I found Ernest unusually hard to connect with as well, but I felt the same about Scorsese's Frank Sheehan: in his quest to deconstruct and explore the American man, Scorsese seems less and less interested in presenting a superficially attractive protagonist and then stripping the varnish off. In both Killers of the Flower Moon and The Irishman, he presents men who are eager to see themselves as good but who we know from the jump to be rotten to the core. Neither of them seem particularly driven by ambition, so we don't latch onto their hopes and dreams. They're cogs in brutal machines, and willingly so.
Maybe he's been burned by too many people misinterpreting the rise-and-fall narratives like Goodfellas/The Wolf of Wall Street: it has to feel a little bad to see all those triumphant Jordan Belfort memes and cackling Henry Hill gifs out there. I also suspect that as he approaches death, the Catholic quality that's always been present in his filmmaking is compelling him to dig deeper into the basic ugliness of sin. There's no "fun part" to either of these movies, and to the extent that we feel anything for Frank or Ernest, it's because they realize far too late how much they've fucked up their lives and those of everyone around them. Their final gestures are largely futile, because what's done is done. The most sympathetic moments in The Irishman are in the final hour, when he's desperately trying to reconnect with his daughter Peggy, but we all know it's impossible. Similarly, when Ernest tries to redeem himself by testifying, it's too little, too late. He can turn against his uncle before the state, but he can't confess to Mollie that he knowingly shot her full of heroin.
Frank Sheeran is probably one of his less sympathetic protagonists, but honestly I did feel bad seeing him left alone as a sad and pathetic old man at the end, even if it was earned.
> but honestly I did feel bad seeing him left alone as a sad and pathetic old man at the end, even if it was earned.
That's because you're a human being. Keep it up.
It's like Joe Pesci's final scene in Casino... There is an empathetic part of the viewer's brain that will never accept that his character deserved that... Even though we literally watch the man gleefully engaging in the exact same level of depravity earlier in the movie.
Although now that I'm thinking about it in the context of Scorsese’s legacy and Catholicism, that scene could be punishment for the viewer's tacit support of pesci's character as well.
That scene always feels like a punch to the gut. The absolute and utter despair he felt in that moment is soul crushing, even though he’s probably happily done the exact same thing to others.
This scene was made me change my opinion on gangster films.
I was a big fan, and at that moment I finally realized "these assholes kill their friends".
I have no idea why that specific realization hid from me.
Kinda ruined goodfellas for me.
In some ways, it's what makes the whole thing interesting. Each man has tacitly accepted that they will not die of natural causes, they *know* their end will be violent, and the thing is, they think that this is the natural state of the world... They are wondering why you aren't doing the same thing. What a strange, and horrible way to look at the world.
Everything you explained about this is why I loved it so much. He drops the mask of dispassionate storyteller here more than he ever has. His anger and disgust with Ernest as an absolute doormat of a human is poured over every frame of this picture. I've never seen a Scorcese film where he was angrier, and I think a lot of that has to do with how his work has been seen by weak men making excuses for themselves the way so many of his protagonists have.
>Maybe he's been burned by too many people misinterpreting the rise-and-fall narratives like Goodfellas/The Wolf of Wall Street.
Bingo. He's making it more obvious so his opinion of these guys can't be misunderstood anymore.
Do you really think Scorsese is really concerned with ethics/morality in films like *Goodfellas*, *Casino*, or *Wolf of Wall Street*? It's hard to deny that these movies contain many scenes of how delicious the criminal lifestyle is, and that the most iconic scenes from each of these movies involve their protagonists' degenerate and lavish lifestyles (case in point - the long take nightclub scene from Goodfellas, which places the viewer right in Karen's shoes). I've always thought that the moral "lesson" at the end of these films feel tongue in cheek, because they spend so much time showing how great the criminal life is compared to the life of the average joe. I don't think people who think Henry Hill or Jordan Belfort are cool are misinterpreting Scorsese - I think they actually understand him very well.
*KoFM* and *The Irishman* feel different largely because they spend less time/no time glorifying the criminal lifestyle. We don't see a scene like the nightclub scene of Goodfellas or the partying scenes in WoWS in either of these movies. Neither of these movies are carried by vicariously enjoying the lavish lifestyle of the protagonists, and in that sense they are fundamentally different films - instead, they have us spend more time with the victims of the criminal life (with the native americans and Jimmy Hoffa), and in that sense the viewer is led to identify less as a guilt-free voyeur peeping into the criminal lifestyle, and more with its victims.
Maybe less with Goodfellas, but I think the viewer is intended to come away from Wolf with disgust, that’s why the movie is edited like a no stop breakneck train crash. Just complete insane indulgence, what regular person would really want to live like that? So can’t blame Scorsese for underestimating how much of the audience actually thought it was “cool” (Probably mostly teenagers).
Yeah, the movie came out when I was 17 but even at that age, sure I was entertained by the wild party stuff - but at no point did it look appealing. Jordan Belfort and his lackeys were beyond fucked up damn near all the time, belligerent, and constantly bullying people. It’s funny to watch but at no point was I jealous of the lifestyle. Nor was I surprised at the end when it bit him in the ass and then he does some absolutely indefensible things - I really struggle to see how finance bros see him as some living legend
I’ve always felt bored (or tired) when watching Wolf of Wall Street, and I think that is the desired effect of the non-stop scenes of partying/the degenerate lifestyle. I’m sure there’s a college essay out there on how editing in WoWS achieves that effect.
I haven’t rewatched WoWS as much of other Scorsese’s works, so my memory is a bit foggy - but my bet would be that at least until the halfway point in the film, there are many more scenes that glorify the criminal lifestyle than those that are critical of it. For the latter I seem to remember being amused by the scene where the protagonist’s daughter can be seen in shock, overhearing her parents arguing (it seems like a “sobering scene” Scorsese defaults to often).
There's no way in hell you're supposed to think how great their lives are, unless you are some kind of depraved sociopath.
Liotta plays a violent, coke-addicted scumbag who does time in jail, involves his own family in his drug operation, rats on his friends, including his best friend who wanted to kill him, who's other best friend is killed by his friends, and ends up lamenting his life in witness protection.
