The Departed (2006, ****)
FINALLY AND AT LAST MARTIN SCORSESE GIVES A SHIT about his indispensable moviemaking talent rather than the Oscars. The Departed is a departure from the muck of Gangs of New York and the moroseness of The Aviator, a welcome return to vulgar, vivid, 
visceral elegance for the 63-year-old director, and his serene, bloody confidence on the contemporary mean streets of Boston matches the exuberance he’s wrought in contemporary Manhattan settings. It’s the first picture of his I’ve fully admired since Goodfellas, a while back in the last century. Several of the major surprises in The Departed draw upon the sleek Hong Kong movie, Infernal Affairs (2002), and if you haven’t seen that film, it’s best to know as little as possible about the story’s twists and turns for full enjoyment.
But simply sketched, Scorsese takes on both cops and hoods in the duplicity-ridden plot. Irish Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) runs Boston’s largest organized crime ring, and the Massachusetts State Police are determined to take him down from the inside. Southie rookie Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) has to prove his bonafides to get into Costello’s crew while his double, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), is on the “right” side of the law, finding a spot in the state police’s Special Investigations Unit, and in charge of one of the sections assigned to topple Costello. But as we know from the first scenes, with Scorsese glorying in criminal bestiality from the get-go, the malefic Costello has groomed Colin since childhood. Scorsese understands beautifully, both in casting and performance, what each of his actors can do. Among the tremendous performances are, of course, Nicholson, who ranges from the most deliciously precise of line readings to the most manic of threats; Damon, charming and plausible in his darkest behavior; Di Caprio, capturing unanticipated terrors in his deep-cover character; Alec Baldwin, hilarious as Colin’s deadpan boss; Ray Winstone as Costello’s enforcer; Mark Wahlberg, note-perfect, as a commanding, fearlessly witty leader of another investigative team (“If you had an idea what we do, we would not be good at what we do. We would be cunts. Are you calling us cunts?”); and Vera Farmiga, of the extra large, blue, blue windows to the soul, as a therapist who winds up treating both Colin and Billy, unbeknownst to any of the trio. Scorsese boldly holds on her large sparking eyes of endless quickness and keenness in a way other directors might fear.
Opening to the strains of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” The Departed’s alternation of portent and release, of rock and opera, of performance precision and actorly arias, seems suited to the schizophrenic patterning of the two cops with a father figure and a fuck in common. In a few conversations with colleagues in other cities who saw the picture sooner, the question of whether the movie has deeper resonance than its rambunctiously entertaining twist-filled plot came up more than once, yet a single viewing suggests that the transposed elements from the Hong Kong movies dovetail sweetly with Scorsese’s own great theme, the lacerating, internalized self-hatred and ultimate misanthropy at the heart of machismo. Scorsese’s gleaming craft is displayed in Michael Ballhaus’ gorgeous light and refined widescreen framings. Scorsese and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker work with a nervous, accelerated cutting style that’s cut to the quick, restive in a way that among recent movies I can only compare to the restlessness of Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover and Clean. his movie races along to several pulses, including intriguing sound editing that uses sudden silence and sudden music in equally jarring but similarly satisfying manner. (There are also the non-joke jokes, such as an impotence reference followed immediately by a Molotov’d vehicle rising skyward.)
Screenwriter William Monahan’s taut, terse script, minimizes explanations of the many characters’ backstory and conflicts, yet his brilliant dialogue crackles with savvy, as attuned to gangland lingo and cop terms of art as David Mamet, but in speakable, naturalistic cadence, for the earnest, as well as the venal and corrupt. The words sing with lusty gusto: “Who am I? I’m the guy who does his job; you must be the other guy’; Of the Irish? “Freud says we’re the only people impervious to psychoanalysis.” An Indian shopkeeper: “What is wrong with this country, everybody hurts everybody?” Baldwin’s gleeful “Patriot Act, Patriot Act, Patriot Act, I love it, I love it, I love it!” And Farmiga: “I have to say your vulnerability is really freaking me out right now. Is it real?”
Nicholson’s impersonation of a rat is a certain classic, and who else could do what he does with a line like, “’Heavy lies the crown’ sort of thing? And asking after someone’s mother and hearing, “She’s on the way out,” Nicholson’s genius is refined in his delivery of the tart, simple “We all are, act accordingly.” But he’s also riotous in abuse like Costello telling a table of priests, “Enjoy your clams, cocksuckers.”
