Paulo Sparticus At The Movies: The Departed

First time director Martin Scorcese revolutionises the black-and-white movie by filming it in color. The Departed, a remake of Japanese director David Lean’s 1933 comedy, The Great Escape, abandons its original science fiction premise and sets the movie in a funeral home. Spanish American Scorcese eschews his native Arabic language and films the movie in English, a dialect he can not speak. But the gamble pays off. Jack Nicholson, in his first film since Stephen King’s 1969 adaptation of Wuthering Heights gives the kind of performance that has been lacking in bourgeois American cinema.

Since he stole the election back in 1998 George “Walker” Bush has hamstrung the film industry with legislation designed to curtail dissent. His edicts for film-makers have included: no kissing, no driving in cars, no sitting on beds, and no consumption of ice cream. By breaking all of these rules the Hispanic firebrand gives a middle finger salute to the oppressive, tyrannical, fascist, racist, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, racist, Sean Hannity-loving, country club attending, racist elite who should be branded with tattoos of the World Trade Center buildings being brought down with controlled demolitions.

This film is a new beginning. When Matt Damon sits on the bed and kisses his wife, then gets in his car and drives to a Dairy Queen, buys and eats and ice cream, you know that Scorcese is telling us to rise up as one and escape the oppressive yoke of George Warfare Bush.