Ari Aster is a filmmaker that likes to examine human relationships and take them to some pretty grotesque extremes, whether that’s a mother’s relationship with her husband and kids in “Hereditary” or a young woman’s relationship with her college boyfriend in “Midsommar.” So, it shouldn’t be any surprise that Aster doesn’t see Martin Scorsese’s film, “The Irishman,” as yet another gangster film in a career filled with legendary crime dramas.
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In an essay written for Variety, Aster discussed “The Irishman” and what it means to him. And though he admits that the film is definitely a gangster film, Aster wrote that “The Irishman” is so much more than that simple descriptor.
“‘The Irishman,’ which serves primarily as a confessional (or an anti-confessional), seems strikingly in denial — an insidious, casual, deep-seated denial, at once tragic and utterly banal,” said the “Midsommar” filmmaker.
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“The film is obsessively attuned to the bruised egos, masculine posturing, inconsequential (yet extremely consequential) faux pas, and petty resentments of its fatally flawed characters, becoming a dense archive of fascinating human detail,” added Aster. “This, like so many of Scorsese’s films, (especially in the gangster genre, which he has all but defined and now, in his way, abandoned) is ultimately the story of an unexamined life.”
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The “Hereditary” writer-director talked about how the new film fits in the filmography of Scorsese, which includes other crime dramas such as “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas,” and “Casino.” And while Aster can see how they are similar, he feels that Scorsese’s latest is a different beast, altogether.
“If the earlier films were operas, then so is ‘The Irishman,’ but it is also distinctly an elegy, and a radically pitiful one, bold in its barrenness,” concluded Aster. “It’s what Marty’s been saying all along, but this time he’s removed the frills. And it’s wonderful.”
Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” is available now on Netflix.
