I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I have a short list of filmmakers whose films I try to see at the first opportunity, often the first night they open near me if circumstances allow. One of the names on my own list is Martin Scorsese and I doubt I'm alone in this. Marty is some kind of living icon of cinephilia these days, due to his work on film preservation and outreach. Even if he never made another film and confined himself to these tasks, he would be one of the most important and revered people in film.
Marty and I have been having a bit of a falling out in recent years. I hated his Oscar-winner, The Departed, and only half-liked Shutter Island, which is ridiculous but lovely. I did love Hugo, but I haven't felt the urge to watch it again. One thing that has really bothered me in recent years about Scorsese is the obnoxious way his films push women to the margins in favor of an aggressive masculinity. That's a strain of his filmmaking that really comes to the fore in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), a film that wallows in dude-bro masculinity and its misogynistic dark side. It's a tumescent film that comes to the screen with its rampant cock pointing straight at the audience. It then proceeds to stroke it furiously for the next three hours(!) before dousing them, bukkake-like in the jizz of its own self-indulgence.
Posts
