DCP at Lincoln Center (NYFF)
This one is hard. The Irishman starts off very clumsily, nostalgic history lesson, sort of thing my dad would eat up. It only gets interesting when Pacino as Hoffa shows up. His performance is fantastic, best I’ve seen from him since Angels in America. Pesci is great, but he isn’t given too much material to work with. De Niro... he’s hard to read. I think having him as the main character makes it hard for De Niro to really dig in (until the end)—he’s really a vessel for viewing everyone and everything else. Love what they did with Paquin’s character. I think a lot of people will compare her to Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Like with Goodfellas, there’s a distinct change in style two-thirds in. I won’t say more except that I’m sure it’s what people are going to remember about the film. From my experience, normal viewers only remember about 1.5 hours of a film at most. Since this is 3.5 hours, that’s a great benefit since it gets much more interesting as it progresses. The final third really demonstrates how this is Scorsese’s response to criticism that his other gangster flicks romanticize crime.
I’ll hold off on talking about the cinematography until I learn more about the production and possibly see it again, but my first impression is not positive. It looks like Greenbook. Very clean, very rose-colored glasses depiction of ‘60s-‘70s. That’s also a problem with the production design.
Also, de-aging isn’t there yet. Give it a couple years (or maybe just never use it again).
In conclusion, this is going to be my dad’s new favorite movie and Pacino should get his first deserved Oscar.