Nothing Left to the Imagination

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2004)

What a shame Scorcese has apparently begun to believe his own stuff. I suppose if he can raise millions upon millions for a production there are limitless possibilities, so why not squeeze in as many disparate elements as you can?
While it is true that the draft riots in New York occupy a significant page or two in the history of the Civil War, their unique relationship to the larger and ongoing question of anti-immigrant sentiment is more like a footnote to that greatest of all American episodes. Federalism has never set well with the American masses, especially those that made up the segment of the population known both before and since as Nativists. It was the frontier that gave birth to the popular notion of Manifest Destiny and all the other myths upon which the Nativists continue to feed. Paradoxically it was also the frontier that nurtured the belief that immigrants who became true-blue Americans were entitled to full social equality and a great share in the riches emanating from that ever-shining goal in the West.
I don't think this film wants to deal with any of that. It begins and ends as a formulaic Hollywood blockbuster, colored a curious orange all the way through as if to mimic someone's sense of what a world filled with candlelight might have looked like. Everything about it is overblown, the kind of film where one expects to see a smiling extra peeking out at the camera from time to time. It is almost like an old musical without the music, where everything seems choreographed rather than natural. What a shame.
Everyone knows that Daniel Day-Lewis steals the show, so I won't labor that point. Di Caprio is out of his element, which is playing roles without rough edges. Diaz is the typical stage ingenue. The rest of the cast march solidly through their lines without missing a beat from the director. I wonder... where have I seen this before? Answer, in many other films from D.W. Griffith to Frank Capra to the older version of Martin Scorcese.
Time to hang up the stovepipe hat.