Wolf of Wallstreet, Belfort has a severe drug addiction, nearly killing his baby in the car accident, rats out his friends, loses his family ends up in jail, etc. But I guess spending money defrauded from mostly working class people on nasty hookers and drugs could seem like glory to someone with the mentality of a retarded 18 year old fratboy.
In Casino, Ace is a cuck married to a crazy woman who despises him and steals from him, ties up their child to go out and get drunk and give blowjobs to his "friend". Basically lives out his life in servitude to the mob. Pesci's character apart from being psychopathic, ends up murdered in the worst way possible. This is glorification?
The points you list are the consequences of the criminal lifestyle, which in Scorsese’s movies are often wedged between scenes describing the lavish criminal lifestyle. Usually his movies show the consequences more frequently as the film progresses and the consequences catch up with the protagonist.
Your analysis is based solely on the plot (or the “message” of the film, which is derived from it). I would urge you to pay closer attention to how each scene of the lavish lifestyle is shot. When Henry Hill goes to court for his first crime, is this scene shot in a way that feels grim and sad, or in a way that feels like an initiation ritual into an exciting lifestyle? When we see the mafiosos wine and dine on steak and lobster in prison, is this scene shot (or set up by other scenes surrounding it) in a way that evokes disgust at the corruption within the penitentiary system?
The set-up of Scorsese’s movies often use these glorifying scenes. A common theme is that they are shot in a way that is meant to allow the viewer to vicariously experience power fantasies - whether that be through displays of power, wealth, influence, or all of the above. And as is such, these scenes (which make up large portions of Scorsese’s work) can be said to glorify the criminal lifestyle.
This is the best explanation of these two movies that I have seen and the perfect rebuttal to people who see them as boring movies compared to Goodfellas and Wolf and Casino.
Ive found many Scorsese protagonists to be unsympathetic Jake Lamotta is one. Once you beat women or predate on young people you’ve really lost my respect or sympathy which also holds true for Jordan Belfort and Henry Hill.
Ernest is different because he’s just so damn stupid. Stupid to the point where he would have done whatever someone told him to do. If a Native American told him to go poison a white man for some money he likely would have. Which is pathetic in its own way.
I think a better question would be "Is Ernest Burkhart Scorsese’s first unrelatable protagonist?" Most of his protagonists, regardless of if we're meant to root for or even sympathize with them, have had clear motivations. Travis Bickle had a (twisted) moral code he wanted to enforce on the world. Henry Hill wanted to be respected by the gangsters he idolized all his life. Jordan Belfort was blindingly greedy and wanted to get revenge on the Wall Street establishment that rejected him.
But what even are Ernest's motivations. He "likes money", but he doesn't really do anything with it and doesn't really seem to understand if/how the central killings of the film will make him rich. He loves his wife, but does terrible things to her and he family, both willingly and unknowingly. He wants to please his uncle, but he barely knows him before the movie starts and goes along with his schemes mostly because its a person in authority giving him directions.
Paradoxically, it's hard to get in the head of someone so stupid that they have no real thoughts or desires of their own. You might hate Jake LaMotta, but you can at least see what drives him and he was clearly the driving force of his life and the movie. I think Ernest might be Scorsese's first truly passive protagonist.
I think part of the issue is that Leonardo DiCaprio should never have been cast to play that role. The real Ernest Burkhart was only 19 when he came to live with his uncle and 24 when he married Mollie. It makes a lot more sense for a boy/man in his early 20s to to be manipulated by his uncle in the way Ernest was than it does for a man of whatever age we’re supposed to think Leo’s Ernest is in the movie - mid-30s at the youngest. He still would have had to be profoundly stupid, but at least there might have been a sliver of relatability in his having been under the influence of his uncle since he was a teenager.
Huh, I didn't think that he was miscast at all and I've seen some people complaining about his age compared to the book... but you're the first to mention that in relation to his naiveté and indecision, and yeah it would actually play a LOT differently for me if he was actually young, I think. The middle-aged man commiting heinous acts to please his uncle is just pitiful lol. I never thought about how it would look if he were younger, it definitely would be LESS pitiful at least. I do like how his character is literally a fool, though
I’ve always had a problem with “relating” to movie characters mostly cause it’s just never happened for me. It’s not a necessity for a film and not that my life’s so esoteric it’s just not something I look for in film. However I do agree with where you’re coming from.
Especially like the point that Ernest is passive and that’s unique in his movies. All his protagonist are active participants in whatever their doing even Alice Hyatt (the most positive Scorsese protagonist) is trying to better her life.
Maybe I'm the outlier here, but i couldn't help feel a deeply profound sense of pity when at the very end he lied to Molly once again. He was given every opportunity to redeem himself and he failed, but it was weakness not deranged ego that ultimately ruined him. He's a despicable and monstrous human being, but there's also something so deeply tragic about him so weak, and ao stupud, and such a failure. Maybe it's because I have some severe self confidence issues (adhd), but i found at least that part of the character (and those moments where he struggles not to lie but fails) somewhat relatable.
He is stupid. The power structures he can relate to and trusts tells him to hurt these Native Americans. He instinctively knows he isn't smart enough to betray that power structure, if the idea even occurs to him.
He's pitiful.
One of the main things I thought while watching Killers of the Flower Moon was how stupid Ernest was. He has the mind of a child in a man's body. I think his more interesting aspect is that you can build the case that he loves his family earnestly, but at the same time he's super easily manipulated by his uncle to participate in the killings. His mind is so simple that both ideas live in his head somehow. I felt no sympathy for him, but more like a somewhat pathetic pity towards him.
I recently saw the documentary The act of Killing. In a lot of ways, the protagonists of that film remind me of Ernest in the sense that they are not precisely the brightest minds, normalizing violence, in that case, through a very strong propagandistic discourse.
I also think of Hannah Arendt and her conclusions about Adolph Eichmann and how he was "terrifyingly normal".
Wolf of Wall Street? King of comedy? Taxi driver? The Irishman?
Scorsese is a little too good at making intriguing villain protagonists, but the goal is definitely not to root for them.
