The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)

[Ruby]

Nicholson has given at least 2 brilliant performances in the last 15 years: Blood and Wine and About Schmidt. Which is two more than the amount of brilliant films that Scorsese has made in the same period.

I think the two performances you mean are The Pledge and The Crossing Guard.

The Pledge was the last film he gave a decent performance in-I almost forgot it was him.

[barbarianeggplant]

So, I realize no one's posted in here since 2009, but I rewatched this the other night as part of a Scorsese festival at my local theater and decided to skim through the thread here. I'm a little puzzled by the pronounced dismissal of the scene where diCaprio's character sleeps with the shrink. I can see where it comes off as Hollywood-y (the grumpy, 15-year old punk I was when Titanic came out is still leery any time diCaprio gets busy on screen), but the core of the film is about dovetailing the parallels between Costigan and Sullivan, and Farmiga's character seems an important mirror in this, which would be less complete without this scene. Maybe it's not the best use of Farmiga (see Down to the Bone for that), as she's more of a device than a person here, but it serves the purposes of the film well and the parallel character studies would be less complete without it.

[Bertram Potts]

Did anyone else pick up on the idea that Matt Damon's character is impotent?

When he gets his appartment the guy insinuates that he might be gay. He is never once shown making love to his girlfriend. When he first is brought on the force Mark Whalberg compares his rise through the ranks to that of a 12 year old boys penis. His boss says that "a girl sees a wedding ring and she knows you got money and your cock must work" and then he laughs and says "oh ya its working... over time" Then we have the shot of his girlfriend with a banana in her hand telling him "it happens with a lot of guys". When he is shown the picture of his baby (I dont think its his, because the only shot of them in bed his girlfriend is behind him and he is in a fettle position) his girlfriend says "that little speck they say is the penis".

Also, we have our introduction to him taking place during a scene where a girl is continually asked about her period. Groceries and goods are taken from this girl and given to matt damon, and this is the first time we see him, then the very last time we see him he again has a bag of groceries and is killed. I know the groceries speak more to other subtexts of the film, but it bears relation to this theory given the young girl that is accosted at the beginning. His boss asks him if he "likes having his cock sucked" by her and he talks about "other fat cocks" penetrating her in his stead. He says himself to his boss "is this what its all about? All that fucking and killing... and no sons".

Plus, what else would explain Jack sticking a big fake black penis in his face, and then musing to himself aloud how easy it is for him to get women? I can go on and on with this. The silly scene where he calls the firemen Homo's... the building he wants to live next to because It probably has some relation to political office (I dont know that area) is also kind of phallic.

[zedz]

I think you lost me with your opening 'gay' -> 'impotent' assumption. Just how do you think gay sex works?

[FrauBlucher]

Film analysis straight out of a psychiatric ward.

[Mr Sausage]

I assume he meant that, being gay, Damon's character can't achieve an erection around women.

Damon's character's insistence on calling the firemen homophobic slurs did make me wonder about him--they seemed pointedly excessive--but I wasn't interested enough to follow up on that.

[JabbaTheSlut]

Thelma Schoonmaker told during a lecture about the editing of The Departed, that the secret backstory of Matt Damon's character was that he was abused as child by Nicholson's mobleader. This is evident in the character's reactions in the movietheatre scene. If I remember correctly, this aspect was Damon's own reading of his character.

[zedz]

I assume he meant that, being gay, Damon's character can't achieve an erection around women.

So therefore he's impotent? Huh? Does that mean that a guy who can't get an erection around another guy is also impotent?

[Mr Sausage]

I assume he meant that, being gay, Damon's character can't achieve an erection around women.

So therefore he's impotent? Huh? Does that mean that a guy who can't get an erection around another guy is also impotent?

Poor word choice on his part? I don't think he meant impotent in general, with any partner. Just difficulties achieving erections with women. I don't see any other way to make sense of his comment, at least.

[zedz]

Well, I think he's trying to make an argument that the character might be gay, but for some bizarre reason seems to think that 'impotent' is synonymous with 'gay' - which would be offensive if it weren't so gobsmackingly foolish.

[flyonthewall2983]

If he was abused by Frank, specifically if it was sexual abuse, his impotence could have been a result of that treatment haunting him as an adult. The sort of slurs he and others used is I'm sure common language among people he grew up with, which is how I read it when I first saw it and how I see it now.

[JabbaTheSlut]

Yes, he was sexually abused by Frank. This is the reason for the character's confusion, sexual and moral; the submissiveness, the inability to enjoy, the impotence. Of course, as I understood, this was Damon's reading of his character but it doesn't say it could also be Monahan's intention too.

