(no subject)

[eirias]

Last night I went out to dinner with some folks (a bunch of Madison restaurants had a prix fixe menu and we got a ridiculous amount of food for the money spent) and then to a showing of The Departed at the Union. What an interesting movie. Kept me awake far past my bedtime, even in a food coma.



Setup: Two Irish kids, same build & general appearance, both recent graduates of the police academy. One gets a posh job as a detective more or less immediately; the other, because of his family connections, gets abused and stuck in a difficult undercover assignment aimed at bringing down organized crime. The ironic part is that the posh guy, Sullivan (Matt Damon), is the one with actual Family connections to start with, and the other guy, Costigan (Leonardo di Caprio), has to use his heritage to weasel his way in.

The first thing that jumped out at me was that the movie had a lot to say about masculinity. The two main characters -- one the hero, one the antihero I guess -- spend the movie in this intricate tango-at-a-distance, and they're pitted against each other as ... how do I put this? ... "like-but-unlike." Each of them has something that the other wants desperately, not a material thing but a psychological thing. For Costigan, it's an identity: he's living this bizarre and extremely dangerous double life, and he doesn't have family or anyone he can trust. Sullivan's got the stable, respectable identity -- his cover for his dealings with the mob is working admirably, and he's got a girlfriend and a lot of money. What he's wanting for, it seems to me, is masculinity. The movie makes all these subtle and not-so-subtle hints that Sullivan is compensating for something he's ashamed of. He uses more anti-gay slurs and makes more overtly/obnoxiously heterosexual gestures than anyone else in the movie, starting from very early, and they make a point of alluding to his sexual problems with his girlfriend multiple times. Whereas Costigan has all the trappings of macho sex identity -- he's living the life of a violent badass and is, we are led to believe, a lot more successful than Sullivan in bed -- but he wants out.

By contrast the movie says nothing at all about femininity. There's pretty much one female character, and her behavior is really kind of inexplicable; we never have any idea why she chooses the men she chooses. She's basically a good-looking plot device.

There's some beautiful film artistry -- the use of symbolic segues between scenes and whatnot. There's a chase scene with a pretty good choice of wardrobes. There's a painful scene with Marky Mark's character talking about the difference between wanting to be a cop and wanting to look like a cop (which I think is pretty interesting in light of Sullivan's issues). There's a priceless use of a bag of groceries.

I still haven't figured out why it's called The Departed, beyond the fact that there are rather a lot of dead bodies (yeah... radicalteacher and rshruti both need to avoid this movie).

Comments

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

A strong argument could be made that the title comes from the fact that both of the main characters have had to kill their true identities.

On an unrelated note, is rshruti my coworker?

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

Yes. :)

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

I thought it likely :-)

[littlepurple.livejournal.com]

What was this eating out thing????
Explain!

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

It's really interesting, for some reason, to hear you comment on masculinity. You should say more!