December 16, 2002

It was the best of films, it was the worst of films…

I haven’t seen a film as frustrating as Gang of New York since seeing Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous the first time.  You can read my entire review from that junket screening, but the key sentence in relation to Gangs is: “When I tell you that DreamWorks forced Cameron Crowe to cut this movie too close to the bone for the film to play in the way that would seem to fit the organic storytelling of the piece, the criticism is real.”  The difference is that even that edited version of Almost Famous was Number Six on my Top Ten that year.  I haven’t completed my Top Ten for 2002 yet, but I would guess that the release version of Gangs of New York – the version Scorsese is swearing to the media is his version of choice – won’t make my Top 20.

The simple truth is, when I walked out of the first screening of the film and gathered in the hallway with others to float ideas, I pulled one person aside and whispered, “It’s a car wreck.  Can’t you see that it’s a car wreck?”  I was so unhappy about it that I didn’t want to infect anyone around me… I didn’t want to be in any way responsible for lighting a match that might spark a fire that might in some way injure a director I consider one of the three best working directors on the planet today…. I didn’t want to believe it…

Gangs of New York is a bad movie.  Gangs of New York is Martin Scorsese’s worst movie since Boxcar Bertha.

Yes, it is true that even in the form in which it will hit screens this Friday there are moments of great beauty and power in this film.  Scorsese is a master visualist.  The production design is spectacular.  Daniel Day-Lewis, despite falling into a DeNiro (+4 inches) imitation at times, gives a great performance.  DiCaprio is solid.  Brendan Gleeson and Jim Broadbent are perfection in their roles.  And the first few minutes, preparing for battle in what seem to be catacombs under the street, are wonderful.  The pieces all seem to be there. 

And then, the trouble.  We hear the first strains of an electric guitar riff twang through the middle of an 1846 gang fight.   And the film will never quite recover.

I knew as I watched that there was no twangy guitar in the Elmer Bernstein score that was dumped just a few weeks ago.  I knew as I watched that Martin Scorsese would never have made a movie with the kind of detailed, distracting, badly written voice over that became a dominant part of the film.  I knew as I watched that some sequences had to have been truncated.  I couldn’t believe that the ending, which makes no emotional sense, had to have something going on that wasn’t in the film, or that, somehow, I was missing.

I went back to Gangs of New York a second time, searching for a more comfortable experience.  I’m letting you further behind my curtain here than usual, because I want you to know just how badly I wanted to like this film… I wanted to love this film.  I had a better time of it the second time around, in great part because I stopped listening to the voice over. I forgave many of the flaws - even though they were still there - and I found myself anticipating, happily, some of the better moments of the film.

And then, I saw the October 2001 cut.

Temp track.  Ugly video dub.  Reels playing out and counting down each time. 

And I finally saw the movie that Scorsese wanted to make for all these years.

There are still figure flaws here and there.  Cameron Diaz is still the wrong actress for this role, even if I believe she is a good actress and that she does a game job taking on the role.  There is still a teletype-operator voiceover segment late in the third act that could have simply been lifted out of the film and would never be missed. 

But what  I was struck with while watching the earlier cut is why I love Scorsese.  He is the greatest operatic director still making movies.  Baz Luhrmann brings an operatic vision to his work, but he is trying to change the face of opera. Scorsese is, using all the tools of the day, a classicist.  Like Coppola, the other truly great adult director of the 70s into the 80s, even Scorsese’s minor work is epic.  Soderbergh tends to embrace the B-movie love of the late 60s and 70s… the naturalism and  overt style combined.  Solaris joins King of the Hill as his only real efforts at the size of filmmaking that Coppola and Scorsese embody.  And he’s been attacked mercilessly for the effort as was Kubrick - perhaps the greatest of all modern era filmmakers -  for Eyes Wide Shut.

If you are spoiler sensitive, you might want to bail out now.  I’m not going to get too detailed, but I am going to get into the overall themes of the movie.

Everyone ashore who’s going ashore?

Okay…

The structure of Gangs of New York is pretty basic.  Gangs tells the story of the rise and fall of Bill Cutting, aka Bill The Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis.  His morality defines the era in which he lives.  He takes his ultimate power from another dangerous man  - a man who has a deep and abiding faith in God, despite his actions.  And when he loses his power, it is to a force with even less of a moral foundation than he… the government. 

The gangs of New York include Bill’s, but in the larger picture, the other “families” are Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall gang, the police, the firemen, the rich families uptown, and the U.S. government itself, conscribing immigrants as they make their first step on American soil.  He is certainly a self-indulgent man.  But he fights for his idea of what the soul of America should look like. 

