into another reality. He would never get to eat bread and drink wine with his friend again, only linger upon those memories and see them in dreams, hoping that they’ll meet sometime in another life. Those words – framing death as going to church – are impossible to forget. They are similar to the words that DeNiro imparted upon Pesci while trying to convince him to take the part: “We gotta do this, who knows if there’ll be anything after?” This being Pesci’s first performance in decades makes it unlikely that his face will ever appear on the big screen again. An old man’s last lines in cinema being an acknowledgement of death, a seeming embrace of its inevitability and consolation in the idea that God might take him away somewhere better – that is one of the most powerful things cinema could ever convey. The whole film feels like a goodbye, a group of men all acknowledging that they’re going to die and that this won’t last forever, just trying to make something beautiful before it’s all over. It might not be the end, but when it is, this will last as a preservation of how powerful seeing the stars for the last time can be.
Frank speaks to the camera a lot throughout the film. By the end, it cuts back and reveals that no one was there, that he was telling a life story to an empty audience. There is no one left to remember him. One feeling we’re all terrified of, even if we articulate it to no one, is the idea that no one will care enough to remember our existence, that our bedside table will be filled by the gifts of no one. I thought about a woman, my great Auntie Anne, who lead a life filled with disappointments, who lost her home because she couldn’t physically cope with living alone anymore, who spent her last years in a care home like Frank’s because my grandparents didn’t have the resources to take care of her independently, who left this earth fading in and out of consciousness, memories and experiences incoherent. No one could ever know what she felt or remembered through those last moments. I was there the day before she died. Hours beforehand, I found out from my mum that my Auntie Anne, a woman who had been special to me in one of those indescribable ways since I was a toddler, was nearing the end. When I reached the hospital and saw my gran try to keep herself together even though she knew that she was about to lose her older sister, there was a feeling of sadness that lingered in my chest that has never really went away. I held my auntie’s hand, staring at her, seeing how small and frail she looked, and told her I loved her hours before she died, that no matter what had happened, I would remember her. While my hand was in hers, she woke up suddenly and looked into my eyes. This was the last time I ever saw her conscious, and one of the last times that anyone would ever see her awake. She said my name with the kind of joy impossible to replicate. That feeling of not being alone, of having someone who loves you hold your hand and let you know that they’ll keep a part of you alive forever is more important than anything.
The regret I felt in the months afterwards, the guilt that permeates me in dreams still is my failure to spend as much time with her as possible. There were so many stories that I never got to hear from her. I ran out of time. Those journeys, those experiences that only she could convey and articulate are just gone. All that’s left is the idea of her, the memories that linger within my soul and the rest of the family that knew her, and that idea of her will continue to live on within the hearts of all of the family that follows me. Still, I hate myself on lonely nights for failing her, for letting a piece of her disintegrate. That tangible feeling of causing disrepair or not being able to fix the mistakes you’ve made has never been captured better than in The Irishman. It’s the only film that’s ever unnerved me on that primal level, the haunting idea of a potential world where my aunt had no one there, the idea that not everyone gets the privilege of having someone to die with.
What does it even mean to remember at that stage of living? What does it feel like to look back on your childhood, on your times of friendship and compassion and the seemingly idyllic times you didn’t truly embrace while they happened? Frank thinks about the little details as much as anything else, lingering upon those little details where he failed his daughter, wishing that he could go back and make it right. There is a fear of constantly searching for the times that you’re never gonna be able to recreate, whether that’s solace in childhood, the beautiful moments in a relationship that always hurt or the glorious moments of friendship that only stand out now because of how bad you fucked up. Most of what Frank can ever think about is Jimmy, the man who loved him more than anyone ever had. What should we do with those memories of friendship, tainted forever by our own shortcomings? Do you force yourself to try and remember the good times devoid of context, or just feel the pain that these quiet moments of kindness now provide? How do you live with yourself, with decades of guilt seeping into your flesh, your bones too weak to escape your own limitations? Do you sit and wait to die? Do you keep telling your stories to no one? Or do you remain in your place, look out the door and keep the hope alive that someone will come see you before death takes you too.
Eventually, we see Frank in his bedroom, talking to a priest about the things he’s done. His voice breaks when questioned about remorse, he trembles when saying the words “sinful and sorrowful.” He looks at the photos of people in his past with a nurse taking care of him, looking at his daughters and Jimmy, preserved forever in happiness, static moments that he wishes could last forever. By the end of the night, he says goodbye to the priest again and realises that it’s almost Christmas. He acknowledges he has no future beyond these walls, before asking the priest to leave the door open a little. He is left alone, sitting in his chair next to the only light in the midst of darkness, lingering on all the thoughts and the hatred he has for himself. He has clung onto religion in his last years, hoping that it might absolve him, that God will forgive him when no one else will. The haunting aroma of past regret and selfishness plagues him, his eyes consumed by pain. He stares through the open door at an empty hallway drained of light, and dreams of a time when things were easier, when at least someone could come through the door to hold his hand. He has no one’s name to say at the end.