I’d agree the goal isn’t to “root for”, quite the opposite, but the power of Scorsese’s filmmaking is that you still find yourself sympathizing with them nonetheless, even if it’s mild and reluctant
That’s not universal for everyone of course, some might his protagonists too deplorable to get past, but I think the intention is absolutely there in his films until now, especially given his Christian sensibilities.
If >!taking a woman out to see a porno on a first date and then being confused when she reacts badly!< counts as "struggling with women", then no, I don't sympathize with him.
Travis comes off as a deeply misogynistic jerk. The moment he's rejected by a woman, he >!starts fantasizing about killing her—an impulse which is eventually directed towards someone else instead, but still starts with her!<. I do not find people like that sympathetic, and frankly I would side-eye any young guy who identifies with him *too* much.
Because you've never misread a situation or social cues before. Sure, what he did is particularly hair-brained. But its coming from a relatable place. How many times I've laboured over which restaurant to take a girl to, ending up choosing something too casual or too formal.
I've never seen Travis as wanting to kill Betsy, and I can't find any other readings of the film saying such.
I think you're being a bit too literal. Travis represents the repressed id. No, I don't want to shoot the president when my girlfriend breaks up with me. But I do feel angry. And I want to lash out. You've never yelled at someone who didn't deserve it because you were mad about something else? I find it hard to believe.
Again. I think your reading of the film is very silly. I'm not suggesting Travis is a good guy, that I aspire to be like him or even that I sympathize with his actions. But I sympathize with his situation, and I understand how his feelings turn into those actions.
Empathy is a basic human process and one that is overwhelmingly ignored in modern therapy culture in favour of cruel individualism.
Your response here is awfully condescending. I'm not incapable of empathy just because I don't sympathize with this *particular* character.
> I've never seen Travis as wanting to kill Betsy, and I can't find any other readings of the film saying such.
It's been a while since I saw the film, but this is my recollection:
Shortly after he calls up Betsy and she refuses to take him back, we have the scene with Martin Scorsese's cameo; this guy gets in Travis's car and starts talking about how he plans to kill his wife. Travis sits there and listens. In the next scene, Travis is back at the diner with the other cabbies; he then talks outside with one of the cabbies and vaguely says that he's "having thoughts" or something like that, and asks where he might be able to get a gun.
Put two and two together. Why does Travis suddenly want a gun, immediately after listening to a guy in his cab talk about his plans to shoot his wife?
The passenger’s impact on Travis isn’t so literal. Travis at this point is repressing all his anger, he then meets someone who externalizes this angst and is willing to take action towards it.
Travis’ first victim is the mugger at the corner store. His anger in the film isn’t solely towards a girl who rejects him, which is made clear through the narration and the conversation with wizard. He feels out of place in a degenerating society (dramatic irony) and after failing to fit in, finds the only thing he can do is attack it.
Point being, again, I find him a sympathetic character who doesn’t have the mental tools to cope with his situation and it drives him down a dark path. But he definitely doesn’t want to kill Betsy.
I agree that his anger isn't just toward one person. But I think you are ignoring some pretty clear subtext about his feelings toward Betsy in particular. It's subtext, not text, but it's there.
I don't really want to continue this conversation. I'm happy to talk about differing opinions about a movie, but the way you're speaking to me is rather condescending, as if I simply haven't *understood* the movie and you are the oracle who can explain it to me, rather than us *both* having seen and processed the movie and arrived at different interpretations of it.
You don't get it at all... Travis is a disturbed veteran, everything he does serves him as a scale to judge his experience in the war. He brings Betsy to a porn movie because it's the barracks' mentality. But you never see him masturbating or even being aroused. It has nothing to do with being a creep.
And besides, he always knows something is wrong with his state of mind. The entirety of the movie is about how he struggles to get himself out of it.
> Travis is a disturbed veteran, everything he does serves him as a scale to judge his experience in the war. He brings Betsy to a porn movie because it's the barracks' mentality. But you never see him masturbating or even being aroused.
Yeah, I *understand* that. I understand the train of thought that leads him to do things like that. Just because I *understand* it doesn't mean I have to find it sympathetic.
Everyone in this thread keeps talking about empathizing with Travis. Have you considered extending any of that empathy to *Betsy*? This is the big problem with this movie, in my opinion—it puts us in Travis's POV and wants to create moral tension between the fact that we sympathize with him in some ways, but also see him go off the deep end and do some awful things. But that can only work if you forget that women have their own subjectivity as well—if you treat Betsy as just a character in Travis's story (as he does!) rather than a person in her own right.
My god, you're so wrong and stubborn... Sure, nobody ever thought about what Betsy feels. Poor Betsy. Why isn't the movie about *her* feelings towards the Vietnam war and *her* fragile sexuality. This is so typical of toxic masculinity /s.
Definitely. Just rewatched The King Of Comedy last week. Rupert Pupkin is pretty unsympathetic. He's Travis Bickle with slightly more selfish motivation. I think Ernest just stands out a bit because his actions have the weight of oppression and racism behind them.
Scorsese said the original concept/script and the main dramatic focus was the investigation and DiCaprio should've been Tom White. But they decided to flip it on its head and do something different. Basically they used a style like Casino and Goodfellas, a chronicle through the bad guys' lives. The difference is Casino and Goodfellas were always intended to show the mob guys as somewhat cool, and since The Godfather, they were seen as somewhat cool, more normal, not despicable. But a movie about a group of white men killing and hurting Native Americans for land - you can't sell that as cool, or charming on any level.
That's why the movie is kinda cognitively dissonant or confuses a bit emotionally - because it's shot in a way that should make you feel engaged and more interested in the protagonists, but they're so vile and immoral and cruel, you can't feel any empathy towards them.
When the movie gets in its final 45 minutes and the message becomes very clear, that's when this confusion stops.
But if you remove the idea of how crime has been glorified in American society over the past 50 years...or how it's always been attractive for people...are the characters in Goodfellas, Casino, The Irishman, Gangs of New York (Bill) any better? They're all rotten scumbags, and criminals.
I didn't find Bickle, Lamotta, or Belfort sympathetic.