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Amsterdam Vallon is the figurative ghost who haunts Bill throughout the movie.  There was only one man Bill ever killed who was worthy of memory.  That was Amsterdam’s father.  When Bill killed Vallon, Sr., he seized power and his era began.  When Amsterdam returns, a heated, revenge-seeking young buck, his immaturity keeps him at a distance from Bill’s heart at first.  Only if Amsterdam matures into the kind of man his father was will he become a true threat to Bill.  But Bill is, ironically, the only one who can really teach Amsterdam the lessons that will lead to that maturity … and to their ultimate confrontation.

And then there is the true genius of Scorsese’s vision.  By the time Amsterdam is ready to confront Bill  - in a way that is equally as transformative as the confrontation between Bill and Amsterdam’s father at the very start of the film -  the moment of honor and power is made irrelevant.  By the time Amsterdam is man enough to go mano-a-mano, the time of the gangs that they grew up with is over… and the gang that wields the ultimate power is the United States government and the army that was built to protect us, not itself. 

And in that ending…. You may want to move along four paragraphs if you don’t want to know the specifics of the film’s ending….

Ready…?

In the Oct 2001 version, Bill The Butcher knows in these final moments that his time has passed.  And he is, it seems to me, ready to die rather than continue fighting to keep his ideology alive, as he has done through the entire third act.  The man who has to kill him is Amsterdam Vallone.  Why?  Because he is the only vestige of the honor that his father represented.

But in the release version, it is made blurry.  Bill is mortally injured by what seems to be some form of shrapnel. He says a line like, “I’m glad to die a true American,” and in one last gasp of rage, Amsterdam finishes him.  But, like so much of the re-cut film, the responsibility for the murder is taken away from Amsterdam, in classic Hollywood hero style. 

In the Oct. 2001 version, there is no shrapnel.  Bill says the line and then he seems to give himself to Amsterdam, much like Willem Dafoe’s Jesus-like acceptance of his death at the end of Platoon.  And Amsterdam knows what he has to do.  He has to take Bill out of his misery… exactly as Bill had done for Vallone, Sr. after mortally wounding him.  The cycle is complete.  And the mature, respectful Amsterdam does what he needs to do.

The two versions are very close.  A few shots and a few seconds different.  But those moments make all the difference in the world.  The honor of Bill The Butcher is the key.

Okay…

You can start reading again…

Unfortunately, all of these ideas were inspired by the version of Gangs of New York that will not make it into theaters and which Scorsese now claims he does not want to see the light of day.

The truly bizarre part of this is that the difference in length between the two versions of the film is only about 20 minutes and there are no major “missing” scenes in the transition.  So what’s the difference?  

First, there is the idiotic need to explain details that truly don’t need to be explained, which leads to intrusive voice over.  It seems to be true that the film confused test-screening audiences at times.  But since when was that an issue in a Scorsese movie?  I’ll tell you when… when the film ends up costing more than $100 million, more than double the budget of any previous Scorsese movie. 

This brings me back to the Almost Famous analogy.  Was Gangs of New York ever going to be a major commercial success?  I mean, go back to the original deal… maybe they thought that DiCaprio was so hot that he would assure a $100 million domestic gross… but that was ridiculous.  Like Almost Famous, a quality adult-minded film with limited commercial elements should be targeting a domestic take of about $50 million   I’m glad that both films were made, but anyone chasing nine figures with smart, thoughtful adult movies is nuts.  Traffic happens.  Cast Away happens.  But they are true blue moon situations.  And pointedly, neither Steven Soderbergh nor Bob Zemeckis was pressured into making changes to their visions.  Much of Traffic was in Spanish.  Much of Cast Away was silent.  They didn’t patronize their audiences.  Ironic, huh?

The next change was in the speed of the cuts.  Some people have talked about how bloody the film once was.  Well, the jar of ears is still there and Hellcat Maggie still pays for a drink with an ear, even in the release version.  There are a few moments of increased intensity in the longer cut I saw.  But the significant changes were in character development.  There are Broadbent cuts that don’t help.  (There are also major voice over issues in some of those sequences, such as when Amsterdam lands in downtown New York and is taken for an immigrant… the feeling of confusion is part of the experience of the movie.)  But Gleeson’s Monk, a highlight of both versions, is given a little more room to breathe.

