Being and Time

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2016)

Some day in the future, the history of Cinema will be written when it will cease to be an art form, having served its purpose and seen its highs and lows. On that day, Once Upon a time in America will once again be remembered as a glorious milestone in the annals of art. An epic whose dimensions still remain to be fathomed, it will remain one of the greatest films to have ever been made and the crowning glory in the career of Sergei Leone, whose legacy can be summed up as the maker of this one film, which he considered his masterpiece and which ultimately took his life when the greed of the producers and lack of institutional support led to it's unfortunate mutilation, being cut down from its original four hours run time to a detestable 140 minutes, the substance long gone and a pale shadow left behind. But history has been kind to it and the original vision of Leone has been restored and appreciated universally.
Based on Harry Grey's novel The Hoods, the story revolves around four Jewish kids in Brooklyn during the early days of Prohibition who get involved in the underground liquor trade early in their lives. Among these are two dear friends Max and Noodles, played by James Woods and Robert De Niro. The film charts their successes and failures against the larger canvas of American society, trying to come to grasp with a new century and its contradictions. Four hours is a long time but you need that kind of time if you want to narrate an epic like this, because an epic is about time and its strange justice. Without time, you won't be doing an epic, you'll be narrating events without those subtle intervals of apparent silence which links facts and transforms tales to epics. Covering a period of around seventy years, the film takes us through the tumultuous period of struggle in the lives of Max and Noodles, their rise to the top of the underground trade and their fall. Their are many characters whose lives revolves around these two, including Deborah, the love of Noodles played by a young Jennifer Connelly. Deborah's Theme. a signature piece of music composed by Ennio Morricone should count as one of the most enchanting pieces of melancholy ever carved out. After the death of three of the four friends due to a misunderstanding in the prime of their youth, Robert De Niro is left alone to face the life long guilt of having caused their deaths and he leaves the city. Three decades go by with him living with his loneliness when he is invited to a mysterious party. The masterful editing makes use of brilliant back and forth between the past and the future, juxtaposing the now old Noodles with his pain and his deep past which alone provided the few moments of happiness. He has changed with time, accepted its decisions and learned to live with himself when it surfaces that his whole life has been the story of a betrayal, a betrayal by his closest friend Max who never died in that accident three decades ago, who took away his love and banished him forever to a life of agony and loneliness. One of the great scenes of this film has Noodles returning to Deborah after 35 years, asking her if she made the right decision to leave him. Her life has been no less lonely amid-st the glamour and success of being an actress and the mistress of Max. The camera cuts to a closeup of the now aged Deborah removing her makeup, revealing the ruins of time etched in her eyes, her melancholy probably redeemed only by her love for Noodles who she never thought would appear again. Two lives destroyed by a betrayal. Max is now Secretary Bailey with whom Time has now caught up and he is about to lose all his fortune and success. He wants a settling of accounts between him and Noodles and asks De Niro to kill him for having done such injustice. But time has erased Noodles's memories. He has made peace with his version of history, and the truth does not matter anymore. Perhaps his refusal to face truth is his revenge as Max is left alone to face himself without the redeeming revenge of Noodles.
Its a film that has a lot to say about love, revenge, betrayal and the strange role that time plays in our lives by restructuring memories in such ways that justice is no more a question of right and wrong but rather only a matter of man being punished and redeemed from within. It's inside us that justice has to be found, whether anyone else knows it or not. Man himself is his judge and Once Upon a time in America will forever remain a testament to this lofty vision of this strange species called Man.