Scorsese's Limelight. While the filmmaker isn't so obnoxiously-shameless at the attempt as Chaplin--he doesn't paint the tears on his cheeks--like that of the silent legend's, this effort at self-consciously belting out a swan song also shrewdly-conceived as a paean to his own myth, drones on and on until it becomes, by turns, tedious, gratuitous, and rather discomfiting. Overlong by a plurality of the running time, The Irishman serves as something of an analog to a storied musical group's autumnal "Greatest Hits" album, with an overgenerous-heaping of all the old hits spun at half the speed, in a lower--and, consequently, less compelling--register.
Perhaps in mind of Leone's sprawling curtain call, Once Upon a Time in America--coincidentally, also starring Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci--Scorsese decelerates his trademark nervy pace down to a crawl, while pouring on the elegiac tone by the barrel. However, unlike the operatic Leone--and despite the impressive $160 million budget--the conception here seems pinched and insistently prosaic. Although Pacino's belated appearance in the film's second hour finally bestirs the torpid proceedings a bit, these surface ripples merely reflect the vibrancy of works past. Underneath, it's all still waters, running more thick than deep. This is a tired movie, in which the weariness of its declining and departing elderly characters contrives to be less responsible for this impression than the drop in artistic vigor. I can't recall a Scorsese picture so slack in invention--one scene after another plays out in simple two-shots--so undistinguished in staging, so nondescript in look (this must be the flattest mise en scène of Scorsese's career).
It doesn't help that the film is sabotaged out of the gate by its associations: not only can The Irishman not help but pale next to the director's better, more vital outings, verisimilitude--and, thusly, gravitas--is critically undermined by the reliance on digitally de-aged stars. This deleterious impact isn't as acutely felt with Pacino, whom is new to the Scorsese ouevre. But particularly with the legacy of Scorsese's earlier collaborations with them, I'm not at all sure how we are expected to respond favorably to DeNiro's and Pesci's thoroughly-unconvincing younger avatars. I'm flummoxed as to whether I should feel insulted or sorry for Scorsese and company, if this is the best they could manage.
For instance, DeNiro's Frank Sheeran is purported to have been a combat soldier in World War II. Whereas when we first meet him in the film's initial flashback as an (early? mid?) 1950s truck driver, I'll be damned if this droopy, hunched avatar doesn't already seem north of half a century. With Pesci, it's really difficult to get a handle on exactly how old his Russell Bufalino his meant to be in these early scenes, since he already looks geriatric and then doesn't prove to appear that much older when the film jumps ahead 20-odd years. The effect is not only disconcerting in itself in an "uncanny valley" sort of way, but since his aged stars cannot help but bring their septuagenarian energies and silhouettes to these avatars, the film is unable to bring off its pivotal juxtaposition: that between the swagger and gusto of youth, and the infirmity and resignation of old age. Without this contrast, the poignancy Scorsese shoots for at the film's denouement can't fail to fall well short of the mark.
In this respect, The Irishman is doomed by the filmmaker's wishful aspiration to exploit this project as the handsome, hefty bow with which to tie up his illustrious career. If only Scorsese had had the better judgment to instead go with younger actors he could convincingly ripen with more dependable methods, and forego a little of the tidy theatrics of casting DeNiro and Pesci, he might have pulled off this stirring "final bow". As it is, as with Chaplin, this self-conscious straining for a dramatic exit ultimately comes off more ponderous than affecting.