Boy Movies #49

Another Scorsese issue

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I’m enduring it

For better or worse, The Age of Innocence was on my mind a lot during Killers of the Flower Moon. The Age of Innocence, an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel, is Martin Scorsese’s most truly romantic movie, following an affluent lawyer who falls for his fiancé’s socially ostracized cousin in 1870s New York high society. It’s Daniel Day-Lewis, it’s Michelle Pfeiffer, it’s Scorsese’s take on period piece eroticism, with all the importance placed on forbidden, longing looks and the earth-shattering power of a touch to the hand. Sandwiched between his Cape Fear remake in 1991 and Casino in ‘95, The Age of Innocence is only unexpected for Scorsese if you choose to see it that way.

One of the details about Killers that completely caught me off-guard was how romantic it so frequently felt. I, an idiot, found myself thinking a handful of times about how beautiful the chemistry between Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone was; it didn’t surprise me to learn after the fact that this has been a point of contention. “They kind of give [Ernest] this conscience, and they kind of depict that there’s love, but when somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that’s not love,” Christopher Cote, the film’s Osage language consultant, said in a red carpet interview that’s been making the rounds online. Killers is a devastating story about the serial atrocities committed against Osage people by their greedy and unrepentant white neighbors, making those intimate moments between Ernest (DiCaprio) and Mollie (Gladstone) that much more staggering. I hate to deploy “deliberate” as a descriptor of any piece of art — like, no shit, I sure hope nothing in the final version of anything is there by accident — but it is a conscious choice to periodically dial the brutality back to frame their courtship as something close to sweet, to genuine. In Killers, Mollie looks at Ernest with reluctant stars in her eyes, taken by his handsome face and his apparent simplicity. Later, in front of a jury and a jarringly gonzo Brendan Fraser, Ernest even doubles down on his love for his wife. I can see why it’s rubbing people the wrong way.

Don’t mistake this as a defense, but the pushback did remind me of an undeniable fact about Scorsese, which is that much like Michael Mann, he is primarily a romantic. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is his answer to the rom-com, and that moment in Goodfellas where the camera pushes in on Jimmy’s (Robert De Niro) crumpling face after he learns that Tommy (Joe Pesci) got whacked is as definitive a declaration of devotion as anything. In The Age of Innocence, Newland (Day-Lewis) laments the way things mapped out between himself and Ellen (Pfeiffer), telling her, “You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and then you told me to carry on with a false one. No one can endure that”; “I'm enduring it,” Ellen replies placidly. Scorsese loves a love story, and he especially loves a doomed love story, love that's not unrequited but unconsummated, as he once put it. Ernest and Mollie aren’t kept apart by circumstance or society — their union is nefariously encouraged by Ernest’s uncle, played by De Niro — but whatever love may or may not have existed between them is rendered meaningless by what he does to her family, to her. 

Obviously, this is just one piece of a film that attempts to grapple with America’s original sin, as well as Hollywood’s (and by extension, Scorsese’s) complicity in it. It’s too big to sum up all at once; I saw it on Saturday and still don’t feel like I’ve fully gathered my thoughts. (Maybe I’ll already be reclining in my chair at AMC Lincoln Square 13’s Dolby Theater for my second viewing by the time you read this…) But that’s fine! As Fran Hoepfner wrote in Fran Magazine this past Sunday, “I do think people are prone to saying six things too many about a thing they’ve just seen.” Personally, I’m cool to take a seat, shut up, and just devote some time to thinking about the impossible feats achieved by Lily Gladstone.

Brave era update

Thank you to everyone who came through last week with scary boy movies for me to check out as we continue to navigate my brave era together. It really is a group effort. At the behest of my friend Alexis on her birthday, I recently watched Evil Dead (2013) (gnarly and DISGUSTING!!!!!!! EW!!!!!!!) and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (not a movie, but Avan Jogia… period). Let’s see how many more I can squeeze in before November 1st, when it once again becomes illegal to watch scary movies for another calendar year.

• Culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.