Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
The term "melting pot" is an apt one, not just because different immigrant cultures are brought together into a unique fusion, but because living creatures tossed into a pot of boiling water are likely to resist. Vigorously. Gangs of New York is Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese's take on the most famous melting pot of all, New York City, and the Draft Riots of 1863, when it boiled over.
The young Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) sees his Irish immigrant father killed in a gang fight against Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis) and his "Natives". Ten years later he returns to find the Butcher the undisputed master of the Five Points, in league with Boss Tweed's (Jim Broadbent) Tammany Hall political machine. It's a street-level story of love, loss, crime, corruption, revenge and a healthy dose of violence; it's got drama after drama after drama.
And it's magnificently realized, you've got to give Scorsese that. They built half of New York on set and shipped in hundreds of extras; the principle performances are all excellent, especially Daniel Day Lewis's Butcher. It's too long and the script is mediocre, but he makes it work.
The trouble is that it isn't a movie about Amsterdam Vallon, it's a movie about the building of New York. Foundation stories are prone to developing a kind of mythic reverence, and unlike Deadwood, which accomplishes the same thing on a much smaller scale, Gangs is invested with all New York City's self-importance and self-worship. It opens with a battle scene reminiscent of Braveheart, and the epic mood only builds from there. At one point Monk McGinn (Brendan Gleeson) comments that the situation is almost Shakespearean; Scorsese obviously thinks so: this is an American epic, about a time when men were giants and strode the Earth in seven-league steps.
Ultimately, it keeps the audience at arm's length; the characters are less interesting and less believable as archetypes than as people. New York itself is the only real character on display, but displayed with the assumption that it's already known and loved. To me it's just a place I haven't been.