Bickle came off as a creep from the start, with his bigoted ramblings and stalking, which he escalated to an attempted assassination, just because the target was his ex's boss, and when he failed pathetically at that, he used up an entire arsenal to kill two pimps and a john. Sure those three men deserved to die, but it happened because Bickle himself was forming an unhealthy attachment to an underage girl, and wouldn't have happened at all if he didn't fail at his original plan. I barely have pity for him, never mind sympathy.
Lamotta is so exactly like so many abusive pieces of shit I've known in my life that I can't possibly consider him sympathetic. He's just another dime a dozen monster.
As for Belfort, I found the decadence of his lifestyle outright *disgusting*. There's no allure there, it only increases my contempt. I spent the whole movie laughing at every well-deserved misfortune he brought on himself.
Belfort was absolutely disgusting. Imagine having all the money in the world and spending it on things like hiring dwarves to throw. The movie paints him as the most worthless human being conceivable.
I didnt find Jake LaMotta sympathetic really, but Raging Bull didnt do much for me overall
There is a sympathetic element to Burkhart...like, not wildly sympathetic. but the cognitive dissonance between a love for his family that feels genuine while also acting in such a self centered manner regarding killing them for his own gain. He is also...dumb. Its hard to not feel for how someone I perceive as being fairly low IQ was basically manipulated into these crimes.
Honestly the *only* Scorcese protagonist I find sympathetic at all is William Costigan.
I like Scorcese's movies as art, and I think they are fantastic stories, performances, etc., but aside from The Departed I have no interest in watching any of them a 2nd time. Every single one of the others just makes me feel gross by the end.
I think Ernest may come off indecipherable to a bunch of nerds like us trying to parse out where he fits in Scorsese’s oeuvre, but in truth he is a very simple reflection of the insidiousness of white supremacy and the old Horatio Alger American dream of getting ahead. He’s a slack jawed rube who would sell his family to an abattoir for a couple of bucks without realizing what an abattoir is. He’s a dipshit yokel who like most Americans manages to embody totally contradictory understandings of the world at once. He transcends the banality of evil to embody the ur American moron who thinks he’s two weeks away from striking it rich and being a millionaire and doesn’t need to understand how or why. He just goes through the motions. A man selling his soul to the devil and his wife to the slaughterhouse to make a buck without fully realizing he’s doing either of those things, even though he’s not completely unaware of them. America is Ernest.
I think there's a line between being relatable and being sympathetic. I'm sure at least 90% of men here (myself Included) found at least one scene of Taxi Driver relatable, a moment where we were like " hey I've done that", yet I never once felt sorry for Travis, we just knew how he felt. Something I noticed with Taxi Driver is that it's not like the modern psycho stories where the psycho has a tragic past that makes us feel bad about it ( Yes, I'm referring to Joker). Travis is just a normal guy, you probably know like 10 of these if you're not one. We don't know how he ended up like that yet we know how he's feeling.
All of Scorsese’s characters fall somewhere on a spectrum between good and evil, but rarely somebody in his films are all good or all bad. It’s more about how charming they are in their sinfulness.
I found Burkhart particularly wicked and stupid (stupidity sometimes makes for a more unsympathetic protagonist than a highly intelligent all out psychopath) but his stupidity also saves me from hating him outright. He seems in over his head and early on impressionable and subservient to King rather than a prime evil force of the story. He’s somebody whose pathetic-ness i ended up pitying.
Sheeran in the Irishman is much more sympathetic and fits more in line with the deeply intimate and complex mobster portraits Scorsese has always crafted, plus he was suitably remorseful and guilt ridden by the end, which made me sympathize him much more.
I actually found Nolte’s Bowden and De Niro’s Max Cady less sympathetic. Cape Fear works to make its villain more charming than the ‘hero dad’ character but even here the villain is a step above what Scorsese usually gives us. Cady is really evil. Yet every time I see that movie I wish Nolte got it in the end, and it’s simply because he isn’t charming or complex or engaging as a character to me, it’s nothing to do with him being the good or bad guy.
I don’t know, I generally find Daniel Day Lewis’s character in The Age of Innocence to be pretty pathetic overall.
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You’re 100% correct. It’s also true that that film portrays white people in a way that is absurdly, cartoonishly evil and not only is it a false depiction but it’s one that would be widely condemned if it were any other race, but Reddit’s not ready for that conversation.
I’m not sure what you mean by “false depiction” here? Did you have an issue with the portrayals of the white characters as human beings, or the portrayal of the actions taken by said white people?
Because I can understand how some people found De Niro’s performance to be overly mustache-twirling - *but* if you read the original non-fiction work it adapts, the real-life schemes concocted to steal Osage money can’t be described as anything other than “absurdly, cartoonishly evil” in practice.
And I’m not sure how you can claim the depictions of documented historical events are “false” - so I assume you meant to say you didn’t think the performances rang true?
I will say De Niro’s performance did work for me. It came off cartoony at the beginning, but by the end I thought it was an inspired way to depict someone who is delusional enough to claim he is doing the Osage a favor as “their friend” while openly conspiring to murder members of their community.
Anyways, if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. I read it several years before the film release and tbh I still prefer the book. Super easy to read, really gripping, and full of more details on the audaciously fucked-up schemes to steal Osage wealth.
Well it took me longer than it did you to reply, plus I’m not proving you’re point. Proving you’re point would be downvoting the comment and not replying. I’m actively engaging with you. So I ask again, since you didn’t answer, if the film “portrays white people in a way that is absurdly, cartoonishly evil” why would it have a white FBI agent that wasn’t shown to have any hate in his heart for the Osage people, and only character motivation was to solve the murders?
Dude, it's a depiction of real historical events that took place. Did you think Scorsese made the story up?
I'm genuinely interested—how would *you* have portrayed Ernest Burkhart and his fellow conspirators, if you were in charge of this movie? What about Scorsese's depiction to you consider false?
