The Departed

It’s a well-known – if only tacitly acknowledged – fact that beneath every tough-as-nails, big-talking, machismo-oozing gangster flick is a Freudian saga of sublimated sexuality, Oedipal crises and castration anxiety just begging to come out. What makes The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s remake of the Hong Kong action juggernaut Infernal Affairs (2002), so brilliant is that it actually admits this subtext; in fact, the film damn near foregrounds it. Yeah, yeah, in telling the parallel and intersecting stories of two undercover “rats” – one spying on an Irish mob boss for the Massachussets State Police, one spying on the “Staties” for the mobsters – The Departed is at surface level what the critics are calling a “tale of questionable loyalties and blurring identities” (All Movie Guide). But fuck that. This is a movie about male repression, pure and simple.

Of course, that interpretation might come as a bitter pill for more literally-inclined fans of Scorsese’s brand of macho cops’n'crooks epics to swallow – because if nothing else, The Departed is a return to the Martin Scorsese of Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995) and Mean Streets (1973), a side of the director whose “comeback” they’ve been awaiting since the beginning of his half-decade detour into documentary (The Blues, 2003, and No Direction Home, 2005), historical fiction (Gangs of New York, 2002) and prestige “Old Hollywood” biography (The Aviator, 2004). But Scorsese’s latest opus exudes a psychosexual self-consciousness (not to mention a thoroughly projected self-confidence) which none of those earlier films possessed. Its tale of two men infiltrating the classic mirror-image institutions of patriarchal law – the police force and the crime underworld – teems with repressed drives, tensions and the affected bluster of masculinity. The undercover cop, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), pops pills to deal with the strain of pretending to be someone he’s not; the mob informer, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), can’t get it up. Even the apparently sexually prodigious, 70-year-old mob boss himself (Jack Nicholson, who in one scene has a hooker snort coke off another one’s ass before, presumably, screwing both of them), is later revealed to be shooting blanks.

Is it any wonder that the one female character worth mentioning, played by relative newcomer Vera Farmiga (Breaking and Entering, 2006), is a female psychiatrist who tries to get both Billy and Colin to open up about their feelings – and does so only by sleeping with them? Or that Nicholson’s Frank Costello, surely his most eccentric and prototypically “Jack” character in years, seems to conceive of his crime syndicate at least partially as an Oedipal war against the symbolic “Father” of the Irish Catholic Church? Or, while we’re on the subject of Oedipus, that Costello’s relationship with Colin is like that of father and son? I would also mention the scene where Costello meets his son-figure in a porno theatre (that traditional enclave of anonymous masculine desires and sublimated sexuality), feigns masturbation in the seat in front of him, then whirls around and whips a huge, black dildo out of his trenchcoat, but I think I’ve already made my case.

Admittedly, this being Oscar season, any talk of The Departed would be lacking (oops, Freud again) without at least a little speculation about whether Scorsese will be coming home with that long-denied statue; so, for the time being, I’ll let my psychoanalysis rest. The fact is, while The Departed is a hell of an entertaining movie (and not just for the reasons enumerated above), even a virtuosic one, a testament to its director’s long-honed skills as a craftsman, its return to the situations and subject matter of Scorsese’s “classic work” does not necessarily make it of the same calibre. If Scorsese wins this year, it will only be because the Academy knows his time to win has long passed.

Where the film most excels, instead, is in its lead performances: DiCaprio’s Costigan, while lacking the element of surprise which made his Aviator performance so striking (“wait, that Titanic kid can act?”), is convincing both as a cocky hood and as an actor rapidly deteriorating into his role. Nicholson, though drawing as much criticism as begrudging praise for his over-the-top Costello – apparently that dick shot was a gag too far – goes so over-the-top he comes back under again; he towers over the rest of the cast in presence alone, and for children of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) like myself, it’s magnetizing to watch. Damon is charming as usual, but his performance, for me, is most commendable in the sense that it adds up to one big phallic symbol: Colin’s posture, giving the appearance of a man in uniform whether he’s dressed in policeman blue, business attire or just boxers and a T-shirt, is as erect as his member is not, as false as his perpetually assumed identity. As for the Oscar-nominated Mark Wahlberg, his performance is all bravado and no depth, his supporting actor nod explicable only if the Academy just couldn’t resist playing the scene where Martin Sheen says “you’re rising fast” and he says “yeah, like a 12-year-old’s dick” at the awards ceremony.

In the end, The Departed, like most good films, is what you make of it. If you’re one of those folks who eagerly awaited Scorsese’s return to the crime drama, you’ll probably love it. If you just can’t get past the fact that one of the central characters here twitches like an overstuffed rat and brandishes a gigantic strap-on, you might hate it. But if you take the
penis jokes and the Freudian commentary not as distractions to the plot, but as the very texture and fabric of the film’s commentary, it’s a whole different movie. Just trust me on that.

The Departed is available on DVD in a staggering five different versions: bare-bones full-screen, bare-bones widescreen, HD, Blu-Ray, and the inevitable two-disc special edition. I don’t have one of those newfangled high-definition players (hell, my shitty combination TV/DVD just died last week), and can’t personally vouch for the special features on the two-disc edition. But the copy I watched included a whopping two “features,” and those were French and Spanish subtitles and audio tracks (though I’ll admit the prospect of hearing Marky Mark say “like a 12-year-old’s dick” in two foreign languages is a tough one to resist). So, if you’re the feature-fetishizing type, you’ll probably be better served by the deluxe package, which includes additional scenes introduced by Scorsese, a feature-length Turner Classic Movies profile on the director, a profile on the “real-life gangster behind Jack Nicholson’s character” (did he pack a 10″ dildo, too?), and a featurette on “how Little Italy’s crime and violence influence Scorsese’s work.” Oh, and a theatrical trailer. Am I the only one who actually likes to watch those?

- Zach Hoskins

The Departed Official Site (and MySpace!)
IMDb Listing
Buy the DVD from Amazon