The Irish­man

You’ve seen it mean and mohawked; rag­ing and roulet­ted. You’ve seen it clean-cut and cut up; burnt, bloody and bedev­illed. You’ve seen it mad-eyed and mon­o­cled; black-and-white and black-and-blue. You’ve seen it shark-like and stoned; Mary Shel­ley-ed and sil­ver-lined. But you haven’t seen Robert De Niro’s face quite like this.

In Mar­tin Scorsese’s The Irish­man, one of the best mugs in the busi­ness is giv­en a high-grade makeover cour­tesy of VFX super­vi­sor Pablo Hel­man and his team at Indus­tri­al Light & Mag­ic. De Niro stars as Irish-Amer­i­can labour union offi­cial and part-time con­tract killer Frank Sheer­an, whose deal­ings with noto­ri­ous Penn­syl­van­ian crime boss Rus­sell Bufali­no (Joe Pesci, act­ing like he’s nev­er been away) are recount­ed here in exten­sive flash­back, requir­ing the 76-year-old actor to play the same char­ac­ter in his late twen­ties, mid fifties and ear­ly eight­ies. We’ve always known Bobby’s got range, but this is some­thing else entirely.

Hol­ly­wood has been dab­bling with this tech­nique for some time now, with mixed results achieved by ear­ly adopters X‑Men: The Last Stand, The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton and Tron: Lega­cy. (Inci­den­tal­ly, De Niro has gone under the dig­i­tal knife once before, while squar­ing off against Sylvester Stallone’s rival Pitts­burgh brawler in 2013’s low-cal-Rocky twofer, Grudge Match.) But the hype sur­round­ing Scorsese’s long-await­ed return to the mob movie fold, cou­pled with his rep­u­ta­tion both as a staunch cus­to­di­an of cin­e­ma cul­ture and an uncom­pro­mis­ing tra­di­tion­al­ist, has placed this cut­ting-edge youthi­fi­ca­tion process under increased scrutiny.

Scors­ese has even spo­ken of his own ini­tial skep­ti­cism, the direc­tor going so far as to reen­act the Christ­mas par­ty scene from Good­fel­las – orig­i­nal­ly filmed when De Niro was 47 – in order to con­vince the cast, crew and him­self. The exper­i­ment worked, but Scors­ese wasn’t ful­ly sat­is­fied. He knows as well as any­one that the tech­nol­o­gy, irre­spec­tive of any advances made since The Irish­man went into devel­op­ment back in 2007, will nev­er com­plete­ly fool an audi­ence – espe­cial­ly one already well acquaint­ed with the pri­ma­ry test subject.

It bears repeat­ing that De Niro’s face has been a fix­ture of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma for more than half a cen­tu­ry. Down the years we’ve become inti­mate­ly famil­iar with those expres­sive chest­nut eyes, and know exact­ly how it feels to be fixed by that stern, silent glare. We know that broad, squin­ty smile; that unmis­tak­able, much-mim­ic­ked frown. Hell, I prob­a­bly know that mole bet­ter than half my extend­ed family.

The point is, we’ve wit­nessed De Niro in his irre­press­ible prime, and watched him grow old grad­u­al­ly and grace­ful­ly for the most part (cf Dirty Grand­pa). The real ques­tion as far as the The Irish­man is con­cerned is not whether it’s pos­si­ble to make him look young again but whether he can still act young. Due to its self-reflec­tive nar­ra­tive struc­ture, we spend a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of The Irishman’s near 200-minute run­time care­ful­ly study­ing De Niro’s de-aged face – skin smoothed, hair­line restored, eyes turned a bril­liant shade of blue – and the expe­ri­ence is at once poignant and uncan­ny in unex­pect­ed ways.

De Niro remains a fine actor, and it’s might­i­ly impres­sive to see him car­ry such a heavy dra­mat­ic load look­ing, mov­ing and sound­ing like a man half his actu­al age. But there’s no get­ting around the fact that he’s not the live-wire pres­ence he once was. Still, the grim inevitabil­i­ty of Sheeran’s drawn-out demise is by no means intend­ed as an anal­o­gy for De Niro’s late-career malaise. This immac­u­late­ly-craft­ed tale of pow­er, cor­rup­tion and lies, told from the per­spec­tive of an elder­ly, less-than-reli­able nar­ra­tor reck­on­ing with a life­time of regrets, speaks to a greater uni­ver­sal truth.

What­ev­er path we choose in life – regard­less of our suc­cess­es and fail­ures – we all meet the same fate, one way or anoth­er. It doesn’t mat­ter who you are: as long as you’re breath­ing you’re afraid of dying. See­ing De Niro mirac­u­lous­ly returned to a state of youth­ful vigour not only brings back mem­o­ries of all those sen­sa­tion­al moments in Mean Streets, The God­fa­ther: Part II, Taxi Dri­ver, The Deer Hunter, Rag­ing Bull, The King of Com­e­dy, Good­fel­las et al, it serves as a sober­ing reminder of our own mortality.

Per Charles Brandt’s 2004 biog­ra­phy ​‘I Heard You Paint Hous­es’ (mob speak for solic­it­ing some­one to car­ry out a hit) and Steven Zaillian’s adapt­ed screen­play, Sheer­an was a vet­er­an of World War Two, a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the Team­sters union, a hus­band and a father. He claimed to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the slaugh­ter of Ger­man POWs, and that he knew who real­ly shot JFK. Yet his lega­cy is ulti­mate­ly defined by his rela­tion­ship to union pres­i­dent Jim­my Hof­fa (Al Paci­no, served with an extra scoop of gus­to), whose dis­ap­pear­ance in August 1975 Sheer­an is wide­ly believed to have been respon­si­ble for.

When De Niro is gone, it won’t feel real­ly like it because we’ll still have Travis Bick­le and Jake LaM­ot­ta and Rupert Pup­kin and the rest. Sheer­an, mean­while, hav­ing lived long enough to see him­self become the vil­lain, will con­tin­ue to live on in infamy. Some­times the grave is the only place a man can go to find solace. The exis­ten­tial fear at the heart of The Irish­man, then, is not of grow­ing old or being for­got­ten, but of not being allowed to die.