Scorsese departs with "The Departed"

Today’s morning news announced Martin Scorsese as the winner of the Golden Globe award for best director. Of course, in case you are not familiar with his name, he’s the director of the movie “The Departed.” Now, I am one of those people who feel that Mr. Scorsese deserves more than an invitation to the Academy Award ceremony every year, declaring winners and paying tributes to past Hollywood filmmakers. It may border on criminal that he did not, so far, get to hold one of the Oscars up on the stage for his past masterpieces: Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Goodfellas, The last Temptation of Christ, Kundun etc… well, you get the idea.

Of recent, however, one of the least accomplished is “The Departed,” in my opinion. Although the film’s basic plot is borrowed from the Hong Kong film “Infernal Affair,” I expected much more character rumination worthy of his craft. Of course, even Scorsese he himself will acknowledge that he hasn’t made an enduring masterpiece with “The Departed” as he had confessed in one of the interviews he gave prior to the release of the movie. He had said , including “The Aviator,” something to the effect that these weren’t the kind of films that he would incubate for a long time as his last pet-project “Kundun.”

Whatever prompted him to commit his energy to this film is really not my point here, nor this review. It, nonetheless, denotes the degree of passion he brought to bear on the project. Now, one may argue it is unfair to judge a film purely based on the director’s passion, vigor or personal affinity to the project at hand, after all we have seen so many Hollywood films that seem so full of passion and energy but fail to deliver on its promise. However, it would be equally dismissive of Scorsese if we consider him to be a Hollywood creature.

What I saw in Scorsese’s other masterpieces was the personal redemption his characters try to achieve in vain through the means of killing, prostitution, gambling, lying, meditations, love, sex, betrayal etc…basically, all of the traits that can be found in the human history. One of his hallmarks is gaining self-consciousness through one’s suffering whether it be physical or mental. Most notable characters embody this quality are Jack LaMotta in “Raging Bull” and Travis in “The Taxi Driver.” The protagonists, in these cases, are nothing more than people who feel that they have to do something. But for what? We do not know. Even if they do achieve their goals by way of whatever means available to them, the end results for all these characters are same as before they set out on their journey, that is, their surroundings.

Jack LaMotta gets a beating in the boxing ring as a way to receive salvation through his self-mutilation. Just as the Passion for Jesus was the only way to accomplish his divine mission, Jack’s suffering in the ring is the very act of the Passion for him. Much as the theatre stage represented for Shakespeare the world, the ring in “Ranging Bull” serves as the world we live in, and the physical abuse and suffering Jack has to endure, our anxiety and pain we must face in the world.

Travis, on the other hand, sees his self sacrifice, in the likeness of Jesus, as a God’s divine calling that must be answered to save this world from the evil. His redemption comes from good deeds by getting rid of a politician who lies. He sees himself as a savior of sorts. As a result, he throws himself at the hatching of a plan to kill an evil politician who is accountable for all the wrong things in the society.

If all of this has religious overtones, it does because Scorsese deals directly with the issue of life and death in modern society and the means to overcome it – transcendence. Thus, we get films like “Kundun,” “The Last Temptation of Christ.” These two films, he had once said, are the projects that he kept close to his heart for 10 years. The overarching theme in these films are, of course, what it means to give oneself to the need of the concerned society when the outcome is more or less the same. It’s a personal question asking only to himself, not a collective one. He does not have the answer to his question, nor does he expect his audiences to draw one from his. Films by Scorsese are as far from being didactic as oil is from water in substance. It is as much about his own spiritual journey as his characters’ own ambivalent future.

With “The Departed,” we get neither a question nor a working out of one. Only thing we get is confusing multiple narratives that coalesce more or less at the end to an unsatisfying ending. There is no redemption, no ambivalence... Characters in TD are so sure of their actions, we are hardly given an chance to identify with them. Here, the difference between the good and evil is distinguished so much so that one is forced to rely only on gores and violence to justify the admission fee. In the past renderings of his characters, the good and evil is not so sharply defined. It is only the inner self that creates a moral universe where he’s the ruler, making his characters the prisoners of their own world, whereas, with TD, the only thing concerns is narrative twist. As such, development of character takes the back seat.

