Great, but brutally exhausting to watch

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2006)

With his films, Scorcese usually tests our guts, stamina and tolerance for pain. With The Departed he even exceeds his previous unbroken records in all of these areas. This is the most powerful film I have seen in ages, but is hard to get to the end without feeling emotionally wrung out from watching his graphic depiction of human venal excess. The extreme violence, profanity, evil, treachery and power addiction wore me out by the end but also made me remember that various forms of these abominable human behaviors do exist in real life and are not exclusive to the criminal world but occur in regular society and the business world as well.
The film story has been outlined by others, so it is my interest here to discuss the philosophy behind making it. Was it made just for profit, or did it have other agendas? It is MHO that with Scorsese, any possible harm to our children and adult sensibilities from watching his films always comes in last compared to the quality of the story told, no matter how tough the subject, from Mean Streets to Taxi Driver and Goodfellas to here. All were degraded and mean societal bottom feeder stories, but were dramatized versions of real life that some people live on some level every day. All of his films show the grittiest and harshest aspects of the tortuous underbelly of our modern "civilization" that cause cruel things to happen in some people's lives and not just to the lowest underclass. Most of us don't know that and Scorsese knows we don't know that so he does his best to show it to us in a way that forever shocks and assaults us as much as Tarantino, Kubrick, or Peckinpah ever did, and maybe more so. And, to do so is very profitable for him as we eat it up, violent wild animals that we are. And, I am very sure that his degrading depictions of our progressively more violent "culture" don't help us improve socially as it is becoming more and more commonplace to see violent degradation everywhere and not just in films(but especially IN films), and Scorsese is only too willing to dramatically show us the reprehensible behavior in our culture that some of us commit on each other for personal gain without thought for the consequences to all mankind in the end. Maybe Scorsese is doing his part to force some form of social change by rubbing our noses in human behavioral filth. As a counterpoint though, how many of us think the violence such as that shown in Scorsese's films is worse than or not as bad for our society as the severe and life-ruining emotional and financial damage to millions of people's retirement as done by Enron, WorldCom, etc.? Hmmmmm.
Finally, I have to admit that I am drawn to his films like a moth to a flame and I can't say that I like that about me, but it is true that Scorsese's work holds an uncomfortable and almost addictive attraction for me and many others. Maybe it's like smoking, drinking or drugs done to excess...all of us know these are bad for us, but some of us just can't help using them even though we know all too well the brutal consequences. We just continue to say, "Someday I'm going to stop." Sure we will.