#4) The Irishman, by Martin Scorsese (2019)

Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is a hitman entirely driven by his fear of something harsher than death: finality. If there’s any truth to religion, death is less an end, more a transition, but finality is an unalterable blackness to which no consciousness will wake from. Of course, death is it’s closest relation, and Frank is exposed to a world where death is at the forefront of his reality – it’s real to him in a way it’s not to you and I, and he can only carry the attitude as long as it’s not me to survive. He probably developed this in World War II, where death was first nature. His killing of two unarmed Nazis, digging their own grave, will be the most buildup we get for any of his kills. In Frank’s eyes, this is a story about survival. But for us, it’s a story about stories. These are the kinds of stories we tell when we’re scrambling to make meaning of life with the looming shadow of death approaching.

Many have widely misinterpreted that this is a film about the events leading up to Jimmy Hoffa's death, but it's not a film about the real Hoffa at all. If anything, it's Hoffa in a dream, filtered through the memory of blood-stained Frank, who knew him well enough to tell tales. It's a story of probability; some things happened, some things didn't, and much was embellished. But aren't stories always embellished? Which is why this film deals with aging, the most natural cause to search for meaning in life. Stories are the spiritual makeup of humanity. Irishman is completely existential in this sense, a kind of primitive art, resembling the core purpose of our ancestors' spiritual mythology. Scorsese has tapped into this deep level of dreaming a movie, the way our early mythmakers saw their worlds and characters come alive, never unrelated to the real world around them. It is a reflection of Frank himself, actually giving his life meaning through telling these stories, whether they're true, untrue, or somewhere in between.

The film takes place through three timelines: the present, Frank in a nursing home telling his stories; the beginning, Frank’s journey from joining the mob through befriending Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino); and the middle, Frank and Russ Bufalino (Joe Pesci) on their way to a wedding, with something much more sinister in the works. Frank started out as a truck driver delivering meat, a brother in Hoffa’s union, when fate led him to meeting Russ, the kind of guy who sits next to mob bosses like Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel). Frank has a sweetness about him, seems like a harmless guy – of course he does, this is how he has to remember himself - but for whatever reason he finds himself getting involved in the mob’s activities. He’s not a particularly ambitious Sam Rothstein (Casino), he didn’t want to carve out his life this way like Henry Hill (GoodFellas), and he’s not psychotic like Johnny Boy (Mean Streets). Frank is the most mysteriously motivated of all Scorsese gangsters, but circumstances reveal it’s always survival [from finality]. At one point, he gets in trouble for blowing up territory part owned by Angelo, though completely ignorant of this. He alludes to having a new child and needing more money as his reason for doing it. And while he should be whacked, Angelo pardons him because Russ vouches for him, just one in a series of events that forge Frank’s deepest loyalty to Russ. When he handles things for Russ, it’s out of respect, not money.

Russ eventually assigns Frank to be the right-hand man of Hoffa, the union president, and Frank is more than willing to oblige. Frank may not be hungry for power, but he’s very appreciative of moving up the ladder. At first, Hoffa just needs some help with rivals, but the problems grow much more complex as he encounters friction within the union, and the mob that’s helping him. Frank has venerable memories of Hoffa; a montage of his “bigger than Elvis” influence over minions, juxtaposed with sleeping in the same room as him. Their bond grows quickly and personally, developing familial relations. Hoffa’s the first of Frank’s friends that his standoffish daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina) is accepting of, as she knows Russ and the rest are gangsters. There’s another poignant montage intercutting Peggy’s proud school presentation on Hoffa, stating all his idealisms, with the reality of his hypocrisy; building pension fund for workers, but giving it away in loans to the mob. This is no secret to attorney general Robert F. Kennedy (Jack Huston), who interrogates Hoffa about his shady dealings. We know that Hoffa is bound for prison, and this will be a turning point for him, but the question of loyalty will remain: who is, and who isn’t?

There’s an invisible food chain, a hierarchy that stretches into the darkness, which we can never fully fathom, but which we hear about. Hoffa still feels like he’s in control from behind bars, his puppet Fitz (Gary Basaraba) running orders. But Hoffa slowly begins to find his place on the food chain, and soon, Fitz is responding to orders from elsewhere. A growing union leader, Tony Pro (Stephen Graham), poses a new threat for Hoffa’s leadership, despite joining him in prison. They both know they’ll be out eventually, and when they are, things will be different. Hoffa’s ego can’t deal with the power status changing around him, refusing to see the mob taking control of the union, clinging on to his only belief, “this is my union.” The more he fights back, the more the mob doesn’t like it. And that’s when talk begins about the fate of Jimmy Hoffa. Frank is stuck in the middle, his loyalty at stake between his friend and the people who take care of him.

