Friday 29 November 2019

WATCHING THE IRISHMAN


Anzio, Italy. World War 2.
Frank Sheeran, an American G.I. in full combat gear, carries an M1 carbine, standard issue for the infantry of the U.S. forces of the time.
Two German soldiers complete the digging of a hole in the forest floor. They climb out, throwing their shovels before them. Have they completed their task so well in the hope of gaining a reprieve?
There is no reprieve. Not in this war. Not in Frank Sheeran’s world, where the officer who ordered him to kill the German soldiers simply said: “And be quick about it.”
Frank Sheeran shoots both soldiers, who gasp in surprise, then tumble, with neat synchronicity, into their self-made grave. Frank Sheeran steps forward and fires again, applying coups de grace to both young men. 
There is no grace in the scene, though there is digital de-ageing of the character of Frank Sheeran, played with dour élan by Robert De Niro throughout the overlong telling of his life as a Mafia killer.
It is as if director Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Raging Bull and many other acclaimed films) has created a summation of his own life’s work. It is yet one more telling of the life and times of a gangster psychopath, set in the sweeping context of historical events in America after World War 2. 
This film is paced to the metronome of a geriatric day-centre, right from the outset. See the cars: huge, sedate and lovingly pictured reversing round corners, in hearse-like motion, displaying their elegant tail fins.
Character development and plot advancement are largely achieved by dialogues that take place at tables with food and drink. Nobody is doing much running around. The delicious Italian practice of eating fresh bread with red wine appears throughout. The director loves this imagery of bread and wine – versions of it appear in many films, an image from his grand lore of Catholic rituals. There is, however, no resurrection from the dead, not for the young German soldiers nor for the numberless others Frank Sheeran later murders on behalf of his Mafia bosses and their Teamster Union associates. And of course, there is a baptism, the director’s central image of family regeneration and continuity.
The idyll of family life has a rotten core in Frank Sheeran’s case. His first marriage – to an Irish-American – ends as he deepens his relationship with his Mafia overlords by marrying a Siciliana-American. Did his first marriage unravel when his talent for following orders into deepening chasms of murderous violence became more obvious? He throws money on the kitchen table, saying he did well at the numbers, but Frank Sheeran is gambling on more than numbers. He is throwing dice, spotted with the lives of his family and of his victims. The scene where he pulverises the neighbourhood shopkeeper, with his bare hands, confirms what has been emerging. Frank Sheeran is a psychopath, very much at home within a Mafia family of psychopaths.
What choices does the director makin the way that scene, and others, are presented? Watching the film, the viewer asks, ‘what emotions are we supposed to be experiencing?’ Dismay, disgust, disbelief, disapproval? Coupled with the World War 2 scene, is this the scene that confirms that Frank Sheeran is a killer and the rest is no more than window-dressing on his vile actions?
The myth of de-ageing has a long legacy in art. Grappling for eternal youth is a trope found in literature and film, as well as in other forms. For Irish figures, we have Oisín in Tir na nÓg; Dorian Grey in his portrait. And now we have the Italian-Irish Frank Sheeran/Robert De Niro, de-ageand ageing on the silver screen. There is no de-ageing for soldiers mouldering in the ground or gangsters, union bosses and others shot in the face. There is death, of course. Even for Frank Sheeran.
See the hunched figure of the aged and diabolical Joseph Kennedy, staring across the water from the deck of his house at his beloved Hyannis Port compound, where the Kennedy dynasty roosted. 
The film presents a chilling critique of organised power in its 20th century American forms. Organised labour. Organised business. Organised politics. Organised crime. It presents the manner in which they interweave and support one another to advance their several aims, using murder when tensions strain the existing order, causing violent convulsionto re-set the system.

Nowadays, young people, they don't know who Jimmy Hoffa was. They don't have a clue. I mean, maybe they know that he disappeared or something, but that's about it. But back then, there wasn't nobody in this country who didn't know who Jimmy Hoffa was.

Personal and national histories are woven into the telling. Frank Sheeran’s father was a house painter. Frank uses the euphemism ‘I paint house’ for his murdering. All of the action takes place in the aftermath of World War 2, with the intersection of economic development with organised crime, capital and labour sharpening the stakes, for all the actors; state, criminal and labour. See the rise of the young Kennedys, in law and politics, the emergence of Jimmy Hoffa in The Teamsters Union and the strengthening of the power of Mafia families. The use of Union pension funds as investments in Mafia casinos in Las Vegas is the key driver of the film. Pressure from Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, seeking to bring Jimmy Hoffa and Mafia associates before the courts triggers Frank Sheeran’s violent actions. Not only does he pull triggers, but he also gets involved in supplying them to the mercenaries, US military personnel and exiles, making up the CIA-backed Brigade 2506, attacking Cuba as the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion. They were beaten back by local forces, commanded by Ché Guevara. 
Throughout the mayhem of this period of US history, Frank Sheeran kept taking orders, as he had in World War 2. He kept obeying and killing. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that the waning of Frank Sheeran's murderous career, in the organisation he served, coincidewith the rise of Black activism, the civil rights movements and the domestic refusal to unanimously support the new war in Viet Nam.

