At the Movies: The Departed

Martin Scorsese’s The Departedis a fascinating piece of Cuisinart filmmaking that brings together all the leading elements of gangster films in this young century. It has a plot from a Chinese film derived from a century of American gangster films—the monstrously successful (in the rest of the world that is; over here it’s a cult favorite) 2002 Hong Kong Chinese thriller Infernal Affairs.(The title was more than a pun, suggesting a descent to the lowest circle of Dante’s Hell, and I’m told the film’s Chinese title, Mou-gaan-dou, translates to the lowest level of Buddhist hell.) Scorsese claims not to have seen the Chinese film, directed by Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak, and worked from a translation of the original script. That’s probably true; certainly there is little to connect the two except for plot.

Scorsese’s major films over the last decade and a half, most notably The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator, have all shown a maturity in regard to craftsmanship and scope over his early lower-budget films, particularly Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), which formed the bedrock of his critical reputation. But craftsmanship and scope weren’t what we went to Scorsese films for in the first place. His best works have always seemed lit from the inside, infused with an instinctive understanding of the complexities of their characters and the richness of their milieus, even when, as in the musical New York, New York (1977), he seemed out of his element or, as in Raging Bull (1980), his handling of the material was forced and overwrought.

As his films have become more sophisticated, they’ve become less personal. The Departed may be his best combination of well-made film and personal work. It may not be a great film—some of it, such as the interspersing in its score of opera with Scorsese’s beloved classic rock, doesn’t appear to have any internal logic—but it’s the kind of film that often seems great while you’re watching it.

The plot is so ingenious that one wonders why it took more than seven decades of crime movies for someone to come up with it. There have been scores of movies about police moles planted in crime organizations and at least a few about gangster connections within police departments, but The Departed juxtaposes the two and places two good actors in the roles, Leonardo DiCaprio as the cop mole and Matt Damon as the gangster mole. Both are superb; DiCaprio gives his most mature performance yet and even holds his own in several one-on-one scenes with a powerhouse Jack Nicholson as the Irish crime boss Frank Costello. Damon, more subdued and more at home with a working-class Boston Irish accent, seems like DiCaprio’s mirror opposite. (Their physical resemblance when they finally meet adds a layer of tension to the film.)

In what seems like a movie-ish device used to insert a token female character, both become emotionally embroiled with a psychologist, played by Vera Farmiga. Farmiga’s performance is knowing and effective; as a doctor who treats both cops and criminals, she sees the mental machinery that makes both DiCaprio’s and Damon’s characters click, and she becomes the prism through which one side intuits the other.

If The Departed is lacking something solid at its core, it’s that there is no equivalent of Nicholson’s Costello on the police side. A strong actor like Robert De Niro or, perhaps more appropriately, Al Pacino, is needed to counterbalance the story, which inevitably gets pulled in Nicholson’s direction by his tidal-force performance. The peripheral parts on both sides are vividly written and played, with Mark Wahlberg (even more street-authentic than Damon), Alec Baldwin, and Martin Sheen as cops and the English actor Ray Winstone as one of Costello’s thugs. Howard Shore’s incidental music is complementary to the moods, and Michael Ballhaus’s atmospheric cinematography does the difficult job of making color seems noirish. The script, by William Monahan, who wrote the underrated Kingdom of Heaven, supplies the actors with a swarm of memorable rapid-fire epigrams (particularly from Mark Wahlberg, who seems as if he could have thought of most of them himself). My favorite line comes from Nicholson’s Costello, who, when told that someone’s mother is dying, replies, “We all are. Act accordingly.”

It’s hard to bring a sense of genuine tragedy to a cops-gangster film, since in the best ones everyone gets what they deserve and deserves what they get. But somehow Scorsese pulls it off. In The Departed you can feel the power of the personal loyalties that lead men to misguided ends and the hellish pressure that causes basically good men to pervert their own ideals. It’s A, if not A-plus, Scorsese.