Search This Blog

Monday, November 30, 2015

Of Rats and Men: "Black Mass" vs. "The Departed"

James “Whitey” Bulger spent about 15 years on the lam as #2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and yet “Black Mass,” the new Warner Bros. drama documenting his reign of terror over Irish Catholic South Boston, directed by Scott Cooper and headlined by Johnny Depp as Bulger, indicates he still eludes us. Guided by witnesses’ recorded testimonies, “Black Mass” is like an old chronological scrapbook from 1975 to the late 1980s reorganized for bureaucratic eyes.  Yet as Cooper emphasizes objectivity, Johnny Depp’s Bulger is an unnerving anomaly—a hybrid of Nosferatu, Pazuzu and Gollum DNA, a horror movie presence contaminating an Irish Catholic period canvas. That a character should be reading “The Exorcist” when Depp’s Bulgerferatu knocks on the door is less period correctness than an allusion to the character’s satanic prowess. In such a thin film, Bulger evades perspective. “Black Mass” cannot make sense of Bulger. Even when he's taken away in handcuffs, he still isn’t “there." It’s as if he needed to be a cosmeticized special effect because Cooper finds his evil unfathomable.

Read the rest at RogerEbert.com:  http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/of-rats-and-men-black-mass-vs-the-departed

Order your copy of Off the Map: Freedom, Control, and the Future in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, published by Cascade Books, here. 

3 comments:

  1. Your Affiliate Money Printing Machine is waiting -

    And earning money online using it is as easy as 1...2...3!

    Here is how it works...

    STEP 1. Input into the system what affiliate products the system will push
    STEP 2. Add PUSH BUTTON traffic (this ONLY takes 2 minutes)
    STEP 3. Watch the system grow your list and sell your affiliate products all for you!

    Are you ready to make money ONLINE???

    Check it out here

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very good post, I enjoyed reading your post very much, I want to retweet this to my followers.

    마사지

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! I definitely loved every little bit of it. I have you bookmarked your site to check out the new stuff you post.

    건마탑

    ReplyDelete