I'm usually pretty on top of these things, usually seeing most of the Best Picture Oscar nominees well before I make a judgment call on what's Best Picture. (The exception here is Letters from Iwo Jima, which is difficult to see, due to Warner Bros' odd 400 screen rollout. You'd think they would want people to see it, but, I guess not.) So, I'll admit that I made this year's Best Picture call without actually having seen The Departed. Everybody said it's great, and Scorsese rarely disappoints, so I was comfortable jumping on that boat. Then I actually saw the movie.
I'll preface my comments by saying that I've seen Infernal Affairs (the Chinese movie of which The Departed is a remake) and all of its sequels, so nothing in The Departed came as a surprise to me. In fact, it's a very faithful remake. There are direct lifts from Infernal Affairs in The Departed. And Scorsese follows the movie...right up until the end.
Infernal Affairs, following the scene in the elevator, ends with the scene of the dirty cop coming home and finding his fiance listening to the tape of him talking to the crime boss. It's a great ending: ambiguous, downbeat, rife with sequel possibilities.
But Scorsese changes the order a little. He puts the scene with the girlfriend first, and then the elevator scene. And I was happy with that. But then, Matt Damon comes home, and Marky Mark shoots him in the head. What the fuck?!?
I'm a strong proponent of the fact that a terrible ending can completely ruin an otherwise perfectly good movie. (Anyone up for a rant on Unbreakable?) The only way Scorsese could have ended this worse would be to have The Funky Bunch come in and sing us out with "Good Vibrations." But what we get is still pretty terrible.
Here, I claimed Scorsese deserved that Best Director Oscar. I'm strongly leaning back toward Eastwood again. I'm pretty sure he didn't fuck his movie up.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The Departed Fucks It Up
Posted by E at 12:22 am
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2 comments:
Departed was an improvement on Infernal Affairs for me. I liked the ending. IA's ending comes up empty b/c you don't really feel that the ending is as open-ended as presented. We know that other than a broken relationship, not much is gonna happen. The Whalberg scene not only provides closure but also nicely underlines the theme of self-betrayal and punishment. It's certainly a more appealing ending in Western countries as all "western" drama is rooted in Shakesepearan-type fatalism, but I found it made a more well-rounded movie that doesn't rely on a supposedly open-ended "trick" ending. N
And having Marky Mark, whose character had been absent from the movie for about an hour, suddenly reappear and shoot Matt Damon in the head isn't a trick ending? That's a little more plot convolution than I care for. Oh sure, it ties things up rather nicely...for the reported sequel for The Departed, starring Marky Mark and, well, probably Alec Baldwin, since he's the only other character that survived (and will be available when 30 Rock inevitably gets canceled at the end of the year).
All in all: Great movie, awful ending.
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