(Above preview image from TheMovieDB.org)
If you've seen any of Scorsese's crime films before, then Goodfellas might not have a lot to surprise you with. Hell, Goodfellas might have been your first Scorsese venture. Or it could have been Taxi Driver. Or if you're like me, it was The Wolf Of Wall Street (which I watched before I started writing my blog). No matter which you watched first, all of them have their familiar elements. It's always about money, or greed, or lust and how all those things came tumbling down one after the other like a house of cards. Then again, though each Scorsese crime film shares a lot, many true crime stories are like that: the 'players', so to speak, tend to repeat the same mistakes as those before them because of inherent human traits like violence and avarice.
And besides, what makes them all worth watching are the specifics of the crime and the criminals themselves. In The Wolf Of Wall Street, it's stockbrokers scamming rich people using a 'pump-and-dump' scheme. In Casino, it's Mafia mobsters scamming people in a...well, in a casino, the Tangiers. And in Goodfellas, it's about a group of gangsters in New York doing their thing...which, funnily enough, includes scamming people. Usually, the main character can start off somewhat innocent or normal before being pulled into their life of crime, then drugs and booze get involved, a rocky romantic relationship is borne out of wealth and not of love or passion and then all of a sudden, like Ray Liotta's Henry Hill says in Goodfellas, "it's all over". And from a non-diegetic standpoint, licensed music is heavily integrated into the film as well for dramatic or comedic effect.
But what truly makes Goodfellas (and Scorsese's other films) special is the quality of its execution and its authenticity to history, in refusing to romanticise the Mafia. The life of a mafioso is grim, brutal and unforgiving and there's no telling when you wake up if you're going to survive to the next day. The violence is intense in this film, sure, but it has to be. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be true to reality of what these quote-unquote "lunatics" were really like. And yeah, the technical craft of the film is exceptional, no doubt about it: the camerawork is well done, the moody, harsh and colourful lighting in certain scenes has an eerie beauty to it and the performances all have a suitable punch and bravado to them (though it was a bit hard for me to keep track of all the characters on a first viewing).
But where Scorsese gets his 'edge' is in the way he tells his similar stories differently and effectively through the finer points of their narrative and the way it flows. Also, I will give Scorsese this: he knows how to make two to three hour films go by real quick. So yes, Goodfellas is great. But you don't need me to tell you that. Everyone else who's seen it has said it all before and probably much more eloquently. Is it my favourite Scorsese film? Perhaps, but for now, I'll let it sit with me and see what I think in a few years from now.
But where Scorsese gets his 'edge' is in the way he tells his similar stories differently and effectively through the finer points of their narrative and the way it flows. Also, I will give Scorsese this: he knows how to make two to three hour films go by real quick. So yes, Goodfellas is great. But you don't need me to tell you that. Everyone else who's seen it has said it all before and probably much more eloquently. Is it my favourite Scorsese film? Perhaps, but for now, I'll let it sit with me and see what I think in a few years from now.
You see, this is the tricky part about reviewing something well-known and beloved: being careful not to step on the toes of people who like the film while simultaneously trying to find something new to say about it. And hopefully I've done that.
Hopefully.
Comments
Post a Comment