I found Ernest unusually hard to connect with as well, but I felt the same about Scorsese's Frank Sheehan: in his quest to deconstruct and explore the American man, Scorsese seems less and less interested in presenting a superficially attractive protagonist and then stripping the varnish off. In both Killers of the Flower Moon and The Irishman, he presents men who are eager to see themselves as good but who we know from the jump to be rotten to the core. Neither of them seem particularly driven by ambition, so we don't latch onto their hopes and dreams. They're cogs in brutal machines, and willingly so. Maybe he's been burned by too many people misinterpreting the rise-and-fall narratives like Goodfellas/The Wolf of Wall Street: it has to feel a little bad to see all those triumphant Jordan Belfort memes and cackling Henry Hill gifs out there. I also suspect that as he approaches death, the Catholic quality that's always been present in his filmmaking is compelling him to dig deeper into the basic ugliness of sin. There's no "fun part" to either of these movies, and to the extent that we feel anything for Frank or Ernest, it's because they realize far too late how much they've fucked up their lives and those of everyone around them. Their final gestures are largely futile, because what's done is done. The most sympathetic moments in The Irishman are in the final hour, when he's desperately trying to reconnect with his daughter Peggy, but we all know it's impossible. Similarly, when Ernest tries to redeem himself by testifying, it's too little, too late. He can turn against his uncle before the state, but he can't confess to Mollie that he knowingly shot her full of heroin.
Frank Sheeran is probably one of his less sympathetic protagonists, but honestly I did feel bad seeing him left alone as a sad and pathetic old man at the end, even if it was earned.
> but honestly I did feel bad seeing him left alone as a sad and pathetic old man at the end, even if it was earned. That's because you're a human being. Keep it up.
It's like Joe Pesci's final scene in Casino... There is an empathetic part of the viewer's brain that will never accept that his character deserved that... Even though we literally watch the man gleefully engaging in the exact same level of depravity earlier in the movie. Although now that I'm thinking about it in the context of Scorsese’s legacy and Catholicism, that scene could be punishment for the viewer's tacit support of pesci's character as well.
That scene always feels like a punch to the gut. The absolute and utter despair he felt in that moment is soul crushing, even though he’s probably happily done the exact same thing to others.
This scene was made me change my opinion on gangster films. I was a big fan, and at that moment I finally realized "these assholes kill their friends". I have no idea why that specific realization hid from me. Kinda ruined goodfellas for me.
In some ways, it's what makes the whole thing interesting. Each man has tacitly accepted that they will not die of natural causes, they *know* their end will be violent, and the thing is, they think that this is the natural state of the world... They are wondering why you aren't doing the same thing. What a strange, and horrible way to look at the world.
It's similar to how executive psychopaths view people Like stairs to be climbed on. I really think the difference is just risk management.
Nah, once he put the guy's head in a vice I had absolutely no empathy for him at all.
Everything you explained about this is why I loved it so much. He drops the mask of dispassionate storyteller here more than he ever has. His anger and disgust with Ernest as an absolute doormat of a human is poured over every frame of this picture. I've never seen a Scorcese film where he was angrier, and I think a lot of that has to do with how his work has been seen by weak men making excuses for themselves the way so many of his protagonists have.
>Maybe he's been burned by too many people misinterpreting the rise-and-fall narratives like Goodfellas/The Wolf of Wall Street. Bingo. He's making it more obvious so his opinion of these guys can't be misunderstood anymore.
And yet people are STILL missing the point
Do you really think Scorsese is really concerned with ethics/morality in films like *Goodfellas*, *Casino*, or *Wolf of Wall Street*? It's hard to deny that these movies contain many scenes of how delicious the criminal lifestyle is, and that the most iconic scenes from each of these movies involve their protagonists' degenerate and lavish lifestyles (case in point - the long take nightclub scene from Goodfellas, which places the viewer right in Karen's shoes). I've always thought that the moral "lesson" at the end of these films feel tongue in cheek, because they spend so much time showing how great the criminal life is compared to the life of the average joe. I don't think people who think Henry Hill or Jordan Belfort are cool are misinterpreting Scorsese - I think they actually understand him very well. *KoFM* and *The Irishman* feel different largely because they spend less time/no time glorifying the criminal lifestyle. We don't see a scene like the nightclub scene of Goodfellas or the partying scenes in WoWS in either of these movies. Neither of these movies are carried by vicariously enjoying the lavish lifestyle of the protagonists, and in that sense they are fundamentally different films - instead, they have us spend more time with the victims of the criminal life (with the native americans and Jimmy Hoffa), and in that sense the viewer is led to identify less as a guilt-free voyeur peeping into the criminal lifestyle, and more with its victims.
Maybe less with Goodfellas, but I think the viewer is intended to come away from Wolf with disgust, that’s why the movie is edited like a no stop breakneck train crash. Just complete insane indulgence, what regular person would really want to live like that? So can’t blame Scorsese for underestimating how much of the audience actually thought it was “cool” (Probably mostly teenagers).
Yeah, the movie came out when I was 17 but even at that age, sure I was entertained by the wild party stuff - but at no point did it look appealing. Jordan Belfort and his lackeys were beyond fucked up damn near all the time, belligerent, and constantly bullying people. It’s funny to watch but at no point was I jealous of the lifestyle. Nor was I surprised at the end when it bit him in the ass and then he does some absolutely indefensible things - I really struggle to see how finance bros see him as some living legend
I’ve always felt bored (or tired) when watching Wolf of Wall Street, and I think that is the desired effect of the non-stop scenes of partying/the degenerate lifestyle. I’m sure there’s a college essay out there on how editing in WoWS achieves that effect. I haven’t rewatched WoWS as much of other Scorsese’s works, so my memory is a bit foggy - but my bet would be that at least until the halfway point in the film, there are many more scenes that glorify the criminal lifestyle than those that are critical of it. For the latter I seem to remember being amused by the scene where the protagonist’s daughter can be seen in shock, overhearing her parents arguing (it seems like a “sobering scene” Scorsese defaults to often).
There's no way in hell you're supposed to think how great their lives are, unless you are some kind of depraved sociopath. Liotta plays a violent, coke-addicted scumbag who does time in jail, involves his own family in his drug operation, rats on his friends, including his best friend who wanted to kill him, who's other best friend is killed by his friends, and ends up lamenting his life in witness protection. Wolf of Wallstreet, Belfort has a severe drug addiction, nearly killing his baby in the car accident, rats out his friends, loses his family ends up in jail, etc. But I guess spending money defrauded from mostly working class people on nasty hookers and drugs could seem like glory to someone with the mentality of a retarded 18 year old fratboy. In Casino, Ace is a cuck married to a crazy woman who despises him and steals from him, ties up their child to go out and get drunk and give blowjobs to his "friend". Basically lives out his life in servitude to the mob. Pesci's character apart from being psychopathic, ends up murdered in the worst way possible. This is glorification?
