Martin Scorsese’s Body of Work Extends Far Beyond Male-Centric Mafia Movies
Actors sometimes complain about being typecast, but it’s a fact of life for anyone in entertainment. John Ford is usually labeled a director of Westerns, despite “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Mister Roberts.” David Lean is known for his epics, but he also directed “Brief Encounter” and “Summertime.” Vincente Minnelli? The director of musicals, overlooking “The Bad and the Beautiful,” “Lust for Life” and “Some Came Running.”
Martin Scorsese in the past year has often been described as the director of gangster films, even though that genre represents only five of his 25 narrative films, or roughly 15% of his work, if you add in documentaries.
Scorsese is also typecast as one who makes male-oriented films. This ignores that his breakthrough “Mean Streets,” was bookended by two women-driven films: “Boxcar Bertha” (1972) and “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974). The latter film won Ellen Burstyn the Oscar; Scorsese has also directed nine other women to Oscar noms: Cate Blanchett, who won for the 2004 “The Aviator,” Diane Ladd, Jodie Foster, Cathy Moriarty, Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Lorraine Bracco, Juliette Lewis, Winona Ryder and Sharon Stone.
Plus he got vivid performances from Cybill Shepherd in “Taxi Driver,” Liza Minnelli in “New York, New York,” Catherine O’Hara and Rosanna Arquette in “After Hours,” Vera Farmiga in “The Departed,” Chloe Grace Moretz in “Hugo,” and Margot Robbie in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to name a few.
At the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival’s tribute to Scorsese, Al Pacino told me, “It’s hard for an actor to know if the role is right for them. You’re always trying to find the character. With Marty, there’s a freedom. He is like a safety net that allows actors to feel free to experiment and try things.” That’s true of all the actors in his films.
This year, Scorsese has been typecast in another, subtler area. “The Irishman” is one of his best films, a valedictory for his past gangster films; in addition, he’s a font of knowledge of film history and an activist for film preservation via the Film Foundation. Despite these things, he inevitably has been asked four recurring questions: Is “The Irishman” a film or a TV show? Why did Netflix give the movie such a brief theatrical run? Was de-aging difficult? And, apparently the most important question: Does he hate Marvel?
The answer to all of these questions: Shut up, it doesn’t matter.
In a guest column for the New York Times, Scorsese explained his comments about Marvel and other studio blockbusters. He wrote that he grew up thinking of movies as an art form and many movies today “are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption.” He worries that Hollywood is seeing “the gradual but steady elimination of risk.”
“Risk” is the key word for his most recent films, which I think are his best: “Shutter Island,” “Hugo,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Silence” and “The Irishman.”In terms of awards, they’ve been a mixed bag: “Hugo” got 11 Oscar noms, with five wins; “Wolf” had five nominations, no wins. The brilliant “Silence” got one; “Shutter Island” got zero.
Is there something sinister or inherently flawed with Academy voters? No. It’s the nature of the beast. Only five individuals can be nominated, and only one can win.
Oscars are 92 years old, and Scorsese has been working for roughly half that time. He’s been making films since before the birth of some director contenders. He is part of Oscar history, esteemed as one of the all-time greats. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee a win.
The outcome on Feb. 9 is in the hands of the awards gods. Whatever happens, “Silence” will be rediscovered in a few years, “The Irishman” and all of Scorsese’s work will stand on its own.
Clarence Thomas speaks, but leaves many questions unanswered, in documentary
Published 9:25 am PST, Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Clarence Thomas is sworn in to the Supreme Court by Justice Byron White, while Thomas' wife, Virginia, center, Barbara Bush and President George H.W. Bush look on.
Clarence Thomas is sworn in to the Supreme Court by Justice Byron White, while Thomas' wife, Virginia, center, Barbara Bush and President George H.W. Bush look on.
Photo: Courtesy Of Justice Clarence Thomas
Photo: Courtesy Of Justice Clarence Thomas
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Clarence Thomas is sworn in to the Supreme Court by Justice Byron White, while Thomas' wife, Virginia, center, Barbara Bush and President George H.W. Bush look on.
Clarence Thomas is sworn in to the Supreme Court by Justice Byron White, while Thomas' wife, Virginia, center, Barbara Bush and President George H.W. Bush look on.
