J. Edgar (15.)
Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Josh Lucas and Stephen Root. 137 mins.
Apart from Gran Torino, the recent films of Clint Eastwood have been so tastefully drained and listless they resembled paint drying as filmed by a conscientious director who had lost his enthusiasm for drying paint but was determined to do a thoroughly professional job anyway. His biopic of FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover pads earnestly and quietly through a turbulent tale that encompasses the greater part of 20th century. This time though Eastwood’s stately approach pays off, mainly because the subject is so meaty you welcome the lack of distractions.
The script by Dustin Lance Black (Milk) works that most tired of biopic conventions, the subject at the end of their life dictating a memoir, but from that crafts a multi strand mosaic that flips back and forth between various ongoing tales from numerous points in his life. It’s a tricksy structure and most directors would have made a point of playing up how flashy and daring it was. Eastwood though delivers it all with minimum fuss and admirable clarity.
Being handed the role of repressed bisexual cross dressing law enforcement officer would normally be a green light to grandstand, but DiCaprio holds himself in. Placed In the centre of a Scorsese barrage of light and sound he can often seem a bit lacking, but he’s right at home in Eastwood’s low key vision. Of the three central performer – Watts as Hoover’s loyal secretary Helen Gandy and Hammer as his partner and presumed lover Clyde Tolson – who have to appear throughout the film’s entire 53 years of the film’s timeline, DiCaprio fares the best with the aging prosthetics.
Frustratingly Hoover did a remarkable job of taking his secrets with him to the grave. Nobody quite knows what dirt he had on everybody else, or quite what dirt he was hiding about himself. Such a void makes him an empty canvass for artists to paint their own obsessions onto but this film opts for studied neutrality. Appropriately perhaps, the film reveals itself through hints and insinuations.
Given the trashing Hoover’s reputation has taken after his death such an approach makes for a comparative sympathetic portrait; you get his side of the story. However, viewers hoping for some kind of point will wait in vain. The film has more false endings than Return of the King. It keeps going in the hope of alighting on some culminating image but doesn’t find it. It knows that this man’s life says something important about America, but it doesn’t know what it is.
American Sniper review
Flags of our Father review
Letters of Iwo Jima review
Invictus review
J Edgar review
Hereafter review
Gran Torino review
Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Josh Lucas and Stephen Root. 137 mins.
Apart from Gran Torino, the recent films of Clint Eastwood have been so tastefully drained and listless they resembled paint drying as filmed by a conscientious director who had lost his enthusiasm for drying paint but was determined to do a thoroughly professional job anyway. His biopic of FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover pads earnestly and quietly through a turbulent tale that encompasses the greater part of 20th century. This time though Eastwood’s stately approach pays off, mainly because the subject is so meaty you welcome the lack of distractions.
The script by Dustin Lance Black (Milk) works that most tired of biopic conventions, the subject at the end of their life dictating a memoir, but from that crafts a multi strand mosaic that flips back and forth between various ongoing tales from numerous points in his life. It’s a tricksy structure and most directors would have made a point of playing up how flashy and daring it was. Eastwood though delivers it all with minimum fuss and admirable clarity.
Being handed the role of repressed bisexual cross dressing law enforcement officer would normally be a green light to grandstand, but DiCaprio holds himself in. Placed In the centre of a Scorsese barrage of light and sound he can often seem a bit lacking, but he’s right at home in Eastwood’s low key vision. Of the three central performer – Watts as Hoover’s loyal secretary Helen Gandy and Hammer as his partner and presumed lover Clyde Tolson – who have to appear throughout the film’s entire 53 years of the film’s timeline, DiCaprio fares the best with the aging prosthetics.
Frustratingly Hoover did a remarkable job of taking his secrets with him to the grave. Nobody quite knows what dirt he had on everybody else, or quite what dirt he was hiding about himself. Such a void makes him an empty canvass for artists to paint their own obsessions onto but this film opts for studied neutrality. Appropriately perhaps, the film reveals itself through hints and insinuations.
Given the trashing Hoover’s reputation has taken after his death such an approach makes for a comparative sympathetic portrait; you get his side of the story. However, viewers hoping for some kind of point will wait in vain. The film has more false endings than Return of the King. It keeps going in the hope of alighting on some culminating image but doesn’t find it. It knows that this man’s life says something important about America, but it doesn’t know what it is.
American Sniper review
Flags of our Father review
Letters of Iwo Jima review
Invictus review
J Edgar review
Hereafter review
Gran Torino review
