Marty at Eighty

Martin Scorsese turns eighty this week. This seems like a more than sufficient occasion to celebrate the greatest living filmmaker on the planet. Mr Scorsese also deserves the utmost commendation for his ceaseless efforts as a film preservationist and steward of the cinema. At a time of stupendous banality and commercial infantilism (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness anyone?), where independent theatres are becoming ever more endangered by rivalrous streaming giants, it is good to be reminded of what makes the movies so special. Cinema, at its apex, serves as a mirror to the human condition; a window to the soul. Just as a Michelangelo or a Raphael could challenge and awe in their static visual representations, a motion picture can reveal, in a more intricate and expansive fashion, the inherent paradoxes, moral quandaries and spiritual battles of the human experience. The relationship between man and nature; man and higher authority (whether theological or governmental); the question of reality itself and our perception of it; the enervation wrought by infidelity and the unbridled joy of love; the possibility of goodness in human behaviour and the incomprehensibility of monstrous evil, and all the shades of grey in between. 

The films that stay with us long after the credits roll, the ones that truly haunt us for days and even weeks afterwards are those that jolt us, that challenge our beliefs, or simply leave us in a state of wonder. I have felt like that after a Scorsese picture more times than I can recall. In fact, certain scenes from the master have left a greater impression on me than most films. A fat, bruised Jake LaMotta shifting from profane rage to weeping despair, while punching the wall of a darkened Miami jail cell; Tommy DeVito’s legendary “What do you mean I’m funny?” prank on Henry Hill; that masterful unbroken tracking shot into the Cobacabana club, as Henry is trying to woo Karen; Sam Rothstein nervously awaiting Nicky Santoro in the middle of the desert in Nevada, not knowing whether he will be buried there in a minute; the psychopathic Max Cady seducing the adolescent daughter of the lawyer who was responsible for putting him behind bars for fourteen years; when Newland Archer and Countess Olenska find themselves alone in a carriage, a scene of such brutality, as the unbearable pain of repressed love and suppressed feelings bubble to the surface; Christ’s ecstatic death on the cross as he deliriously pronounces that “It is accomplished”; the obsessive and delusional Rupert Pupkin practising his stand-up routine in front of a collage of people with a voiceover of uproarious laughter; after the bloody carnage, when we see Travis Bickle in his taxi cab driving Betsy - with her ethereal image in the rear view mirror; Frank Sheeran, old and overrun by guilt, alone and afraid at Christmas time, waiting for God’s mercy. I could go on all day.

Any director requires collaborative partnerships to fully execute their vision. Scorsese has been blessed with several: his magnificent editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, the ferocious Joe Pesci and more recently, the remarkable Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave his best performance to date in The Wolf of Wall Street. But Scorsese’s greatest achievements are most inextricably linked with another New Yorker by the name of Robert De Niro. Mr De Niro, who for my money, gave the best performance ever committed to celluloid in Raging Bull, enabled Mr Scorsese to translate his most prominent themes of guilt, alienation and unstable machismo onto the screen, with lethal effectiveness. 

Kurosawa. Bergman. Bunuel. Fellini. Hitchcock. Kubrick. These are some of the titans in the pantheon of great filmmakers. Martin Scorsese has long earned his place alongside them, and, perhaps at the very summit. May he long continue his unfathomably exceptional output. 

Top 10 Scorsese Films (in no particular order): 

Taxi Driver

Raging Bull

Goodfellas 

Casino

Silence

The Age of Innocence 

The Departed 

The Irishman 

The King of Comedy

Mean Streets