Movie: The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
Martin Scorsese is getting a little overrepresented here, but if you are connecting movies to songs and don't link Gimme Shelter to Scorsese, you may as well pack it up. More to the point, his use of this song in The Departed is a great example of how great his famous collaboration with editor Thelma Schoonmaker works. We hear Gimme Shelter twice in the movie, first during the opening scenes giving the film an immediate jolt of energy, further amplified by Jack Nicholson's delightfully smirky narration. The second time we hear it, it's during one of the more calmer scenes. In both cases the song perfectly fits and shapes the mood the film is going for. The Departed makes use of both an original score by Howard Shore, and previously recorded songs, and many times they blend together. The second time we hear Gimme Shelter it can hardly be characterised as a needle drop. The song seems to flow naturally out of the preceding soundtrack. And everything is just synced perfectly to the rhytms of the editing and the movements of the actors.
I don't think The Departed is among Scorsese's greatest works, but, aside from After Hours, it's mabye his most seamlessly flowing film, even if some shots look a bit uncannily fake. It sometimes feels as if Scorsese is struggling to get the same authenticity out of Boston, as he gets out of New York. Still, it's hard to find many films with more entertaining performances. It asks some of the greatest, most compelling actors alive to play exactly to their strengths, givest them juicy dialogue, and then helps them even further by having every shot, camera movement and music choice perfectly match their energy and their character's vibe. Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg could deliver their banter in their sleep and make it funny, but The Departed pretty much hands them their lines and performances on a silver plate. It's quite a shame that because of their pompous egos we are unlikely to see similar performances of Wahlberg and Baldwin any time soon. It's even more unfortunate that this looks to be Jack Nicholson's last relevant movie. Though Nicholson fully takes advantage of his freedom to show off, it's not a vain performance. His Frank Costello is steaming out of every pore, and in close ups you can almost smell the saliva and snot of his face, His highly visible squalidness is both a symbol of his decay and of his remaining power.
Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon are equally great as, respectively, the undercover cop and Costello's mole who have to identify each other. Damon has pretty much perfected playing overeager overambitious strivers who are way in over their head, but pretend they have everything under control, and he gives probably the best performance. This is also though where the film's weaknesses come in. Stylistically Scorsese turns The Departed into a pulpy thriller, but narratively this tries to be a serious crime drama. In that regard the film is not so succesfull as it never bothers to put any thought into how the lives and actions of its main characters would look like if they were more than just plot devices. It's a shame that the film treats such a great setup with such flippancy and as a result many scenes are not as tense as they should be. It's often too obvious that everything is only happening because the film needs it, rather than because it makes sense in the context of the characters. It's especially a miracle how Damon's Sullivan survives for as long as he does. He should be found out way before the film's halfway point.
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