We don't spend our lives writing the future, we spend our lives writing the PAST ...

Rating: 10/10 (12 July 2011)

*** Like the movie starts with the sound of "God Bless America", I'd like to open this review by the following words : 'God Bless You Signor Leone for this cinematic epitaph, whose only criminal aspect is the unfair butchery that prevented it from a higher recognition in your lifetime. But time did justice to this masterpiece whose greatness transcended the notions of screen time. And wherever you are, I hope that, knowing the reputation of "Once Upon a Time in America", your smile would be as wide a Mr. De Niro's in the last iconic frame.' ***
A kid is about to pay the services of a prostitute with an appetizing pastry. Waiting on the landing, he tastes the cream, licks the paper, takes the cherry, puts it back, and finally succumbing to the irresistible call of childhood -hell with it- he eats it. No words needed for one of the most beautiful scenes in cinema's history, Ennio Morricone's music is enough to remind us that even the most corrupted souls have been pure once.
One of these souls is David "Noodles" Aaronson, a man with memories like a double-edged sword, enriching his heart with so many precious jewels, and tormenting it with the weight of a deadly secret. And we literally endure the guilt through a long sequence where an annoying phone ringing is heard in the foreground. Leone even teases us as the ringing persists when an anonymous hand takes the receiver. It's not about who calls but who's called, during the Prohibition's farewell party, which foreshadows a more brutal farewell.
Noodles appeases his remorseful heart in the Chinese theater's opium den then manages to escape from a bunch of goons coming to kill the 'traitor'. He takes the key from the gang's ex-headquarter, Fat Moe's speakeasy. He goes to the train station, opens a locker and takes the briefcase containing all the shared funds of the late gang, its emptiness ironically mirrors Noodles' new condition. He leaves New York, the heart full of a sentiment that Morricone's haunting score beautifully conveys : nostalgia, the death of innocence mourned through the haunting music of a pan flute, also heard in the iconic Manhattan Bridge scene, where Dominick, the youngest kid of the gang, "slipped".
And in one beautiful ellipse, "Yesterday"  an old man is back home, 35 years later. The poignant "Deborah's theme" brings back the nostalgia with an intensity that makes us feel like we grew up in that neighborhood. "What have you been doing all these years?" asks an older Moe. "Been going to bed early.", replies a laconic Noodles, whose Proustian innuendo associates his long exile to a wise resignation for nothingness. A sentiment we could feel after half an hour, but Leone trusts our patience : we must understand the value of the loss before plunging into it. And the transition is magical between the eyes of the old and the teenage Noodles watching through the hole in the toilet wall while Deborah, the love of his life, practices her steps.
All the transitions are brilliantly directed by lights, from candles or cars, as the allegory of this invisible stuff that only our hearts can see in our reality's darkness, the memories. The whole movie is a dreamy introspection which is one with the history of America, with the childhood part as a tribute to the Great Emigration Wave. Noodles grew up in the New York City's Jewish quarter, a setting reconstructed with a sense of details that reminds of the epic reconstitution of Little Italy in "The Godfather Part II" and the Feast of San Gennaro has been replaced by Pesach, during which young Deborah reads a poem to Noodles implicitly declaring her love, sincere but impossible.
Many years later, after a magnificent dinner, Noodles reveals to her that the two things that prevented him from insanity in jail was the remembrance of Dominick's last words and the last part of his innocence still left in his heart : her. But Deborah, corrupted her way, became a star and leaves a speechless Noodles for Hollywood. Her decision sealed his fate as a vulgar criminal and what followed then in the cab, was the weakest and saddest expression of a man who had nothing to lose anymore, not even pride. Noodles took with strength what his heart couldn't, a desperate act that would haunt him forever.
Adulthood terribly distorts the most meaningful things. Max mechanically cleans his shoes, Deborah maliciously tells Noodles to see "his mom" but something doesn't ring true anymore. Even the tone of the film radically changes, more 'gangster' and political material, and the confusion can be upsetting ... except if we believe that the essential would be elsewhere, especially when 35 years later, the money suddenly resurrects in the train station's briefcase and Deborah reappears from Noodles' eternally point of view : he's old but she looks as young as ever, a poetic irony when we learn she's the mistress of the powerful Senator Bailey, who's no one else but a man from the past.
Max resurrects in Noodles' life and asks him, as a redeeming act of vengeance to kill him for he took his money, his girlfriend, his life. Max could easily accept, but he can't afford to lose his pride again, and the most valuable things he still possesses, his memories ... even if the illusory happiness implies an illusory guilt. Noodles, in a voluntary denial, wishes the best for 'Mr Bailey' adding : "It'd be a shame to see a lifetime of work go to waste." The last words of the film.
And the beautiful "God Bless America" rocks us like a peaceful lullaby transporting us back to the Chinese theater, where Noodles' heart finally relieved, if not redeemed, can savor his memories  painful, but intact. No words, again for one of the most beautiful endings in cinema's history, only a big smile.