Gangs of New York
“Gangs of New York” was a movie Martin Scorsese waited three decades to make. He first read Herbert Asbury’s 1928 of the same name in the ’70s, and the desire to bring it to life onscreen until he was finally given the chance to make the film for Miramax films and co-executive producer Graham King, who has been his primary financial back in the past decade. Anyone who followed film at the time Scorsese was making this one is, no doubt, familiar with the struggles of its creation when Marty finally took this epic story in front of his cameras. More on that later. For now, I’m going to discuss the film as I saw it in my first viewing since watching it in theatres in December 2002, when it landed on my top 10 list, just behind “Bowling for Columbine,” of the year’s best films.
Working from a screenplay by Jay Cocks, Steven Zallian, and Kenneth Lonergan, Scorsese delves into criminal underworld of 19th Century New York City, where gangs of American “natives” and Irish immigrants take to the streets for control over the area known as the Five Points, which is the political home of the infamously crooked William “Boss” Tweed (the superb Jim Broadbent), who shows up at the docks welcoming the immigrants off the boat, but is loyal to the natives like Bill “The Butcher” Cutting, who doesn’t hide his dislike for these “invading hordes.” The film opens thrillingly when Bill the Butcher takes to the streets with his gangs to fight a band of Irish warriors known as the Dead Rabbits, led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson, excellent in a brief role). Vallon ends up dead, at the wrong end of his own knife, killed by Bill the Butcher, who sends the Priest’s young son up to Hellsgate to get an education. Sixteen years after that day, in 1862, as America finds itself in a war over its history of violence and intolerance towards other, the young boy, who now goes by the name Amsterdam, returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge on Bill for his father’s death all those years ago.
In many ways, this is an ideal film for the director of “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “GoodFellas,” “Casino,” and “The Departed,” the latter of which finally won him his long-overdue Oscar; Scorsese is a director for whom crime and spirituality go hand in hand. But in many other ways, this was the most ambitious film of his career at the time. Ever the student of cinema, Scorsese looked to combine his fascination with crime and violence with the production values of the grand epics like “Gone With the Wind” and David Lean’s Dickens adaptations. Rather than create the world of “Gangs of New York” with computer imagery and miniatures, Marty constructed the sets to full scale at the legendary Cinecitta studio in Rome, where one of his filmmaking idols, Fellini, created some of his greatest films. The decision gives the film a liveliness and energy that makes the films shortcomings in terms of story disappointing. Similar to historical epics such as “Gone With the Wind” and “Titanic,” Scorsese has used a simple plot device to bring us into a larger historical narrative; in this case, a revenge story that feels woefully inadequate, especially when you consider that that larger narrative is far more interesting than the revenge drama of Amsterdam (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in his first collaboration with Scorsese) against Bill the Butcher, especially when a pickpocket and prostitute named Jenny (Cameron Diaz, who feels out of place in this cast of acting titans) comes into the picture.
The biggest problem with the film in terms of its story is that the most compelling character, Bill the Butcher, is just left of center to the film’s focus, Amsterdam. DiCaprio’s performance is as good as it can be when compared to the towering Daniel Day-Lewis as the Butcher (a fictionalized version of the real-life Bill the Butcher, William Poole). Day-Lewis came out of a self-imposed retirement to work once again with his “Age of Innocence” director in this role, and the fire he brings to the role burns just about everyone he shares the screen with; of course, when you compare it to his later performance in “There Will Be Blood,” Day-Lewis seems to just be warming up here.
To have a character as galvanizing as Bill the Butcher near the black, violent soul of “Gangs of New York” makes one curious about how the structure of the film evolved over the three decades it took for Scorsese to get it in front of his cameras. Were he able to make the film in the ’70s, I wonder if the “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” filmmaker wouldn’t have had The Butcher at the film’s center rather than just a footnote in a lesser, more cliched story. Sadly, we won’t really know what type of movie that would have led to, but that doesn’t prevent the film we got instead from being a flawed but powerful look at America’s history of violence from one of its greatest filmmakers.
A couple of other notes/acknowledgments:
=When Scorsese and his writers put the focus on the inequities of the original military drafts that took place during the Civil War, the film shifts into an entirely new and exciting gear. Especially of note are his brilliant filming of the Draft Riots of 1863, as well as an earlier scene that shows how Irish immigrants came off the boat, only to be “drafted” into the Northern Army and put onto another boat.
=As problematic as the film is narratively, “Gangs of New York” remains a technical marvel in Scorsese’s filmmography, from the masterful production design by the great Dante Ferretti, the stunning cinematography by Michael Ballhaus, and the startling editing by Scorsese’s longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker. And Scorsese’s eclectic choice of music is, as always, at the service of the storytelling. Most hauntingly is a selection of pieces, “Brooklyn Heights I-III,” composed by Howard Shore that will stick with you long after we see New York transform into the modern day metropolis Scorsese grew up in, including the towers of the World Trade Center, which were destroyed over a year before this film’s eventual release by terrorists, more bloodshed that resulted from the beliefs of those that thing their race is better than others.
The cycle of violence has continued in the decade since.
