City life: Gangs of New York
January 16, 2009
I keep referring to the new Martin Scorsese movie Gangs of New York as Slaves of New York after the Merchant / Ivory production of the Tama Janowitz book. This is a mistake, but I think Slaves will last longer.
I was looking forward to Gangs: the director had telegraphed it as a seminal work and I was even prepared to look beyond Leonardo diCaprio, but it's just not very good. Scorsese's later work has moved into a finely tuned realm of shades and whispers: Gangs is straightforward and boring. Although violence is its subject, the film isn't violent at all in comparison to Raging Bull or even Casino: Miramax have steered the camera away from the icky bits, except where the black actors are concerned. After threatening all manner of mutilations, Daniel Day Lewis leaves Leonardo with a few little cuts and a photogenic burn under his cheekbone - nothing a few time lapse dissolves and Cameron Diaz can't fix.
A lot of research has gone into the film and nobody stops talking about it (much like Minority Report) but the characters are straight from stock. The Celtic soundtrack limits the director to the euphoric instead of the funny / sad / jarring jumps between popular songs that made Goodfellas great. I believe artists get better with age, not worse, but the train jumping the track now and then is part of the process. Gangs of New York reminds me of what Lou Reed did with Magic & Loss or, lately, The Raven: an experiment for him rather than us.
I was looking forward to Gangs: the director had telegraphed it as a seminal work and I was even prepared to look beyond Leonardo diCaprio, but it's just not very good. Scorsese's later work has moved into a finely tuned realm of shades and whispers: Gangs is straightforward and boring. Although violence is its subject, the film isn't violent at all in comparison to Raging Bull or even Casino: Miramax have steered the camera away from the icky bits, except where the black actors are concerned. After threatening all manner of mutilations, Daniel Day Lewis leaves Leonardo with a few little cuts and a photogenic burn under his cheekbone - nothing a few time lapse dissolves and Cameron Diaz can't fix.
A lot of research has gone into the film and nobody stops talking about it (much like Minority Report) but the characters are straight from stock. The Celtic soundtrack limits the director to the euphoric instead of the funny / sad / jarring jumps between popular songs that made Goodfellas great. I believe artists get better with age, not worse, but the train jumping the track now and then is part of the process. Gangs of New York reminds me of what Lou Reed did with Magic & Loss or, lately, The Raven: an experiment for him rather than us.