life is brutish and short and we should be grateful for any illusion of peace we can muster

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2006)

Martin Scorsese is a brilliant filmmaker and all his films are must sees. When he's plumbing the depths of his bad guy obsession his films can be simultaneously riveting and repulsive. The Departed qualifies on all counts, must see, riveting and repulsive. DiCaprio is Scorsese's new DeNiro and he is the centerpiece of the latest Scorsese descent into death. Cormac McCarthy says any writer unwilling to deal with death isn't serious. If this is so then McCarthy is as serious as any writer has ever been. His latest, The Road, deals with nearly everyone's death in a post-apocalyptic world of cannibalism and ash. Not far removed from McCarthy's world of dead people is Scorsese's world of people fixing to be dead. No happy endings (no surprise), awful lot of brains blown out, and an awesome display of acting from DiCaprio. You have to wonder where the anguish and anger he shows us in his interview with Wahlberg and Sheen come from. Watching Vera Farmiga as police shrink watch her boyfriend Matt Damon talk to Nicholson on his cell made us want to see much more of her.
Scorsese seems to have a visceral hatred of snitches. Rats abound in The Departed and we have trouble telling the difference between the good and bad guys at first. They all end up bad guys by the time all the blood is let. Scorsese works hard to make us sympathize with DiCaprio's character and if we can see past the anger and beatings administered by him we do care more for him than anyone. I couldn't tell if Nicholson's charm was innate or Scorsese's manipulation but we shouldn't like the head bad guy, right? Even when he does his rat impersonation? Right? Maybe Martin is talking to us about honor, about being true, about the damnation visited upon the liar. Or maybe he's just saying the world is an ugly and violent place, life is brutish and short and we should be grateful for any illusion of peace we can muster.