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Scorsese: "The Irishman"

"The Irishman" is a weird and sometimes thrilling movie about silence and subtext.

Scorsese has explicitly said that he is interested in what happens between people when the dialogue runs out. And again and again, you see him experimenting with long pauses.

Body language. Things conveyed through the eyes. That's what keeps "The Irishman" floating along, more than the killings and big speeches.

When Sheeran meets the woman who will become his second wife, she is his waitress. "Is there anything you need?" the waitress asks. Long, meaningful, Pinter-esque pause. Sheeran: "I'm great, I'm great." Waitress: "You just let me know if you need anything." Final, covert glance.

In the next scene, Sheeran is divorced from his first wife and marching back toward the marital "aisle."

This kind of playful use of gaps and pauses recurs when Peggy's "uncle" tries to make nice. "I bought you skates, I heard you like skating." Peggy--who is maybe a second-grader--stares daggers at her "uncle." And this wordless look strips a grown man of his power. So fascinating and strange to see attention devoted to that kind of interaction--in a mafia movie.

Finally, the scene that will become immortal: Hoffa's pseudo-son, not terribly bright, partakes in an assassination. He doesn't really know what is happening; he pulls up in a car that reeks of fish, because someone has just asked him to deliver a bit of frozen fish to a friend.

"What kind of fish?" says an irritated fellow mobster. "Was it salmon? Was it cod?"

There's silence. Everyone in the car is coming to understand how incurious--and thus how vulnerable to attack--Hoffa's pseudo-son is.

"You just accept a fish? You don't ask any questions about it? You just stick it in your car?"

We learn all we need to know about the pseudo-son here--and Jesse Plemons's tortured, awkward performance is masterful.

We're talking about fish; we're expending nervous energy as we plan to kill Hoffa; we're making the time go by.

I haven't seen "Parasite" yet. A big part of me suspects that Scorsese deserves the "Best Picture" Oscar this year.
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