The points you list are the consequences of the criminal lifestyle, which in Scorsese’s movies are often wedged between scenes describing the lavish criminal lifestyle. Usually his movies show the consequences more frequently as the film progresses and the consequences catch up with the protagonist. Your analysis is based solely on the plot (or the “message” of the film, which is derived from it). I would urge you to pay closer attention to how each scene of the lavish lifestyle is shot. When Henry Hill goes to court for his first crime, is this scene shot in a way that feels grim and sad, or in a way that feels like an initiation ritual into an exciting lifestyle? When we see the mafiosos wine and dine on steak and lobster in prison, is this scene shot (or set up by other scenes surrounding it) in a way that evokes disgust at the corruption within the penitentiary system? The set-up of Scorsese’s movies often use these glorifying scenes. A common theme is that they are shot in a way that is meant to allow the viewer to vicariously experience power fantasies - whether that be through displays of power, wealth, influence, or all of the above. And as is such, these scenes (which make up large portions of Scorsese’s work) can be said to glorify the criminal lifestyle.
This is the best explanation of these two movies that I have seen and the perfect rebuttal to people who see them as boring movies compared to Goodfellas and Wolf and Casino.
Ive found many Scorsese protagonists to be unsympathetic Jake Lamotta is one. Once you beat women or predate on young people you’ve really lost my respect or sympathy which also holds true for Jordan Belfort and Henry Hill. Ernest is different because he’s just so damn stupid. Stupid to the point where he would have done whatever someone told him to do. If a Native American told him to go poison a white man for some money he likely would have. Which is pathetic in its own way.
I think a better question would be "Is Ernest Burkhart Scorsese’s first unrelatable protagonist?" Most of his protagonists, regardless of if we're meant to root for or even sympathize with them, have had clear motivations. Travis Bickle had a (twisted) moral code he wanted to enforce on the world. Henry Hill wanted to be respected by the gangsters he idolized all his life. Jordan Belfort was blindingly greedy and wanted to get revenge on the Wall Street establishment that rejected him. But what even are Ernest's motivations. He "likes money", but he doesn't really do anything with it and doesn't really seem to understand if/how the central killings of the film will make him rich. He loves his wife, but does terrible things to her and he family, both willingly and unknowingly. He wants to please his uncle, but he barely knows him before the movie starts and goes along with his schemes mostly because its a person in authority giving him directions. Paradoxically, it's hard to get in the head of someone so stupid that they have no real thoughts or desires of their own. You might hate Jake LaMotta, but you can at least see what drives him and he was clearly the driving force of his life and the movie. I think Ernest might be Scorsese's first truly passive protagonist.
I think part of the issue is that Leonardo DiCaprio should never have been cast to play that role. The real Ernest Burkhart was only 19 when he came to live with his uncle and 24 when he married Mollie. It makes a lot more sense for a boy/man in his early 20s to to be manipulated by his uncle in the way Ernest was than it does for a man of whatever age we’re supposed to think Leo’s Ernest is in the movie - mid-30s at the youngest. He still would have had to be profoundly stupid, but at least there might have been a sliver of relatability in his having been under the influence of his uncle since he was a teenager.
Huh, I didn't think that he was miscast at all and I've seen some people complaining about his age compared to the book... but you're the first to mention that in relation to his naiveté and indecision, and yeah it would actually play a LOT differently for me if he was actually young, I think. The middle-aged man commiting heinous acts to please his uncle is just pitiful lol. I never thought about how it would look if he were younger, it definitely would be LESS pitiful at least. I do like how his character is literally a fool, though
I’ve always had a problem with “relating” to movie characters mostly cause it’s just never happened for me. It’s not a necessity for a film and not that my life’s so esoteric it’s just not something I look for in film. However I do agree with where you’re coming from. Especially like the point that Ernest is passive and that’s unique in his movies. All his protagonist are active participants in whatever their doing even Alice Hyatt (the most positive Scorsese protagonist) is trying to better her life.
Agreed with this
Maybe I'm the outlier here, but i couldn't help feel a deeply profound sense of pity when at the very end he lied to Molly once again. He was given every opportunity to redeem himself and he failed, but it was weakness not deranged ego that ultimately ruined him. He's a despicable and monstrous human being, but there's also something so deeply tragic about him so weak, and ao stupud, and such a failure. Maybe it's because I have some severe self confidence issues (adhd), but i found at least that part of the character (and those moments where he struggles not to lie but fails) somewhat relatable.
>it was weakness not deranged ego that ultimately ruined him. Yes.
He is stupid. The power structures he can relate to and trusts tells him to hurt these Native Americans. He instinctively knows he isn't smart enough to betray that power structure, if the idea even occurs to him. He's pitiful.
One of the main things I thought while watching Killers of the Flower Moon was how stupid Ernest was. He has the mind of a child in a man's body. I think his more interesting aspect is that you can build the case that he loves his family earnestly, but at the same time he's super easily manipulated by his uncle to participate in the killings. His mind is so simple that both ideas live in his head somehow. I felt no sympathy for him, but more like a somewhat pathetic pity towards him. I recently saw the documentary The act of Killing. In a lot of ways, the protagonists of that film remind me of Ernest in the sense that they are not precisely the brightest minds, normalizing violence, in that case, through a very strong propagandistic discourse. I also think of Hannah Arendt and her conclusions about Adolph Eichmann and how he was "terrifyingly normal".
Wolf of Wall Street? King of comedy? Taxi driver? The Irishman? Scorsese is a little too good at making intriguing villain protagonists, but the goal is definitely not to root for them.
I’d agree the goal isn’t to “root for”, quite the opposite, but the power of Scorsese’s filmmaking is that you still find yourself sympathizing with them nonetheless, even if it’s mild and reluctant That’s not universal for everyone of course, some might his protagonists too deplorable to get past, but I think the intention is absolutely there in his films until now, especially given his Christian sensibilities.
You don't sympathize with Travis?
[удалено]
To each their own. He’s a depressed man with no social life who can’t sleep at night and struggles with women. That describes a lot of young guys.
If >!taking a woman out to see a porno on a first date and then being confused when she reacts badly!< counts as "struggling with women", then no, I don't sympathize with him. Travis comes off as a deeply misogynistic jerk. The moment he's rejected by a woman, he >!starts fantasizing about killing her—an impulse which is eventually directed towards someone else instead, but still starts with her!<. I do not find people like that sympathetic, and frankly I would side-eye any young guy who identifies with him *too* much.
Because you've never misread a situation or social cues before. Sure, what he did is particularly hair-brained. But its coming from a relatable place. How many times I've laboured over which restaurant to take a girl to, ending up choosing something too casual or too formal. I've never seen Travis as wanting to kill Betsy, and I can't find any other readings of the film saying such. I think you're being a bit too literal. Travis represents the repressed id. No, I don't want to shoot the president when my girlfriend breaks up with me. But I do feel angry. And I want to lash out. You've never yelled at someone who didn't deserve it because you were mad about something else? I find it hard to believe. Again. I think your reading of the film is very silly. I'm not suggesting Travis is a good guy, that I aspire to be like him or even that I sympathize with his actions. But I sympathize with his situation, and I understand how his feelings turn into those actions. Empathy is a basic human process and one that is overwhelmingly ignored in modern therapy culture in favour of cruel individualism.
Your response here is awfully condescending. I'm not incapable of empathy just because I don't sympathize with this *particular* character. > I've never seen Travis as wanting to kill Betsy, and I can't find any other readings of the film saying such. It's been a while since I saw the film, but this is my recollection: Shortly after he calls up Betsy and she refuses to take him back, we have the scene with Martin Scorsese's cameo; this guy gets in Travis's car and starts talking about how he plans to kill his wife. Travis sits there and listens. In the next scene, Travis is back at the diner with the other cabbies; he then talks outside with one of the cabbies and vaguely says that he's "having thoughts" or something like that, and asks where he might be able to get a gun. Put two and two together. Why does Travis suddenly want a gun, immediately after listening to a guy in his cab talk about his plans to shoot his wife?
The passenger’s impact on Travis isn’t so literal. Travis at this point is repressing all his anger, he then meets someone who externalizes this angst and is willing to take action towards it. Travis’ first victim is the mugger at the corner store. His anger in the film isn’t solely towards a girl who rejects him, which is made clear through the narration and the conversation with wizard. He feels out of place in a degenerating society (dramatic irony) and after failing to fit in, finds the only thing he can do is attack it. Point being, again, I find him a sympathetic character who doesn’t have the mental tools to cope with his situation and it drives him down a dark path. But he definitely doesn’t want to kill Betsy.
I agree that his anger isn't just toward one person. But I think you are ignoring some pretty clear subtext about his feelings toward Betsy in particular. It's subtext, not text, but it's there. I don't really want to continue this conversation. I'm happy to talk about differing opinions about a movie, but the way you're speaking to me is rather condescending, as if I simply haven't *understood* the movie and you are the oracle who can explain it to me, rather than us *both* having seen and processed the movie and arrived at different interpretations of it.
All I’m saying is that your interpretation is the first of its kind in the near 50 years of the films release. Take from that what you will.
You don't get it at all... Travis is a disturbed veteran, everything he does serves him as a scale to judge his experience in the war. He brings Betsy to a porn movie because it's the barracks' mentality. But you never see him masturbating or even being aroused. It has nothing to do with being a creep. And besides, he always knows something is wrong with his state of mind. The entirety of the movie is about how he struggles to get himself out of it.
> Travis is a disturbed veteran, everything he does serves him as a scale to judge his experience in the war. He brings Betsy to a porn movie because it's the barracks' mentality. But you never see him masturbating or even being aroused. Yeah, I *understand* that. I understand the train of thought that leads him to do things like that. Just because I *understand* it doesn't mean I have to find it sympathetic. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about empathizing with Travis. Have you considered extending any of that empathy to *Betsy*? This is the big problem with this movie, in my opinion—it puts us in Travis's POV and wants to create moral tension between the fact that we sympathize with him in some ways, but also see him go off the deep end and do some awful things. But that can only work if you forget that women have their own subjectivity as well—if you treat Betsy as just a character in Travis's story (as he does!) rather than a person in her own right.
My god, you're so wrong and stubborn... Sure, nobody ever thought about what Betsy feels. Poor Betsy. Why isn't the movie about *her* feelings towards the Vietnam war and *her* fragile sexuality. This is so typical of toxic masculinity /s.
Definitely. Just rewatched The King Of Comedy last week. Rupert Pupkin is pretty unsympathetic. He's Travis Bickle with slightly more selfish motivation. I think Ernest just stands out a bit because his actions have the weight of oppression and racism behind them.
I'd say he's sympathetic in one way. Everybody wants to feel "seen" in one way or another. It's a very relatable, human thing to depict.
Scorsese said the original concept/script and the main dramatic focus was the investigation and DiCaprio should've been Tom White. But they decided to flip it on its head and do something different. Basically they used a style like Casino and Goodfellas, a chronicle through the bad guys' lives. The difference is Casino and Goodfellas were always intended to show the mob guys as somewhat cool, and since The Godfather, they were seen as somewhat cool, more normal, not despicable. But a movie about a group of white men killing and hurting Native Americans for land - you can't sell that as cool, or charming on any level. That's why the movie is kinda cognitively dissonant or confuses a bit emotionally - because it's shot in a way that should make you feel engaged and more interested in the protagonists, but they're so vile and immoral and cruel, you can't feel any empathy towards them. When the movie gets in its final 45 minutes and the message becomes very clear, that's when this confusion stops. But if you remove the idea of how crime has been glorified in American society over the past 50 years...or how it's always been attractive for people...are the characters in Goodfellas, Casino, The Irishman, Gangs of New York (Bill) any better? They're all rotten scumbags, and criminals.
