PULP & POPCORN

Page 55
REVIEW
“Silence”
scr. Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks
dir. Martin Scorsese
There are few things more difficult for filmmakers to deal with in their work than
religion.
Martin Scorsese has never been shy about the things that preoccupy him as a
filmmaker, and the more you study his work, the more obvious it is that his
Catholicism is one of the driving forces in what stories he chooses to tell and the way
he chooses to tell them. There is more than one Martin Scorsese, though, and just
because you like some of his movies, it does not mean that you’ll like all of his
movies. When I look at Good Fe!as and The Age Of Innocence, what I see are two films
that are almost wholly dissimilar on the surface, but set side-by-side, you can clearly
see the same filmmaker at work, the same mind approaching storytelling problems in
the same way. Scorsese’s greatest gift is his eye for detail and the way he uses that to
present cultures to us almost as anthropological study.
A great example is the way he shows how heavy the wise guys are in Good
Fe!as, with young Henry Hill watching the car actually rise on its shocks as the wise
guys get out. There are scenes in The Age Of Innocence that are that exact same kind of
observational reality, designed to pull you into the rules and manners that defined
every single social interaction between those characters. You can’t do the scene with
the gloves in Good Fe!as because the rules of that world are different, and what makes
each new Scorsese film interesting to me is seeing how he approaches this new world
we’re heading into with him. I’m not excited because Scorsese’s making films about
gangsters; I’m excited because he’s going to apply that level of attention to detail to
taking me into a world, and whatever world it is, I’m going to feel like I’m in good
hands. I feel like I’m going to be fully transported. That’s what he does best.