If they can whack a President, they can whack a president of a union. You know it and I know it.

This epic context is present, but kept in the background, as the film uses a road trip with two middle-aged couples to tell the killing of Jimmy Hoffa. Or a least tell Frank’s version of it, as Hoffa’s body has never been found. The director uses his A-list cast: De Niro as Frank Sheeran, Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa and Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino, the Mafia boss. They are all terrific, Joe Pesci, in particular. There will be Oscar nominations. Women characters are well in the rear. African American characters come late and are marginal. All the cast play well, none more so than Scouser Stephen Graham as Anthony ‘Tony Pro’ Provenzano.

Then who? 
I'm gonna tell you. Tony. 
Tony. Which Tony? They're all named Tony. I mean, what's the matter? Italians, they can only think of one name.

Frank’s daughter, Peggy, is possibly the only actively moral person we see in the film. She is living the American dream in her own way, working as a teller in a bank, where she refuses to serve her father. The shield of security glass between them chillingly reflects the prison visits she never made.
What emotions are being offered in this final sequence, this slow, long-winded slide to the grave down the chute of an old folks’ home? Is the director seeking to evoke sympathy? Should we empathise with the murderer, while he rebuffs opportunities to express regret and seek forgiveness from his putative God, via the earnest young priest? 
The music is terrific throughout, from the do-wop of The Satins to the strings of The Barefoot Contessa, with scenes cut to the music and given crisp tone and shape by the edits. The music brings us back to the 50s and 60s USA from which much of contemporary, global pop culture arises.
The viewer lives through the legacy of these times, Frank Sheeran’s times, when orders were obeyed, when capital, crime and labour contested with each other, when psychopaths did the bidding of their bosses. Much like today.

Would you like to be a part of this, Frank? Would you like to be a part of this history? 
Yes, I would. Whatever you need me to do, I'm available.


The Irishman, film, Martin Scorsese, Tribeca Productions et al., 2019




Thursday 21 November 2019

A FLOURISH FOR ETHAN


A Flourish for Ethan: on the occassion of his naming, 21.11.2019 


There is a piece of Gaelic wisdom which goes


Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí.


It translates to English as


Praise the young and they will flourish.


Dá bhrí sin, molaim Ethan agus tiochfaidh sé.


Thus, I praise Ethan and he will flourish,


Mar atá sé tagtha go dtí an lá seo


As he has flourished to this day.



Molaim Zoë, Brian agus Arlo agus tiochfaidh siadsan.


I praise Zoë, Brian and Arlo and they will flourish.


Agus sinne, fosta. Comhluadar Ethan.


And us, too. Ethan’s family and company.


Molaim muidne agus tiochfaidh muid. Le Ethan.


I praise us and we will flourish. With Ethan.











Friday 1 November 2019

FROM AN EMPTY AUTUMN DITCH TO A DREARY WINTER BOOTH

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
The people of the UK woke up this morning to the shocking news that, despite his vehement promise, their Prime Minister had not been found dead in a ditch. Searches up and down the Kingdom, covering England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where ditches are particularly many, tangled and deep, revealed them all to be void of a Prime Minister. There was a surfeit of cans, plastic bottles, tattered Halloween outfits, used condoms, busted wardrobes by the dozen and a number of bed frames and mattresses showing evidence of people having been busy making the beast with two backs.
The UK Prime Minister gave a solemn promise that he would die in a ditch if UKexit/Brexit did not happen at Halloween. The fact that ditches across the UK do not contain a dead Prime Minister leads to a number of speculations:
Firstly, that the Prime Minister has fallen into a ditch at sea.
And having thrown him from your watery grave,
Here to have death in peace is all he'll crave.

That he’s somewhere on the shipping lane between Belfast and Liverpool, resting on a wet border in a seabed of new tariffs.
Secondly, that though he has indeed passed, he has not passed into immortality in a ditch, but, through the zombie machinations of arch-ghoul Dominic Cummings, who wears a permanent false face, regardless of season, that the Prime Minister is no longer human, but is, in fact, a changeling, taken by the Other World and returned to the UK even more malevolent, damaged and flawed than before, no longer to be named Boris, but from now on to be known as Síofra.
With that in mind, UK voters will enter dreary booths in December and adjust their preferences accordingly. Otherworldly promises will be made, gifts offered, platitudes, enticements and appeasements laid before them.
So, let's see: it was told me I should be
rich by the fairies. This is some changeling:
open't. What's within, boy? 
The election will decide if UK subjects will be ruled by a Síofra or by a human, a much-traduced human, in the person of the leader of the Opposition, who is variously coloured ‘flaming red’ and ‘dithering magnolia’.
Meanwhile … 
Number of food parcels given out across UK soars 73% in five year
New data released today shows April 2018 to March 2019 to be the busiest year for food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network since the charity opened. During the past year, 1,583,668 three-day emergency food supplies were given to people in crisis in the UK. More than half a million of these (577,618) went to children. This is an 18.8% increase on the previous year.
The main reasons for people needing emergency food are benefits consistently not covering the cost of living (33%), and delays or changes to benefits being paid.

Quake in the present winter's state and wish
That warmer days would come: