That’s as true in the world of film as anywhere else. White male directors—Who needs them? White male stars? Ditto. Old white male directors and stars? Let’s not even go there.
The stories of white men have been told to death. And here comes Martin Scorsese with yet another film about gangsters obsessed with guns and status, a story in which women are mostly relegated to the sidelines. The Irishman may be the last thing you want to see right now.
Yet even if The Irishman takes place almost completely in a world of men, it’s all about the limits of that world— and about how even the most thoughtless and ruthless men somehow long for women’s approval, even if they can’t, or won’t, admit it. Scorsese has never bought into facile readings of masculinity: In Taxi Driver, a loner’s fantasies of heroic vigilantism push him beyond his limits. The Wolf of Wall Street is a burlesque of American male greed. The Aviator shows us a dashing, ambitious capitalist whose eccentricities morph over time into crackpot paranoia. Scorsese’s 25th narrative feature inches into even subtler realms. The Irishman is a late-career masterwork, a picture that couldn’t have been made by a young man, or by anyone without Scorsese’s range of experience as a filmmaker. It’s an antidote to men’s insistence on their own superiority and power, and a reminder that old age, if we’re lucky enough to see it, eventually brings us all to our knees. The Irishman is about everything life can take out of a man—even one who thinks he has everything.
SCORSESE AND SCREENWRITER
This story is from the November 11, 2019 edition of Time.
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This story is from the November 11, 2019 edition of Time.
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