TRUMPY

We watched "The Irishman," the new Scorsese movie, on our television monitor, courtesy of Netflix. I know, I know, you shouldn't watch movies on your TV screen, but I was happy I had not spent the $20 or more (that's senior rates!) for us to see it in the theater. Could not have sat for the full 3 1/2 hours anyway: for we seniors, the males at least, the aging bladder makes that problematic.

But I was happy for a different reason. I wouldn't argue that this as not a "good movie"--in the sense that it was expertly directed, that the acting was superb (if unsurprising: De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, the old gang), and so on. And even for three and a half hours, it was compelling. It kept us glued. I was left at the end with only one question: why?

When I asked my daughter, Sarah, what she thought, she had exactly the same comment, the same single word: why? Why devote all that talent, all that money, all those other resources, to making a film that she described--accurately, in my view--as "Trumpy."

When a film has a start-to-finish narrator, as this one does, he tends to set the tone for the movie's values. He's what the French call the "raisonneur," the one who holds the center. Frank Sheeran, the character played in "The Irishman" by Robert De Niro, is portrayed as the obedient servant of organized crime and corrupt union bosses (specifically, here, the powerful Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.) A doting family man at home, he's a crook and a ruthless killer--the kind we're all supposed to love when he's played by the screen icon De Niro. (We actually kind of love them all because they're so familiar to us--Pesci, Pacino--and they have an unquestionable screen charm).

The problem, as I see it, is that all these characters are totally unrepentant, unremorseful, and they can do anything they want and get away with it. The film holds them unaccountable. Throughout. This is what my daughter describes as "Trumpy." It's power appropriated by corruption, and exercised with no accountability. It could be argued, I suppose, that the acts are presented as vile and reprehensible, but they're shown to us in the guise of a "good film" and we're invited to buy into them as a part of the enjoyment of a movie that brings us along with its slick narrative, seductive images, and engaging characters.

The "why," for me, is about the production of such a film particularly at this moment in history when it seems to celebrate the very values that are undermining our culture and our political life. We have a "godfather" president whose whims are treated as commands by those who catch the mere whiff of them, and whose only interest--aside from the crass appeal of money--is in maintaining the reins of his own power at all costs; a man who lacks the slightest human compassion or remorse; in a word, a sociopath.

Given the actor De Niro's very public disgust the president--which I assume is shared by others who contributed to the making of "The Irishman"--I guess we are supposed to experience the film as the indictment of Trumpism and Trumpy values, of shameless corruption and abuse. Unfortunately, it plays out as the opposite. Scorsese has always seduced us with the spectacle of the adroit perversion of American values represented by the mob. The appetite with which we slate the hunger for his fare suggests complicity.

Morality play, or exploitation of the dark side of our nature? I'll agree that it's debatable. But my own queasy feeling as I watched the conclusion of "The Irishman" suggests the latter.