Photo: Courtesy Of Justice Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas speaks, but leaves many questions unanswered, in documentary
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A new Clarence Thomas documentary opens with a clip from the Supreme Court Justice's contentious 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, in which we hear Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., refer to Thomas, with understatement, as "somewhat of an enigma." In the intervening years, Thomas has done little to make himself less of one. He rarely grants interviews, and on the court, he is known for going years without asking a single question during oral arguments.
By that measure, it is welcome to have "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," for which Thomas and his wife, Virginia, sat with filmmaker Michael Pack for more than 30 hours of interviews. Structured around this conventional talking-head footage - which covers, in easily digestible if inertly chronological fashion, Thomas' Georgia childhood, education, first marriage and career - the film reveals much, while at the same time leaving us to wonder much. A lot of this ground has been covered before, in Thomas' 2007 memoir "My Grandfather's Son," from which Thomas occasionally reads aloud.
One throughline is Thomas' political evolution, beginning with an abortive stint as a Catholic seminarian - the lone black student - that ended when he withdrew after hearing a racist remark. That was followed by his self-described leftward radicalization, subsequently abandoned, along with his anger, when he became what he calls a "lazy libertarian" at Yale Law School, then a left-leaning registered Democrat and, years later, a reliable member of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. As common as such transitions may be in the life of any 71-year-old, "Created Equal" doesn't offer many insights, at least not in a deeply satisfying way, as to how and why he has changed.
As it inevitably must, the film eventually works its way back to the confirmation hearings, during which sometimes-lurid allegations of sexual harassment were made by attorney Anita Hill, who once worked with Thomas. And Thomas again refers to the proceedings as a "high-tech lynching," orchestrated because he was the "wrong kind of black guy," as he characterizes his opponents' views.
This part of the film is the most interesting - and, depending on your predisposition, potentially poignant - segment. But "Created Equal" is, by design, a lopsided affair, with Pack - a conservative filmmaker and former president of the right-leaning think tank the Claremont Institute - clearly sympathetic to Thomas' self-characterizations. Pack makes no attempt, for example, to present arguments that might counterbalance the claim of a lynching, however metaphorical. The comparison is drawn, somewhat absurdly, between Thomas' treatment and the treatment of Tom Robinson, the character falsely accused - and convicted - of rape in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
There is no mention, for instance, of other women who might have corroborated Hill's claims.
But "Created Equal" isn't that kind of documentary. Rather, it's meant as an opportunity for Thomas to have his full say, without challenge. At one point, he talks about how he prefers to vacation in RV parks instead of, say, resorts. He explains that he prefers the company of what he calls "regular" people, leading one to wonder, among many other questions left unasked and unanswered: Does that mean that travelers who stay in hotels are, despite the film's title, less "regular" than others?
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Two stars. Rated PG-13. Contains mature thematic elements, including some sexual references. 116 minutes.
Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time.
'The Reason I Jump': Film Review | Sundance 2020
Everyone has a favorite book that we long to see adapted into a film so more people will know about the book and read it too. At the same time, we also dread the filmmakers will ruin it by misrepresenting or diluting the essence of what makes that book so special.
For many people living with autism, their most beloved tome on the subject is The Reason I Jump. This collection of 58 questions and answers on what having autism feels like, a sort of poetic catechism, was written by 13-year-old Naoki Higashida just after he had learned to use a computer and alphabet board to help him catch thoughts before, as he describes them, they fluttered away. The novelist David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and his wife K. A. Yoshida, who have an autistic child themselves, translated the book into English in 2013 to much deserved acclaim.
Now director Jerry Rothwell's oneiric, sensuous documentary, also called The Reason I Jump, offers fans of the book an unexpected gift: Instead of a literal adaptation, Rothwell's film is a supplement, an echo, a response that enriches the experience of the original work. Not that viewers necessarily need to have read Higashida's playful, insightful prose beforehand. But those who have will feel deeply grateful that Rothwell, the film's producers Jeremy Dear and Stevie Lee (who both appear in the film with their son Joss) and all their collaborators have found such an elegant, luminous way to pay tribute to the book.
A work of cinematic alchemy, by tinkering with sound (exquisitely designed by Nick Ryan) while DP Ruben Woodin Deschamps deploys macro and ultra-wide lenses in addition to off-kilter framing, it manages to evoke the sensory distortion, intense focus and literally different way of seeing for people on the autistic spectrum. Aptly enough, it's a work that enlightens and informs but that is also ravishing to behold.
