The Irishman

The Irishman directed by Martin Scorsese stars Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Ray Romano. The film is based off a book titled I Heard You Paint Houses, which is a true story on Frank Sheeran’s (DeNiro) real life confession of being head of an Italian Mafia group. It ws made on a $159 million budget under Netflix and was filmed in New Jersey and New York.

            The story takes place in early 2000s about a guy named Frank Sheeran who after World War II, looks back on his life as a hitman and his mob career through the decades. Two events he talks about is doing ties with the Bufalino crime family (Pesci & Romano) and claims he was involved in the disappearance of his life-long friend Jimmy Hoffa, who heads a group called International Brotherhood of Teamsters and vanishes in 1975 at the age of 62.

            The main theme of the story is weakness, betrayal and ways the director portrays the frailty of the once mighty. Weakness is shown through the film in Sheeran whereas he talks about his past he feels this sort of shorthanded out of control feeling as he shares about the dealings and plans, he does to help the Bufalino family. Betrayal is shown between Sheeran and Hoffa at a scene where Hoffa gets on one of their guys for being 15 minutes late to a meeting negotiating pay. After all that they feel betrayal from this guy due to what’s been happening. With the third theme it seems that the character falls later into the film proving the point in frailty to the mighty character which is Sheeran.

            You notice throughout the film there are many nods to previous mafia fims terms of cinematography and resemblance. The cinematography is similar in this film in this film by the lighting because this film is always dark and sometimes there’s barely any light to show the seriousness and tone of the film. There are two examples where the lighting is very dark, the opening scene and a scene where the characters are at a bar discussing plans with the Bufalino family. The lighting in this scene is dark to serve as a tone for the scene and a feeling of something big is going to happen and a deal maybe ensuing. It gives the audience an understanding and feel for the scene. You do see in the film a lot of dollies and tracking shots, which is a nod to previous films. The dolly shots are a resemblance to Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990) and Casino (Scorsese, 1995) in terms of how these previous films always used dolly shots when following characters throughout the film in restaurants, bars, and casinos. Also, like previous films before tracking shots were always shot throughout the films in a way to capture and focus on the characters as they are moving whether walking or moving in anyway.

            The similarities to other mafia films in Irishman makes many nods to those past films as mentioned the filming and the cinematography. One example is the house in the opening scene is the same exact house which is a nod to Goodfellas. The film also in many ways references The Godfather Trilogy where both films the sub-plots involve Italian American organized crime families being involved in legitimate business like both families are interested in working in Las Vegas creating casinos and businesses prior to Fidel Catsro’s Revolution. There is also a definite resemblance to The Godfather Part III (Coppola, 1990). The resemblance is obvious the Italian mafia involvements in mysterious deaths in this film Jimmy Hoffa and Godfather III Pope John Paul I to protect their investments. Also, the main plot of both films involves the main character who is a respected mafia higher-up who is dying of old age reflecting his life of violence.

            There’s also a new technology in this film that was rarely being used that most films never used, and it was a technique called Youthification. Youthification was invented by Industrial Light and Magic (who did films such as Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Bourne, Terminator series and Avatar) where the actors were able to be de-age throughout the decades in the film. How it works is they would put digital markers or dots on the characters face and digitally restore them to a younger age for the scenes they were in. The technology worked on DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino.

            Some interesting facts, trivia, and final thoughts on the film. This was a major film for the first time Martin Scorsese would work on with Netflix and his longest mainstream film and longest movie in his career at 3 hours and 33 minutes. Joe Pesci refused to come out of retirement for this at least more than 50 times according to Scorsese. This is the 7th film pairing between DeNiro and Pesci, 9th pairing with DeNiro and Scorsese and the film can be found in the Criterion Collection spine #1058. Overall, the film is great and a good nod to previous mafia films; it is very long and in the middle, it gets slow and boring but it still is a Scorsese mafia film and he still took elements from the past films and still was able to make it work. The film was nominated for Academy Awards and Golden Globes but didn’t win a category. It is a good film to watch and if you are into mafia films this is the movie to watch because it definitely is a nod to the previous films.

Works Citied

O’Brien, Geoffrey. “The Irishman: The Wages of Loyalty.” The Criterion Collection, Criterion, 25 Nov. 2020, www.criterion.com/current/posts/7202-the-irishman-the-wages-of-loyalty.

Scorese, Martin, Dir. The Irishman. Netflix, 2019