The Departed

The Oscars are yet another Western cultural phenomenon from which I have become almost entirely insulated since coming out to live in the East. Not that I miss them much. In many years, the so-called 'Best Film' will just be some piece of crowd-pleasing pap; anything with any real quality is likely to get 'Best Director' or 'Best Screenplay', if it's lucky. Many outstanding small films are never even in the running for nominations.

However, I was rather startled when I saw the results of this year's awards. Startled - because I'd seen 'The Departed' only a month or so earlier (while staying with an old college friend in The Other Place.... as I must coyly refer to this country's '2nd city' for at least a few more days), and had found it more or less instantly forgettable. I was surprised that it even got nominated for anything. It WON??

Well, 'Best Director' for Scorsese we can see. Not deserved on this occasion, but it's one of those classic consolation prize things: finally the Academy realises he should have been honoured for 'Raging Bull' or 'King of Comedy' or 'Goodfellas', and so gives him a Lifetime Achievement Award by another name.

But 'Best Film'?! Do me a favour! Was there really nothing else worthwhile in contention this year?

The direction here was pedestrian. Scorsese was going through the motions. He hasn't actually made a really good film since 'Goodfellas'. Well, maybe 'Casino' (which I consider underrated: it would probably be far more highly regarded if people weren't always comparing it with 'Goodfellas'), but that was over a decade ago. 'The Departed' is probably his best effort in 10 or 15 years, but it's still fairly humdrum.

William Monahan's script? Well, a bit of a mixed bag. Some strong dialogue, sure. And I think in general he does a good job of transplanting the Chinese original to an American setting, plausibly substituting the poor Irish communities of south Boston for the clannish loyalties of the Hong Kong underworld. However, the best scenes in the film tend to be those which are least changed from the original (I'm fond of the bit where the two henchmen outside the bar/mob headquarters are joking about trying to spot the undercover police keeping them under surveillance; having decided that "the trick is that they don't look at you", they quickly come to suppose that every passing pedestrian must therefore be a police spy - "He's a cop." "Yeah, and him. Is she a cop?" "Oh, definitely. Never looked this way once." [My buddy The Choirboy and I often replay this scene when attractive women in bars are refusing to notice us! "She's a cop. And her. And her."]) And, much as I like the Hong Kong original.... well, the story is not really its strong point. The plot is ridiculously convoluted, often melodramatic, and frankly implausible in many respects (How does suspicion not fall on a young cop who rents a fabulous apartment far beyond his means? And who is picked up from his Police Academy graduation ceremony by a notorious mob boss??). Within the genre of the Hong Kong action flick such weaknesses can be tolerated, can even be seen as 'strengths'; 'Infernal Affairs' (the dreadfully punning English name it got landed with is the worst thing about it) could get away with this kind of plotting because it was so relentlessly slick and stylish, and was located in a slightly unreal, comic-book milieu. 'The Departed' was attempting to be a more 'serious' picture, a weighty meditation on loyalty, honour, and identity; I found its credibility completely blown by its overwrought plot. (Hello, yes - the sub-plot about the two moles unwittingly sharing a lover? Inserted into the original purely to create an opening for HK pop tart Kelly Chen to appear in the film. Deeply implausible and completely irrelevant - it should have been cut from the American version, if they weren't going to do something worthwhile with it.)

And the acting? Hmmm. Jack was just being Jack. He's played so many of these glinty-eyed psychopaths now that he can phone it in. The only novelty here was that, in deference to his advancing years, he was being allowed to play a geriatric glinty-eyed psychopath. Martin Sheen was playing President Bartlett, suddenly confused at finding himself sharing an office with the amusingly foul-mouthed Mark Wahlberg (about the only performance I did like, though perhaps more for the character than the acting per se). Fat Alec Baldwin injected a somewhat incongruous comic note. Matt Damon was playing a charmless, personality-less, amoral cypher of a man - some people said this was an astonishing performance, others said it was not acting at all; I'm with the latter group. And Leo - well, Leo I like, he's a fine young actor; but he's already developing a tendency towards scenery-gnawing, and his character here (traumatised, paranoid, insomniac [Sounds like me!]), and the fact he was playing off Jack, just gave him too many temptations to indulge that.

A better-than-average crime flick, perhaps, but overlong, muddled in its motives, often ridiculous in its plotting, and no better than adequate in its acting and direction. Oscar-worthy?? Only in a very poor year!

You know, what they really ought to do is give film awards to the best films of 10 years ago - that way, there'd be some proper sense of perspective. What were the best films of 1996? Really?? Did any of them even get nominated for Oscars at the time?!