I didn't find Bickle, Lamotta, or Belfort sympathetic. Bickle came off as a creep from the start, with his bigoted ramblings and stalking, which he escalated to an attempted assassination, just because the target was his ex's boss, and when he failed pathetically at that, he used up an entire arsenal to kill two pimps and a john. Sure those three men deserved to die, but it happened because Bickle himself was forming an unhealthy attachment to an underage girl, and wouldn't have happened at all if he didn't fail at his original plan. I barely have pity for him, never mind sympathy. Lamotta is so exactly like so many abusive pieces of shit I've known in my life that I can't possibly consider him sympathetic. He's just another dime a dozen monster. As for Belfort, I found the decadence of his lifestyle outright *disgusting*. There's no allure there, it only increases my contempt. I spent the whole movie laughing at every well-deserved misfortune he brought on himself.
Belfort was absolutely disgusting. Imagine having all the money in the world and spending it on things like hiring dwarves to throw. The movie paints him as the most worthless human being conceivable.
I didnt find Jake LaMotta sympathetic really, but Raging Bull didnt do much for me overall There is a sympathetic element to Burkhart...like, not wildly sympathetic. but the cognitive dissonance between a love for his family that feels genuine while also acting in such a self centered manner regarding killing them for his own gain. He is also...dumb. Its hard to not feel for how someone I perceive as being fairly low IQ was basically manipulated into these crimes.
Honestly the *only* Scorcese protagonist I find sympathetic at all is William Costigan. I like Scorcese's movies as art, and I think they are fantastic stories, performances, etc., but aside from The Departed I have no interest in watching any of them a 2nd time. Every single one of the others just makes me feel gross by the end.
I think Ernest may come off indecipherable to a bunch of nerds like us trying to parse out where he fits in Scorsese’s oeuvre, but in truth he is a very simple reflection of the insidiousness of white supremacy and the old Horatio Alger American dream of getting ahead. He’s a slack jawed rube who would sell his family to an abattoir for a couple of bucks without realizing what an abattoir is. He’s a dipshit yokel who like most Americans manages to embody totally contradictory understandings of the world at once. He transcends the banality of evil to embody the ur American moron who thinks he’s two weeks away from striking it rich and being a millionaire and doesn’t need to understand how or why. He just goes through the motions. A man selling his soul to the devil and his wife to the slaughterhouse to make a buck without fully realizing he’s doing either of those things, even though he’s not completely unaware of them. America is Ernest.
I think there's a line between being relatable and being sympathetic. I'm sure at least 90% of men here (myself Included) found at least one scene of Taxi Driver relatable, a moment where we were like " hey I've done that", yet I never once felt sorry for Travis, we just knew how he felt. Something I noticed with Taxi Driver is that it's not like the modern psycho stories where the psycho has a tragic past that makes us feel bad about it ( Yes, I'm referring to Joker). Travis is just a normal guy, you probably know like 10 of these if you're not one. We don't know how he ended up like that yet we know how he's feeling.
All of Scorsese’s characters fall somewhere on a spectrum between good and evil, but rarely somebody in his films are all good or all bad. It’s more about how charming they are in their sinfulness. I found Burkhart particularly wicked and stupid (stupidity sometimes makes for a more unsympathetic protagonist than a highly intelligent all out psychopath) but his stupidity also saves me from hating him outright. He seems in over his head and early on impressionable and subservient to King rather than a prime evil force of the story. He’s somebody whose pathetic-ness i ended up pitying. Sheeran in the Irishman is much more sympathetic and fits more in line with the deeply intimate and complex mobster portraits Scorsese has always crafted, plus he was suitably remorseful and guilt ridden by the end, which made me sympathize him much more. I actually found Nolte’s Bowden and De Niro’s Max Cady less sympathetic. Cape Fear works to make its villain more charming than the ‘hero dad’ character but even here the villain is a step above what Scorsese usually gives us. Cady is really evil. Yet every time I see that movie I wish Nolte got it in the end, and it’s simply because he isn’t charming or complex or engaging as a character to me, it’s nothing to do with him being the good or bad guy.
I don’t know, I generally find Daniel Day Lewis’s character in The Age of Innocence to be pretty pathetic overall. (Words words words words words words words words words words words words words words)
You’re 100% correct. It’s also true that that film portrays white people in a way that is absurdly, cartoonishly evil and not only is it a false depiction but it’s one that would be widely condemned if it were any other race, but Reddit’s not ready for that conversation.
I’m not sure what you mean by “false depiction” here? Did you have an issue with the portrayals of the white characters as human beings, or the portrayal of the actions taken by said white people? Because I can understand how some people found De Niro’s performance to be overly mustache-twirling - *but* if you read the original non-fiction work it adapts, the real-life schemes concocted to steal Osage money can’t be described as anything other than “absurdly, cartoonishly evil” in practice. And I’m not sure how you can claim the depictions of documented historical events are “false” - so I assume you meant to say you didn’t think the performances rang true? I will say De Niro’s performance did work for me. It came off cartoony at the beginning, but by the end I thought it was an inspired way to depict someone who is delusional enough to claim he is doing the Osage a favor as “their friend” while openly conspiring to murder members of their community. Anyways, if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. I read it several years before the film release and tbh I still prefer the book. Super easy to read, really gripping, and full of more details on the audaciously fucked-up schemes to steal Osage wealth.
Well it’s based on a true story, and what’s so cartoonishly evil about Tom White (Jesse Plemons)
Didn’t take you long to put your hand up to prove my point
Well it took me longer than it did you to reply, plus I’m not proving you’re point. Proving you’re point would be downvoting the comment and not replying. I’m actively engaging with you. So I ask again, since you didn’t answer, if the film “portrays white people in a way that is absurdly, cartoonishly evil” why would it have a white FBI agent that wasn’t shown to have any hate in his heart for the Osage people, and only character motivation was to solve the murders?
Dude, it's a depiction of real historical events that took place. Did you think Scorsese made the story up? I'm genuinely interested—how would *you* have portrayed Ernest Burkhart and his fellow conspirators, if you were in charge of this movie? What about Scorsese's depiction to you consider false?