Watch for a shot in a foot-chase scene on a Chinatown side street that holds on a lamp made from vertical fingers of mirror, capturing multiples of DiCaprio’s eyes in foreground while the figure of Damon runs into the distance, in perspective the same dimensions as the long strips of mirror. Dazzling. Just dazzling. [Ray Pride]
I just watched it.. wow. I totally agree about the acting and dialog.. it all just snaps and crackles.
Normally, I find Leo a turnoff.. playing at being tough, unsuccessfully. But all is forgiven. He’s superb in this, though not as masterful or complex as Jack though. This is the best I’ve ever seen him. Ever.
Un-mentioned by any critic or commentator is an early scene of Leo’s that heavily borrows from a lesser known early film of his, The Quick and the Dead. No one can convince me that Scorsese [or Leo?] didn’t add the deliberate thunking countdown of the clock before it strikes a new hour, from that early film into this one. It’s portentousness is very fitting.
From a female perspective, I wish there had been less shooting. I find all that blood and mayhem a cop out… un-necessary and off putting. Less is more. One becomes inured.
While I enjoyed the film, it’s getting really tired reading about all Scorsese/Oscar/Best since GoodFellas comments now polluting the web and various critics. Comments like: FINALLY AND AT LAST MARTIN SCORSESE GIVES A SHIT about his indispensable moviemaking talent rather than the Oscars.
Really seem to diminish to work Scorsese has performed as a DIRECTOR since 1990. While audiences may not like AGE OF INNOCENCE, KUNDUN and BRINGING OUT THE DEAD — to say that Scorsese was off his game as director of those films shows a lack of understanding and perspective to the work a director puts into a film.
Do you really think he didn’t give a shit about KUNDUN? Naw — he just suffered in the heat of the locations cause he thought the Academy would throw him a statue if he directed such “serious” fare. Yeah right — Grade-A bullshit.
I don’t think his work as a director on DEPARTED is any better than his work on BRINGING or KUNDUN. Each film brought its own set of challenges and attitudes — it seems to me that people praising Scorsese and his latest just DON’T LIKE those “other” films — without ever considering the same talent that went into making them.
I would agree that the SCRIPT of DEPARTED would qualify as my favorite of the three — and thus the film would follow suit. But as I make this statement, I in no way want to take away from the directoral accompolishments that were achieved in those pictures. In fact, I like many of the visual flourishes in BRINGING better than DEPARTED.
But I’m in agreement on GANGS — a mess of a movie — which I felt the first time I saw it and on repeated viewings. THE AVIATOR screenplay was directed about as well as any working director today could have done — including its original director Michael Mann. I’m also in the minority when I say I hope Scorsese NEVER wins an Oscar — ’cause frankly — he’s in better company by not winning one (aka Welles, Kubrick, Cassavetes).
I just dread the fact that EVERY discussion or piece written about Scorsese now has to address the bloody “Oscar”. It’s enough to turn you off of awards forever.
I would also prefer that the conversations wind up being about the film’s velocity and vivacity rather than the potential for awards… Mr. Scorsese’s reticence to speak widely about The Departed is an interesting departure from the publicity on the two Miramax-distributed pics.
Dave Kehr disagrees, and I saw the movie more the way he did. Kehr writes (at davekehr.com):
Martin Scorsese’s return to the contemporary gangster genre — via a remake of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s glossy, stylized Hong Kong film of 2002, “Infernal Affairs” – has a bored, dutiful feeling, as if Woody Allen had been forced to remake one of his “early, funny ones.” The plotting is completely artificial, and makes sense only within a context of self-conscious formal play: a junior member of Boston’s Irish mob (Matt Damon) is assigned by his eccentric godfather (Jack Nicholson) to infiltrate the ranks of the Massachusetts State Police, at the same time a dutiful police cadet (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned by his boss (Martin Sheen) to ingratiate himself with Nicholson’s gang. For the first hour or so, Scorsese and his editor, Thema Schoonmaker, treat the material as a premise for a virtuoso exercise in parallel montage; the film achieves a fugue-like structure at times, as Scorsese and Schoonmaker move through three or four levels of simultaneous action at once, finding creative and sometimes quite beautiful transitions based on matching rhythms, textures, movements, and shapes. But in the second half, as Scorsese tries to go deeper into the characters, he’s unable to turn up much of substance, and the animated stick figures of the Hong Kong film turn into animated stick figures carrying around a lot of dubious psychological baggage, mostly centered on missing dads and their inevitably psychotic substitutes.