[swo17]

It's similar to The Departed, I think, where there seemed to be little acknowledgement of the film being an adaptation of Infernal Affairs.

Probably because once you've seen Infernal Affairs, it kicks half the steam out of The Departed.

[domino harvey]

And seeing the Departed kicks the other half out

[carmilla mircalla]

I consider The Departed one of Scorsese's top five. Infernal Affairs and The Departed are two different movies to me so I don't personally compare them. However The Departed is much better.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha I mean you literally do compare them, in the very next sentence

[Randall Maysin]

It's not like anyone cares, but I find The Departed fairly disgusting aesthetically. It's a prime example of 'Le cinema du Pig' - incredibly flashy, meaninglessly obsessive, funny but with absolutely no sense of humor about itself, etc. You can't help but respond to all the talent involved while you're watching it, but afterwards you feel really silly and slightly disgusted for having done so, b/c its so stridently grandiose and vaguely aspirational yet has no actual moral seriousness whatsoever. It's entertaining but worthless.

[Brian C]

It's not like anyone cares, but I find The Departed fairly disgusting aesthetically. It's a prime example of 'Le cinema du Pig' - incredibly flashy, meaninglessly obsessive, funny but with absolutely no sense of humor about itself, etc. You can't help but respond to all the talent involved while you're watching it, but afterwards you feel really silly and slightly disgusted for having done so, b/c its so stridently grandiose and vaguely aspirational yet has no actual moral seriousness whatsoever. It's entertaining but worthless.

I can't really disagree with this too strongly. Last time I watched it (a few years ago), I was surprised by how weak it was, and especially how little disjointed the action is from the characters. It had very, um, emphatic performances from the actors, but little sense of the actual characters.

Mostly it just felt like a mess. Scorsese usually has a very strong sense of what his characters are all about, but with that one stuff just kinda happened.

[hearthesilence]

I actually think this is one of his better films of the past 20 years, even though it falls very short of Kundun and Hugo. It's not a great film, and it's possibly his least personal work. But I think it's very good entertainment and everything seems to "work" for me in this context. The character explorations are pretty slick without much depth, but as an engine for all that goes on in this film, it's efficient. (Compare that to The Aviator - given the context of that film's nobler intentions, the shallow explorations feel more like a liability there.) The material is not challenging for Scorsese, and since he's not one to phone anything in, he made The Departed into something a lot better through his stylistic flourishes alone.

The cast is fun to watch because it feels like everyone is relishing the opportunity to do a Scorsese film, with the script giving them plenty of opportunities to strut their stuff. This does take a bad turn with Nicholson's over-the-top moments, but otherwise, actors like Baldwin, Wahlberg, etc. are a riot, even allowing us to laugh at their ridiculous macho posturing every now and then. So with that in mind, I don't disagree with many of the observations made in the last two posts, but I don't react with disgust because so much of it is comedy to me, and we're supposed to be in on the joke.

[oh yeah]

The Departed is a messy film, no way around that, and I understand a lot of the criticism of it. But ultimately I think it ranks as one of Scorsese's most viscerally effective works. Yes, there's a slight initial feeling of this being an "impersonal" project, but it doesn't really matter because it's such an angry and kinetic film that I can't imagine Scorsese just robotically churning it out. Part of the movie's appeal as well as its fodder for criticism is how incredibly over-the-top it is; it's maybe Scorsese's most maximalist film, or certainly in the gangster genre. The editing is dizzying (and predictably skilled), but with its quick cuts and frantic, look-at-me camera work, it creates a very chaotic aesthetic -- one which somehow works, I think, because it fits the tone and theme of the film. This is basically in line with No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood as far as nihilistic Bush-era cinema goes; indeed, the final act confirms Departed as the most despairing, brutish and cold world we've seen yet from Scorsese. But I think the denouement feels earned, and quite poignant actually (despite the infamously hackneyed touch in the final shot).

DiCaprio gives what might be his best pre-Wolf of Wall Street performance, all violent anxiety fraught with desperate self-loathing. It's a great piece of acting; Jack, on the other hand, just hams it up. Nothing terrible, but he's one of the film's weaker parts for sure. I think the film really rests on the contrasts between DiCaprio and Damon's characters, both always twinned in disturbing ways which suggest one must be wiped out like a file deleted from a computer. Like Mann's Miami Vice from the same year, Scorsese's film is very much one examining a certain kind of post-human element that was (and still is) deeply felt in the post-9/11 surveillance-state/Patriot Act environment of fear, terror and drone-like obedience. Indeed, the film is defined by the shadow of 9/11, which fuels its abiding sense of melancholic nihilism -- detectable in everything from the bleak noir-like narrative trajectory down to the deliberately subdued and de-saturated color palette of plain grays, cold blues, wintry whites. The choice of Ballhaus over Richardson as DP makes a lot of sense: whereas a Richardson-shot film like Casino is stylized like some gaudy Bosch-meets-70s fashion tour through Hell, Ballhaus showed in Goodfellas and others a more grounded and "realistic" style which serves to depict a clean, anti-septic, essentially Godless world.

