[PEN-L:33451] RE: Re: Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest film

["Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I saw it tonight.  It's an incredible movie.

If you haven't seen it, you might want to read
this later (if ever).  I don't give away much
story, but there isn't much to give away.

Some of the comments by reviewers and LP's
friend reflect disapproval for failure to
find the good guy/bad guy fault line in the
movie.  But there is no such fault line.
Everybody has some good and some bad, even
'Bill the Butcher.'

The print reviewers evidently failed to see
the raging critique -- via a style of reportage
without any didacticism -- of U.S. society
being born.  The city government is corrupt
to the core. The Civil War is a charnal house
for the working class that the wealthy are able
to forego. Civil society is one big underground
economy ruled by criminals.

I expect some on the left will be distressed
at the point where the good guys -- the Irish --
start lynching African-Americans.  The working
class without Marx, Lenin, or any kind of social
democratic or labor leadership is a scary thing,
but the film's core is about just that -- the
working class in motion (not necessarily forward
motion).  The workers in the film work elsewhere.
They are really paupers with jobs.  The work
shown in the film is the work of crime and
politics (intimately intertwined here).  Nevertheless,
the story reeks of populist themes.  People are
oppressed most for failure of the government to
protect them from each other, and for lack of
any sort of democratic participation.

The right may be annoyed to find Bill the Butcher
mouthing a lot of their favorite lines.  The best
place to be a fly on the wall would be inside
Pat Buchanan's head, as the nativists merrily
dismember the foreign heathen Irish, or while
Bill the Butcher launches into extended rants
against Popery.

There is not much sentimentality on the surface
of the film.  An exception is the end, with a song
by U2 that is o.k. but typically embroidered in
schmaltz, but the point is all in the line of the
song -- "these are the hands that built America."

You could call it a patriotic celebration in the
sense that it strives to be truthful and there is
a line of progress visible as the film ends.  The
frankness about the cost of such progress is where
the greatness of the film lies, IMO.  You have to buy
capitalism as a progressive stage at some point in
some sense to agree on this score.

I doubt much of the public is going to get the point.
The small theater in which I saw it was about 1/3rd filled.
Most people left when the final credits began to roll.  I stayed
and was the only person in the theater while most of the
credits rolled and the theme song continued.  (The back-
ground sound is still pitching ideas at you as the credits
wind up.)

Much of the acting is noteworthy.  Daniel Day-Lewis is great.
I had forgotten that the actress I was watching was Cameron Diaz
until the credits started.  The supporting actors are
great.  DeCaprio is mostly inert.

I'd say the best thing about the movie from the standpoint
of how it would strike a politically untutored person is that
it raises a million questions.

mbs