DEATH BE NOT PROUD
THE BACKBEAT TO MARTIN SCORSESE’S THE IRISHMAN is a lulling road trip, taken by Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) with his boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and their wives, sometime in 1975. They’re headed to a family wedding, but there will be business to attend to, ugly business, even if their chitchat and carping could be heard in any of a million such cars where grandpa rules apply (here, no smoking) and rest stops are legion.
Framing the trip, and narrating Frank’s rise as a mercenary for the mob and a right-hand man to Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino with chummy showmanship), is… Frank, aged and wheelchair-bound in an old folks’ home, geriatrically affable, speaking as if from beyond the grave, or at least beyond the graves of all those he has outlived (or bumped off). But amidst the film’s camaraderie and beatdowns and killings and comical misunderstandings and bits of mafia business, the rhythm of the road—solidified in the toggling title credit (i heard/road/you/road/paint houses)—keeps returning, later getting a fatalistic sonic counterpart in the score’s dirty-bluesy drum scarified by an ever-deepening cello, like scraping the bottom of life.
Frank’s biography traces a variation on a respected 20th-century arc of achievement: GI serving in World War II, truck driver working his way up, leadership role in the Teamsters, proud father to a family of five, and pillar of, Scorsese’s vividly illustrated, largely anecdotal 209-minute movie has a way of ably simulating the actual passage of any life, in skipping nimbly from station to station in Frank’s, usually through the encounters and relationships that comprise his profession: cruising through the years yet nearing twilight before you know it, and recalled equally in landmark events and episodes from the routine that fills the workday.
