Deep story that's still easy to follow.

Rating: 7/10 (10 April 2006)

Crime dramas seem second only to epics in terms of relative length and pondering. For a genre that follows the lives of people who could die at any instant, crime dramas seem to relish the long takes of an actor drinking some (usually illegal) alcoholic substance, pause, smoke a cigarette, take a deep breath, stare at the camera for a while, and then deliver his response to the slowly seething other character. I think this is why I like Miller's Crossing so much... it has the general ideas and conceits of a crime drama of this nature, but it can pull it off in less than two hours.
Well, okay, so let's start over. This is Once upon a Time in America, a crime drama about a man named Noodles who makes his way through the underground starting in the streets of New York and making it big during the Prohibition, eventually to find himself stuck in a quandary over his loyalty to his friends and his desire to keep them all out of trouble. In untypical genre fashion, we follow the movie through a series of flashbacks as Noodle is suddenly dug out of hiding 30+ years later by a mysterious force that seems determined to bring him back to whatever it is he's escaping from. Both parallel stories, his current life and his past life, are revealed simultaneously, each providing clues to the other's motivation. Leone ties the two together with some of the best editing techniques on film, and thus we get a deep enough story that's still easy to follow.
In typical antihero fashion, we will watch our character Noodles as he makes it and breaks it, alienating friends and lovers and eventually spiraling downward from his comfort zone. GoodFellas? Godfather? The same basic structure is there, and let us focus a moment on the "America" part of the title. If anything extra can be gleaned from the three hours and forty five minutes of this film, it comes mostly from the short conversation with the socialist. "What, you think you'll change anything? All they'll do is rape you in the a** and keep on doing it." We're never really presented Noodle's character as poor or not-very-well off, even in the younger stages of his career, but we understand--"The Underground", as it were, is simply a parable for American economics, of course. To follow the American Dream is at heart capitalistic, and capitalism is based on exploitation. That is why Noodles can't get the girl of his dreams even though they both love each other. That is why Noodle's era must eventually end to be replaced with a new one. That is why Noodle's eventual catharsis results basically in retirement, retirement not only from his source of income but from the memories of where that income came from.
All of this is illustrated and structured around nice long zooming shots inward towards an actors face as he or she... acts. With silence, with movement, with dialog and keeping still. The characters are believable of course, but that's because we've been raised on a diet of them. What, besides the idea of the American Dream as it relates to the criminal world, keeps compelling us to sit for nearly four hours to watch Al or Robert slap hysterical women around, cavort with dangerous friends, and face down killers with a subtle scowl that suggests pure control and power over the situation? Whatever it is, this is a buffet of it. Just take the Intermission's suggestion and pause it a moment for a break, or you might digest too much and explode.
--PolarisDiB