Faced with the fact that Higashida, now in his twenties, doesn't want to appear on screen himself, the filmmakers opt to expand the remit to documenting the experience of five young people with autistic spectrum condition who either don't speak at all or don't use conventional language to communicate. In the past, people like the ones met here were often considered so severely impaired they were simply institutionalized or even worse (at the end, the film alludes to the eugenicist extermination of autistic people under the Nazis). But now new approaches in education, speech and occupational therapy offer tools to help non-verbal people speak, such as tablets and alphabet boards with letters that users with less fine motor skills can poke at to spell out words.
For Amrit, a young woman in Noida, India, painting and drawing are her main means of communicating. Her work is vibrant, bold and extremely neat, capturing the busy world around her with fluid, dashing lines. Her mother, in a moving scene, describes how in the past Amrit's inability to communicate would leave both of them screaming but now her art gives the young woman an outlet, and through the course of the film we see her preparing for a solo show in a gallery.
By way of contrast, Dear and Lee's son Joss, in his late teens, can speak quite fluently without tools, but his mind is so stirred and swept by his overwhelming sensory experience that his speech often seems incoherent and strange. He often mentions experiences that happened years ago to him in houses the family no longer lives in, as if, like the protagonist in Slaughterhouse-Five, he's become unstuck in time and experiences past and present all at once.
Because his parents are filmmakers, Rothwell has access to homemade footage showing Joss as a child, delighting in water and flashing light toys, intercut with him today, still obsessed with these same things but also now "green boxes," or pad-mounted transformers that distribute electricity in some municipal areas. Those emit their own distinctive hum, or to Joss' ears "music," and he can hear from great distances.
In Arlington, Virginia, the filmmakers meet Emma Budway and Ben McGann, teenage best friends, who attend a special school together and are practically inseparable. Using alphabet boards to communicate, they have means to express themselves quite eloquently, although the film demonstrates that this takes more time than just speaking. Still it's worth it to watch Ben pick out the letters to say that without having people with autism participating in the conversation about the condition, it's not a conversation.
Finally, the film travels to Sierra Leone, where Jestina lives with her mother and father. Arguably the least able of the five young people we meet, Jestina is clearly deeply loved by her parents, who have started a special school for other children like her in Freetown. It's a vitally necessary project in a country where people with ASC are still suspected of being witches or possessed. "The lucky ones are the ones who are still alive," observes Jestina's mother, as many are left to die in the bush by parents who don't understand their children's needs and are afraid of the social stigma that comes from having a disabled child.
Around these stories, Rothwell weaves in an interview with Mitchell himself, as well as a framing device that features an English voice reading passages from Higashida's book. The voiceover explains, for instance, why he (like Joss) loves to jump on trampolines or why he feels the need to wander from home or run off sometimes. Meanwhile, we see a little biracial boy of about eight or nine with autism (Jim Fujiwara), exploring a vast, mostly empty landscape of towering electricity pylons, soaring brickwork bridges and fields of grass. The camera goes in tight on the patterns of the swaying stalks, or the doppler shift illusion of planted rows of trees, the sort of optical flutterings that mesmerize people on the spectrum. These expressionist touches are deployed throughout, offering a cinematic approximation of the sensory distortion and overload experienced by people on the spectrum.
As a critic, I feel this is a wondrous work, one that captures, as far as I can tell as a neurotypical person, a lot of what it's like to live with the condition. But as the parent of a child with autism, one who struggles with sensory overload in much the same way as all the kids met here, I can't help wondering what he will make of it. He'll probably complain that there aren't enough cats in it — but I think he'll also appreciate the effort to show how people like him see the world, in their own words.
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Documentary Competition) With: Jim Fujiwara, Amrit, Emma Budway, Joss Dear, Jestina, Ben McGann, David Mitchell, Elizabeth VossellerProduction: A BFI presentation of an Ideas Room, MetFilm, Vulcan Productions, Runaway Fridge productionDirector: Jerry RothwellBased on the book 'The Reason I Jump' by Naoki Higashida, English translation by David Mitchell, K. A. YoshidaProducers: Jeremy Dear, Stevie Lee, Al MorrowExecutive producers:Stewart le Marechal, Jonny Persey, Peter Webber, Jody Allen, Paul G. Allen, Rocky Collins, Jannat Gargi, Ruth Johnston, Carole Tomko, Lizzie FranckeDirector of photography: Ruben Woodin DeschampsEditor: David CharapComposer: Nainita DesaiSound recordist: Sara de Oliveira LimaSound designer: Nick RyanSales: MetFilm Sales
No rating; 82 minutes
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