And so it is with The Departed, a film about a world bereft of any higher or moral power (the constant references to the crimes of the Church are telling), bereft of anything besides the power of the hollow-point bullet which tears through skin and bone with perfect precision. Scorsese has never made a more pessimistic film, not even Taxi Driver. And I find it consistently re-watchable and riveting, especially in the second half which dispenses with some of the clunkiness of the first. I think Wolf is definitely a superior film (and the best of his post-Casino works), but The Departed hits hard and uncompromisingly. One astute critic essentially likened it to the intricate cop/rat interplay of Prince of the City filtered through the dystopian vision of Blade Runner; I think it's an apt comparison considering the way the movie both indulges in old-world Scorsese-isms and yet also moves us forward to a frighteningly anti-humanist, almost science-fiction world, i.e. the world we live in today (or did in 2006). It's a great, flawed film -- mostly limited by the occasional macho-posturing of Monahan's script and the ways that it dips into the well of past Scorsese tropes instead of pushing even further into the unknown as Mann did fully with Vice.

[flyonthewall2983]

One astute critic essentially likened it to the intricate cop/rat interplay of Prince of the City filtered through the dystopian vision of Blade Runner

Ironic considering Scorsese almost considered buying the rights to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in the late 60's, and David Cronenberg's later comment on how Taxi Driver was "more Blade Runner than Blade Runner".

Your summation is nearly pitch-perfect for me, except I feel this is better (and more re-watchable) than Wolf of Wall Street. I'm fine with movies where there is no one to root for, and being the kind of purging examination of the concept of American greed as that movie is. But at least with The Departed, there was enough natural sympathy you gain for DiCaprio's character that it makes someone like me a little more invested in what's going on. All you were waiting for in Wolf of Wall Street to that end was seeing Jordan get busted, which was handled in a way that was like (if I may) a bucket of ice to the crotch.

[dda1996a]

One astute critic essentially likened it to the intricate cop/rat interplay of Prince of the City filtered through the dystopian vision of Blade Runner

Ironic considering Scorsese almost considered buying the rights to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in the late 60's, and David Cronenberg's later comment on how Taxi Driver was "more Blade Runner than Blade Runner".

Your summation is nearly pitch-perfect for me, except I feel this is better (and more re-watchable) than Wolf of Wall Street. I'm fine with movies where there is no one to root for, and being the kind of purging examination of the concept of American greed as that movie is. But at least with The Departed, there was enough natural sympathy you gain for DiCaprio's character that it makes someone like me a little more invested in what's going on. All you were waiting for in Wolf of Wall Street to that end was seeing Jordan get busted, which was handled in a way that was like (if I may) a bucket of ice to the crotch.

Which was the whole point really. He was released in real life as well and went on to make millions from books and tours, and no one remembers the people who spent years catching him. That was the entire point of Wolf

[flyonthewall2983]

Of course, but it still doesn't make it as captivating a movie for me.

[oh yeah]

I think the presentation of Belfort's punishment was intentionally casual and almost tossed-off, in keeping with the film's tone and themes. The real end to the film is the final scene/shot, anyway. And besides, to me that's a film where the journey is so wonderfully entertaining that having some epic destination isn't even all that important.

I agree that The Departed is a more emotional film than Wolf, but I think it's just down to the two films being made in different modes: Departed being tragedy and Wolf comedy. Jordan Belfort may be a character I'm less invested in than Billy Costigan, but Belfort's story is so incisively and hilariously-told, and so spiked with surprising suspense, that I find them equally riveting -- if in a very different way. Also, I guess Wolf just feels to me like the most self-assured and downright masterful Scorsese's been since '95 -- and indeed I'd say it's one of his very best films, and one of the best comedies of recent years. Though Departed feels a little Schizophrenic in its stylistic ADHD, I think that Wolf managed to use those maximalist tendencies in the best way, crafting a more coherent and cohesive aesthetic in the process.

[flyonthewall2983]

Though Departed feels a little Schizophrenic in its stylistic ADHD, I think that Wolf managed to use those maximalist tendencies in the best way, crafting a more coherent and cohesive aesthetic in the process.

That's fair, and yes Wolf has probably some of the best comedy I've seen in recent years in cinema. I don't mean to come off too harsh on it, but I guess I prefer The Departed that much over it.