Perhaps the oddest edits come in the love story between DiCaprio and Diaz.  It seems that they tried to make the film more romantic in the name of commerciality.  You may have seen the line in a TV spot where she says, “I’m not in love with him.”  In the version I saw, she says, pointedly, “I don’t want him.”  Diaz’ character, Jenny Everdeane, is a whore and a thief.  And she falls in love with DiCaprio’s Amsterdam because he can see right through her.  He is also on the edge of honor, but he is different than the rest.  The release version downplays Jenny’s status as Bill’s whore in a couple of spots.  Softening takes away from the love in a world of violence and leaves us wondering why she cares so much for this man. 

Perhaps the best example of a bad cut in this relationship is a very slight, but much needed, verbal bookend to their relationship that has been pulled.  You can really hear someone saying, “I hate that line” and “It takes away from the power of the ending.”  But that voice is wrong.  The recurring line is, “Can I walk with you a little?”  And it is more than a cute kind of beat.  When Amsterdam catches Jenny after she robs a house, all he wants is his personal property back.  The moment is loaded with sexual tension.  But it is also angry.  Both characters claim to want to get away from one another.  But then, after a beat, “Can I walk with you a little?”  Here are two people out of their neighborhood, among the uptown rich, away from their comfort zone… so they bond, in spite of their little skirmish.  But without the line, it’s just a cut to a confusing continuation of a scene we thought was over. 

At the very end of the movie, after many scores have been settled, the line is reprised in the earlier version.  Again, it has multiple meanings.  It sends the pair into the sunset.  But it also stands as a “what do we do now?” beat that speaks clearly to the themes of the film.  The entire world has changed around them and all they have is one another.  Like America itself, they survive… by simply walking on… walking on… Instead, we get a heavy-handed “remember 9/11” kind of close, which isn’t all that different visually.  But spiritually…

The third big difference is the score, though I think I may be overstating that.  I don’t like what is in the movie.  But, amazingly, much of what I found offensive is right there on the temp track in the Oct. 2001 version.  What you can really see in the still-unfinished version is that Robbie Robertson’s well-researched delivery of real music of the era, played primarily by wandering minstrels, is quite elegant and appropriate.  Equally appropriate is silence.  But the release version doesn’t much care for the quiet.  Every void seems to be screaming to be filled.  And that’s a shame.

But don’t let me bog you down with the details of this disconnection.  The details are crucial, but they are not what this is all about.  It’s about the spirit. 

The Gangs of New York that I saw on video is an opera.  I don’t need to speak the language to appreciate the story.  The story is clear and powerful, as the viewer fills in what isn’t obvious.  It requires focus and real interest.  But the rewards are glorious.

The Gangs of New York that I saw in the screening room is a troubled movie, loaded down with fixes that don’t quite work.  If you’ve watched a lot of movies, you can smell them as they pass before you.  It’s not hard.  You know how you fall in love with a song and, over time, you learn the lyrics.  Imagine a song in which the lyrics overwhelmed the music and you had to keep listening to the lyrics before you really heard the beat… the music.  You would never have a hit that way.  Great lyrics with bad music is a disconnect.  It would be something like believing that the theme from Cheers would be a radio hit if it weren’t for the popularity of the show.  Steve Allen used to do this gag with early rock-n-roll where he would read rock lyrics like poetry as a way of mocking rock.  But he was wrong.  He would never have mocked Duke Ellington for playing songs without any lyrics.  He understood the power of that music.  Rock lyrics may have been inane, but they were only a part of the experience.

Gangs of New York is Scorsese’s ultimate homage to Sergio Leone.  Just look at the title treatment at the end of the movie.  And what do you think of when you think of Leone’s best work?  Do think of the works or do you think of the visual music?  You think of the sound and the way that Morricone’s music made you feel.  When you want to quote the film, you probably, like me, squint your eyes a little and taste one of those little cigars in your mouth and try to whistle the themes, all the while hearing the air rushing over the dusty plains. 

The Leone version of the film exists.  It’s not far away.  If we are lucky, someday we will see it.  But for now, the director is doing his job and helping his financier sell the product.  It’s in his best interest.  Perhaps an extra year with the film has left our fair hero a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome and he really believes that his best work is what is being released.  And perhaps I’m a big mouth with a runaway ego.  But I don’t think so.  (At least, not on this issue.)  I think Scorsese’s lion heart of a film is still in the editing room.  And it’s a powerful movie.  But the release version is a beautiful, interesting, well-acted near miss.  And it hurts my heart.

E ME:  I know that it’s hard to respond to a review of a movie you haven’t seen…. but feel free to spark that flame…