Personal Vs. Political

Rating: 8/10 (25 October 2011)

Though Scorsese had cogitated this project for decades, it still serves well as a companion piece to his adaptation of The Age of Innocence. Set in 1870s NYC, that story depicts the ivory tower built upon the urchins of the city's mean streets up into the 1860s, depicted here. I find the extreme class divides between both stories fascinating. Was Day-Lewis' Newland Archer studying law and enjoying the opera on the Upper East Side at the same time his Bill the Butcher was leading slaughters in Lower Manhattan? Standing alone, nonetheless, Gangs is about the classic revenge struggle of DiCaprio's angry young hero Amsterdam.
This is Amsterdam's fever dream of recollections and impressions of the history of Five Points. Mention of saints, Satan cast out of paradise and a large, championed crucifix, all in a row not even two minutes in, shortly followed by a battalion of reactionaries receiving Holy Communion before a vicious street fight, signals Scorsese's way through the character's agitated story, some of it, Amsterdam tells us, he remembers, the rest of which he took from dreams. So, he's very much of his time, place and circumstances, living them both inside and out. This gives Gangs the vehement storytelling energy of Scorsese's more modern films centered on gangsters, rather than, say, the abstract contemplativeness of his earlier Kundun, also about a crusader whose early childhood is saturated in deep religious zeal. And perhaps there's a religious lapse personal to Scorsese when Amsterdam becomes a man, setting forth on his vendetta as he pitches the Bible into the river, in very smooth high-definition slow-motion.
What's also immediately evident is the full-bodied cacophony of urban life, squashed in on itself, doing little to comfort traditionalists and xenophobes, not the least stubborn of which is Day-Lewis' Irish-hating Bill, a killer WASP let's say, introduced scraping his foot against the ground like a literal bull, whom we later learn is perhaps the most eloquent man ever to have trouble reading. NYC here is its own character, arguably in a similar way that Vietnam is the main character of Apocalypse Now, in that it ceaselessly inundates the characters on their epic journey. Amsterdam and Bill are at personal odds framed by their dynamically different class and generational positions in a society fueled by racism and other forms of bigotry, fed by ubiquitous corruption. The illustration of the hounding and intolerance of non-Natives at the time is one of the historical elements to which the film remains most faithful. Even beyond the barbaric makeshift melees that bookend this saga, violence is the fabric of this main character, and Scorsese creates an all-encompassing textile of sudden explosions of it, from fleeting cutaways of random muggings to a brutal fistfight between Amsterdam and McGloin carefully storyboarded for gracefully headlong, vicious energy, followed with fluent transition into a contemplative comedown of Amsterdam's uncertain sentiment toward the newly admiring Butcher.
True to America's lineage, Scorsese depicts a world where property holds sway over humanity. "I'll give you a dollar for that locket," Bill bids a fellow, who tells him it was his mother's. "Dollar and a half," Bill wrangles. "Done." A man of wealth, likely one of Newland Archer's peers, bids, "You can always hire half the poor to kill the other half." Anybody can be bought, and in order to secure your rights and have them protected you must secure and protect them all by yourself. The film's tapestry shows how free-for-all capitalism and weak government had made criminals out of everyone, having generated America's immense gangland history. Let's point out that Amsterdam and his compadres rob a poor woman's house while it's burning down. They're hungry! He later leads his posse in pawning a dead body off as loot. Bill swiftly lets him know that the mere pleasure of his company has a price. We see he means it when he puts on the most masterfully commanding charm and deferential charisma when confronted with a wealthy family whose interests are carefully considered by powers that be.
The film's sporadic glimpse into the antiquated tradecraft of thieves and gangland M.O. is given the grinning sense of nifty fun of The Great Train Robbery's Victorian-era safecracking or Paper Moon's Dustbowl short cons. Cameron Diaz shows her bones as the wickedly clever sneak thief who becomes Vicky to Amsterdam's LaMotta, or maybe more akin to Zoe Bethune to Amsterdam's J.R. Unfortunately, this romantic trajectory also sends the plot for a time into hackneyed territory, something Scorsese had avoided more effectively than any other Hollywood director of his generation, or most. Gangs, thus, does lose the infectious forcefulness and unceasing originality of any of his other crime-themed films. Karen Hill had three dimensions. Diaz's Jenny is increasingly diluted into one, merely a tag-along love interest. It's the class struggle that gets the propellers spinning again, as the immigrants engage their oppressors with Democratic leadership. And when subjugation and violence again overtake, the film comes full circle to the epic street fight for justice, both for the hero and for America itself.