Every characteristic highlighted is a function of Frank’s memory, which fondly recalls Hoffa. Frank may be a hardened killer, unable to feel remorse for his crimes, but he has a soft spot for Hoffa. He remembers him eating ice cream a lot, the chat they shared by their beds in pajamas like boys at a sleepover, and the times he danced with Peggy. Experiencing the fate of Hoffa is heart wrenching, and yet another tale entered into the mythos of his mysterious disappearance. Just the same, there’s warmth for Russ, the man who practically crowned an Irishman a made guy in the Italian mob. They were friends until the end. The third act deals with Frank and Russ, geriatrics now, rotting in prison. Watching Frank’s senior obstacles pile on, regressing to a helpless state, is the poignancy of a six-film arc; through all the power achieved by illegitimate means, you could never escape the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Scorsese has changed his form, evolving his cinematic style to complement what is likely the last chapter in his gangster saga. It’s a shame for anyone to see this without experiencing the full six movements. What it means thematically to his body of work is as important as a chapter is to a book, part of a greater whole. But as with each installment, it never treats itself as a puzzle piece, it is a whole entity unto itself. Mean Streets appropriately began the story with its namesake, the street-level cronies. GoodFellas explored the mid-level mob, while Casino showed the mob with it’s own city at the top-level. Gangs of New York brought us back to the 1800s and showed us the historical roots of the mob. And his Oscar-winning The Departed flipped sides to see it from the law enforcement perspective. They’ve been caught, and now the only thing they can do is rot. That’s what The Irishman is; it behaves this way, as age and decline do. Gone is the frenetic pacing, fast editing, and flashy lights of previous installments. The Irishman is finality; the end of an era not just for the mob, but for Scorsese and his crew in this genre. The mastery is in how the film behaves: slow, patient, subdued, clinging to memories; a reflection of the mob’s glory days waning. Lower-thirds reveal details about characters we don’t get to intimately know, telling us when they died and how – Scorsese isn’t spending his time creating the illusion of glorification anymore. This is the life: death!

Unlike the unreliable narrator in Henry Hill, whose telling of the lifestyle is contradicted by outcomes, Frank seems honest, but this is only because his unreliability is more complicated, and requires breaking the fourth wall into the real world, where it’s been suggested that his confessions are largely embellished. The most important, talked about technique is the use of digital de-aging. Different televisions will have a different effect, but on mine, the image is completely photorealistic. But I also say that if it isn’t for you, it doesn’t have to be. A slight surreal quality may even be intended; this is an old man trying to remember himself and key players when they were younger, and any imperfections are in him trying to imagine it.

Life has to mean something. Whether it’s picking a green casket over a black one, or a .32 over a .22 caliber gun, the accumulation of all our choices form the unique matrix that tell our story, which is our spiritual energy field. Scorsese, at 77 years old, is right to choose this point in his life to express that. The way Frank prepares for his death may seem hapless and cold, but that’s the comeuppance of a man who killed in cold blood, scared his family away, and was drawn into betrayal. Now he’s that old man desperate to tell his stories to anyone who will listen. Are we just a bunch of suckers? Probably. We’re the last thing Frank needs – we’re sitting on the other side of that fourth wall looking at him, and he’s looking right back at us. The last thing he asks for is to keep his door slightly open. It's like if you shut the door, you throw up a border between life and death, and in it he's isolated. The open door creates the illusion that he’s still connected to that world out there, that he somehow matters. This is not unlike the Day of the Dead ritual, in which preserving the memory of loved ones keeps them alive in the afterlife, helping them along their spiritual journey. Frank seeks remembrance through us. His ultimate act will be ‘confession,’ another ritual preparing the soul for its journey. Whether the illusion is finality itself, or escaping it, will be for Frank to find out.

From Netflix. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Steven Zaillian. Based on the book by Charles Brandt. Cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Starring Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Ray Romano, Anna Paquin, and Harvey Keitel. Rated R.

Now streaming on Netflix