What happened to Leone on this one? (Spoilers)

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2012)

First, I should say that I'm a great fan of Sergio Leone's films and an unconditional fan of "The good, the bad and the ugly". The verve of Leone - the transition of his Italian glance on the American myths - created his unique style and rich cinematographic language.
Last week I bought the DVD with the integral version of Leone's "Once upon a time in America" (the only movie directed by Leone I had never seen). At the end I was in shock, because I couldn't understand what had happened to one of my favorite directors. Reading the reviews in IMDb, I notice that people confuse their affection for the director's work and look only to the extremely emotional side of the subjects addressed by the film, classifying it, among other things as "the best movie ever done". What I can say about this - If OUTIA had been directed by some unknown director, there would be no excuse to forgive so many basic mistakes of adaptation, script and art direction. I feel compelled to comment these factors here –
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
First of all, the fact of being a story of gangsters with a cultural Jewish background is absolutely irrelevant; the way the story is told, the gangsters could be Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, because there isn't any cultural idiosyncratic motivation (like the Italian family ties showed in "The Godfather"). The (absolutely lethargic and confused) character of Robert Deniro begins and finishes at a Chinese house of opium. It would Make much more sense, for example, if he looked for forgetfulness, redemption or origin, obviously, in a synagogue; There is not, in Heaven or Earth, something that justifies that the character Eve is never really introduced to the public, as well her deep relationship with the main character. She appears for a moment in the beginning, close to the end of the film, sudden and without explanation and then she finally disappears; I would use at least, the 3 minutes of the boy staring the candy to develop something about the character of Eve. The image of the unrecognizable cadaver of Max is quite a predictable trick, advancing since the first sequence of the film, his return. For the absolute lack of vigor and rhythm, Leone seems to have opted to show some grotesque, brutal, and nevertheless lukewarm sequences, as trying to affirm that the movie is a dense history, full of meaning. Seemingly, the rapes aren't in the book, what turns them unjustifiable. The long and tedious sequence of the dinner of Deniro and Mcgovern abuses of romanticism (the film massacres the music "Amapola" to such point that I will never want to hear that music again) - to finish in a repeated rape. That is one of the most absurd and implausible sequences that I already saw in a film. Quite out of order it's also the endless sequence of Carol inspecting the gangsters' "weapons". Under any point of view that sequence increases something to the plot. Ultimately, even keeping all these elements in the story, no one can understand the total lack of development on more relevant topics. There are terrible gaps, the size of continents, inexplicable under any point of view: The absence of any comment concerning the exile of more than 30 years of Deniro, the absence of any development of the Joe Pesci' character, the absence of any comment concerning the rise of Max to a circle of political power, the totally inexplicable union of Max with Deborah . All those factors have, as result, the sensation that you never really understand the characters' motivations. Finally, the art direction is precarious. The errors to portrait the New York Jewish culture are several and the construction is particularly forced in the 1968' ambiance; It's almost embarrassing to see Vietnam graffiti, the music of Beatles and some sixties' cars, unnecessarily spread in a garden, to guarantee to the spectator that "Yes, you are seeing something that happens in 1968"; The fact you see Mcgover in 1968, without having aged one day since the thirties it's almost surreal; Curiously, the always great music of Ennio Morricone is inappropriate and repetitive in certain sections and surprisingly absent in others. I'm still a big fan of Leone, but I have to admit that the other Leone films are infinitely superior to this one and nothing justifies such large, almost esoteric errors. The explanation is a mystery as great as try to understand the motivations of this film.