I will concede that Scorsese does try to render the law enforcement as a complicated beast that more or less rivals the actual bad guys in virtue, and perhaps surpasses in exploitation, in which code of justice is as weighty as a piece of paper. Yes, on the surface this does seem like Scorsese’s familiar territory where, once again, we revisit the grey world of good and evil. But this is only on the surface. How the characters in TD that occupy the film’s temporal space of nearly 2 hours see themselves through the eyes of its creator is still not clear because they are not given the emotional space that’s required for these characters to be introspective.

I do wish Mr. Scorsese to receive some kind of major recognition in the form of prestigious film awards like the Oscars or the Cannes, but I would be even more delighted if it was for the film that’s worthy of his art.

The Old Garden

Nearly two decades after the tumultuous years of social upheaval in Korea, Hyun-Woo Oh, one of the main characters of the film, is released from the prison, serving 17 years for trumped up charges by the Korean government. We follow Hyun-Woo's path as he looks for his place in the society where he took no part in during the last two decades where Korea has seen amazing economic growth. Unlike what the premise of the film hints at, much of the film is about the past, that of Hyun-Woo's journey prior to his arrest. It is, more specifically, a romantic journey that the filmmaker wants us to follow.

The journey takes place against the backdrop of the 80's, when socially conscious low-wage workers and college students protested against the government for social injustice prevalent everywhere at the time. Violent clashes between the two were frequent, but mostly it was the civilians who were unfairly victimized by the militant government, which ultimately resulted in hundreds of death. Hyun-Woo, who took up this cause, was part of this student movement at the time along with his friends, who were eventually arrested, tortured and senselessly killed.

He flees at the urging of his friends, while most of his friends were captured. As he roams through the countryside, he meets a girl by the name of Yoon-Hee, who provides physical as well as emotional protection.

The film slowly builds layers of Hyun-Woo’s subtle and complex emotional states during this time, which involve among other things responsibility to his comrades who had been captured or killed and his complicated romantic entanglement with Yoon-Hee. The fact that the film grounded the story in the historically, socially sensitive 80's did not catch me by surprise, after all I moved to the States in the 80's when this sort of thing was happening everywhere. But it's the filmmaker's attempt to leave the past as it is and not to draw out any moral or social implication it has in the present that surprised me.

The director, Sang-Soo Lim, once said he wanted to focus on the human aspect to the story. As if to prove that he really meant it, he eschews much discussed and criticized role of the militant government in favor of the two lovers caught in this complicated era. It is a noble attempt on his part, and I think it is the right choice ultimately, despite the fact that he half successfully conveys the characters' complicated emotions.

His noble attempt aside, however, we only get glimpses of the effects the social circumstance has on the characters, instead we get anecdotes of their predicament assembled in linear narrative fashion that more or less disrupted only by Hyun-Woo's memory. I can see why Lim chose to show things in fragments, as most of us see the past in fragments when memory is conveniently called up to suit the present. But his refusal to go into the depth of his characters stopped this reviewer from going into his also. The ultimate question for Lim is not why but how, and I could see the merit this inquiry into their inner depth could have elicited ; nevertheless, I am thoroughly unconvinced of his character renderings.

Surely, the operating principal behind his latest work is showing the characters as they are and not to fall on either side of the political and social spectrum by means of apolitical figures. But as the superficiality of the characters is all we get, we never fully engage ourselves in their ups and downs of life. Some scenes come off from the screen as if they are 30 second TV commercials designed to promote the latest home products or fashion trends.

It is, in a way, a paradox to make a film based on an era that yearned for a better future for its generation that now seems only to belong in a history textbook when it’s only two decades ago. That this longed generation of economically renewed Korea only sees the past decades that struggled for them as another historical incidents buried deep in the textbook is only to be expected, that the demographic of the theatre going group is pretty much limited to teens and twenties, that the movies nowadays catered mostly to this group that worships the façade of things and not the things themselves are not something to ridicule the filmmakers about – their intention being an honourable one no matter what the outcome is. Yet, I came away from watching the movie feeling like this was the way Hyun-Woo felt about his past, our past.