‘The Irishman’ Is A Perfect Thanksgiving Movie
By: John Devore
Tags: Culture, Thanksgiving, Politics, Film, Movies

‘The Irishman’ Is A Perfect Thanksgiving Movie

Take a dose of tryptophan and watch Martin Scorcese’s gangster epic

After every Thanksgiving dinner, I turn into a sort of centaur, the mythological beast whose lower-body is a horse, only I’m half-man, half-couch. I am not one of those Americans who watch football while lost in a gravy fog. I was raised by Texans. Texans are to football what Klingons are to space battle.

Instead, I put on a movie and hope my friends and family join me, bellies exposed. It can’t be just any movie, of course. It must be a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie, which is a very specific kind of movie. There are three things a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie needs:

It needs to be long enough that you can take a short nap, wake up, and still follow the plot It needs to be a serious movie but should have a few laughs It needs to teach some kind of basic moral lesson.

Wizard of Oz is a good Thanksgiving movie. So are any of the Lord of the Rings movies, which are intense but have some lighthearted moments. I find Hobbits talking about taters to be very amusing. Die Hard may be considered a Christmas’movie but it is too short to be a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie and the moral lessons — don’t rob people, be a good ex-husband — are too basic. Depressing movies about war crimes or cancer are not ‘Thanksgiving’ movies.

Martin Scorcese’s new movie The Irishman, a sprawling masterpiece about a mob hitman, is a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie. You can watch it on Thanksgiving Day on Netflix. I saw it during its very limited theatrical run. I plan on streaming it after I’ve given thanks for the carbs that I will then inhale.

The Irishman is Martin Scorcese’s return to the gangster genre that made him famous. His best movies aren’t all mob flicks, though. His career is long and varied and some of his best movies are quiet and meditative like Age of Innocence or wrestle with controversial religious themes, like The Last Temptation of Christ.

Americans love gangster movies because we love stories about people who will do anything to get rich

But its goombahs behaving badly movies like Goodfellas and Casinos, both critically-acclaimed hits, that earned him a reputation as a filmmaker exclusively interested in the underworld. In The Irishman, Scorcese has the final word on the genre he is most associated with.

Americans love gangster movies because we love stories about people who will do anything to get rich, and then get punished for it. We are such a two-faced country. Americans believe in hard work but dream of the easy way. Even the story of the first Thanksgiving is a lie. Yes, the Native Americans fed our hungry ancestors but they were then slowly murdered for it over the course of the next few hundred years.

The Irishman is based on a nonfiction book titled “I Heard You Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt about the life of Frank Sheeran, an alleged mafia hitman. The title refers to blood splatter on walls after a murder. The book is full of dubious confessions from Sheeran who is not the most reliable of narrators. But in The Irishman, Scorcese takes Sheeran’s word for it.

The movie drains the romance from the gangster genre. It has neither the kinetic crackle of Goodfellas or the Shakespearean sweep of The Godfather. Robert DeNiro’s performance as Sheeran lacks any charisma whatsoever — he’s a bit of a dimwit who just does what he’s told.

None of the stereotypes of the gangster movie are present in The Irishman. The violence is brutal but perfunctory. Usually these movies have at least one scene where a couple of mobsters eat massive amounts of pasta. In The Irishman, a hit is planned while a boss makes a salad. The bombastic macho swagger is missing too. For instance, Joe Pesci isn’t a fast-talking maniac in this movie. He’s soft-spoken, even gentle. The Irishman takes it time making you glad you aren’t in the mob.

Trust me, it really is a perfect ‘Thanksgiving’ movie.

First, it is very long. A three and a half hour funeral procession. It is a movie about many things, but foremost, it is a movie about aging and you will feel yourself age during it. That is not to say that the movie is boring because it is not. That said, you can safely take a proper twenty-minute nap during it and miss almost nothing. I mean, spoiler alert, Jack Kennedy gets capped and Jimmy Hoffa disappears, permanently, but other than that you can nod off for a few without losing the plot. The ending is the beginning and vice versa.

For a movie about death and regret it’s also a movie with some very funny moments. It may be Scorcese’s funniest movie, to be honest. There are entire scenes of pointlessly mundane chatter that are positively Seinfeld-ian. There is something inherently funny about people who refuse to see the evil they commit and, therefore, never change. It’s like watching a clown repeatedly slip in blood they spilled.

“The Irishman” is a movie with startling moral clarity

As legendary workaholic union boss Jimmy Hoffa, Al Pacino is a loudmouth riot. Yes, he chews the scenery as if it were my made out of my mother’s green bean casserole. But he’s hilarious as a man who thinks he’s untouchable. My favorite bit in the movie is when minor characters are introduced and then titles are flashed up on the screen telling you how they died (nail bomb, shot multiple times, etc.)

The Irishman is a movie with startling moral clarity. It teaches many valuable lessons. One is an important history lesson for those of us living in the 21st century: the 20th century was garbage. Frank Sheeran learns how to kill without remorse in World War II. Elections were bought and sold. The entire century was nothing but men doing what they want as their children silently stare at them in horror. Scorcese accepts Sheeran’s near deathbed squealing as gospel. In The Irishman, the mob killed a president, funded Las Vegas, and erased one of organized labor’s greatest heroes from history because he was bad for business. That is America’s most recent history.

The Irishman also warns against choosing the wrong family. In The Irishman, one family offers money and power and the other love, but heartstrings are attached. Sheeran picks the mob over his own and ends up broken and alone. In the end, Sheeran has nothing to be thankful for. All he has is guilt and a line of bullshit to anyone who’ll listen.

There is a scene near the end of the movie that has stuck with me. In Goodfellas, prison is where mobsters enjoy privileges that regular inmates don’t. Remember the famous scene where Paul Sorvino’s Paulie slices up garlic with a razor blade for a tastier pasta sauce? The final scenes in prison between DeNiro’s and Pesci’s characters are bleak. Both mean shake with decrepitude. The last time DeNiro’s Sheeran sees Russel Bufalino, his friend and father figure, is when the old man is being pushed in a wheelchair. “I’m going to church,” Pesci’s mob boss says, like an excited child on his way to a playground. Wheee! He’s wheeled up a ramp and into a hospital where he will then die of lung cancer, even though he had quit smoking decades prior. Which is pretty funny.

Be thankful for the good things you have because we’re all going to church.