Scorsese: The Heart of Life, Through Cinema

Film Twitter ™ Has A Lot To Be Thankful for This Year

From a triumphant welcome to Letterboxd to several appearances on his daughter Francesca’s TikTok, the movie world (Film Twitter ™ especially) is in full celebration mode of Martin Scorsese.

Rightfully so, as a steward of cinema, he deserves all the accolades and adoration that come his way.

It’s not every year that one of my favorite filmmakers releases a movie, and Killers of the Flower Moon lives up to the high expectations.

In the past calendar year or so, we have been blessed with movies from legends like Steven Spielberg as well as upcoming films from acclaimed directors Ridley Scott and Michael Mann. What a time to be a movie fan, to witness these great directors continuing to make movies well into their seventies and eighties. 

Refusing to go quietly into retirement, these legends continue to make art and ponder existence. 

We see details and themes from their own lives in many of these director’s works. See, Spielberg, Steven, in The Fabelmans for one of the better recent examples. (It’s a crime that it didn't win any Oscars, but that’s for another post.) 

For Martin Scorsese, a frequent theme he explores is striving. 

Through many of his characters, we see poster children striving for success and fame, but ultimately, belonging.

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” — cue Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches”. The immortal opening from GoodFellas perfectly distills that theme of acceptance. In GoodFellas, that’s the story of Henry Hill and his quest to become a gangster. 

The highs (in this case, literal highs) and lows of the rise and fall of a gangster are masterfully created in GoodFellas, and it’s likely the movie for which Scorsese will be best remembered.  Additionally, with 2007’s The Departed, Martin Scorsese adds another masterpiece in the world of gangsters and crime. 

Both the main characters in The Departed, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) are living to be accepted in worlds they do not belong. 

Costigan, growing up in a family of convicts, works to be a cop and eventually goes undercover to penetrate Frank Costello’s (Jack Nicholson) crime syndicate. Sullivan is the mole in the Boston Police Department, with the puppeteering Costello behind him, with his eyes on getting Colin to run for political office one day. 

The cat and mouse game ultimately has no winners, as neither character belonged anywhere permanently. 

In 2007, late in his career, Scorsese finally won his Oscar for Best Director. It is one of my favorite Oscar moments. He gets his flowers, and I can’t help but notice the parallels between Marty and the characters in the movie he won for.

“I don’t really belong there anyway,” he told GQ’s Zach Baron.

To me, that self-awareness and apathy toward belonging in a club is rarely found in Scorsese’s characters, like Jake LaMotta, Henry Hill, Jordan Belfort, Travis Bickle, Sam Rothstein, etc.

More of these themes come to a head in the 2019 epic The Irishman. In the story of a life of change-making, union busting, and house painting, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is sitting in a nursing home, reflecting on his life, the loss of his friends, and what is left at the end of his life. 

We cannot help but think about the 80-year-old Martin Scorsese as he releases another film this year, and wonder how many films (and morbidly, years) he has left. 

No one can speak for Marty better than Marty — a recent interview with GQ’s Zach Baron had the following poignant musing as he considers what is next for him.

It’s a matter of continuing, exploring. Getting right with God, that’s always the case. You’re in the process of it. It becomes more evident as you age that you may not have the time. So it is a matter of dealing with that aspect of it every day. It’s who you’re dealing with, how you’re dealing with them, the best way you can.

The reflections of Martin Scorsese are a gift not only to movie fans but also to humanity. 

As we all age and have limited time in this life, this perspective, from a man who has given us so much entertainment, is worth celebrating and pondering, much more important than the state of superhero movies.