There was some disappointment at this year’s Venice Film Festival when it emerged that Martin Scorsese’s new work wouldn’t be ready in time. Yet the work in question - 15-minute short made to promote a casino resort in Macau – to me seems sadly symptomatic of a directorial career that’s increasingly looking in need of fresh inspiration. Where did it all go wrong?
Compare Scorsese’s first quarter-century as a filmmaker to his second and the drop-off in quality and audacity is inescapable. Cape Fear was the first warning sign, a trashily commercial remake of lurid misjudgements. Then came The Age Of Innocence, a yawningly dull stab at arthouse respectability that made Merchant Ivory look animated in contrast. Casino, a cynical attempt to relive former gangster glories, was full of flab. And then the rot really set in: Kundun, Bringing Out The Dead and the risible Gangs Of New York showed a helmer in total creative freefall.
Where the Marty of yesteryear took pains to innovate, the Scorsese of today merely imitates. What is Hugo if not a facsimile of Spielbergian whimsy, or The Wolf Of Wall Street besides an appropriation of Oliver Stone’s mojo? Shutter Island is Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor in everything but name; The Aviator a winsome love letter to a Hollywood long gone. And then there are the films that have next to no personality at all, like Shine A Light: a Rolling Stones concert that any hack-for-hire could’ve knocked out in a lunch hour.
Which brings me to The Departed, the film that won Scorsese his Oscar... 16 years too late. A textbook example of the Academy’s habit of honouring their own for the wrong darn movie, this bloated rehash of a far superior original is everything that is wrong with Scorsese. Would the Marty of old have tolerated Jack Nicholson’s grandstanding, or DiCaprio’s Bah-staan accent? When Scorsese jokingly asked on Oscar night that they “check the envelope”, he was unwittingly speaking for everybody who could not believe it was this – a virtual parody – he was finally being honoured for. Only a mook could argue his best days aren’t behind him. Or is it just me?
