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Originally Posted by demonrail666

I can't disagree with any of that, but somehow still like it - even more after watching it a few times. Not saying it's a grower just that I think I've ended up focusing on the positives (DDL and the basic story) rather than the cons (pretty much everything else).

“pretty much everything else” ha ha ha

yeah i didnt hate it, sorry if i gave that impression. it’s just that with scorsese one expects MORE. much more. here the soufflé collapsed for sure but it was still edible.

the basic story is kind of what i had a problem with. they cram too much in too short a time so that everything had to be abbreviated. there was no delving into character really. so they add the voiceovers to help make sense etc. but not really. first it makes you think you’re witnessing some sort of montecristo revenge. or some sort of popular uprising. or some sort of struggle. but then it turns out that no! it’s not about them at all. time makes their struggle futile. which is... a great point i suppose but the way it gets torn down after such a huge buildup is... it makes the story unclear.

the period reconstruction was great—even though the thing mixes historical events from various different decades in a contrived hodgepodge, the production i thought was pretty fucking great. maybe except for the digital elephant ha ha ha. but yeah it was a glorious thing to see.

artistically i think maybe the best thing that came out of that movie was there will be blood— because without bill the butcher maybe there would have been no daniel plainview a few years later, you think? it’s a continuation of the type, in a way. a fortunate typecasting.

the other thing that probably derived from it was the embrace of the filth of the past, not done for comedy. a tv show like “deadwood” where people are always trudging through the muck or end up in the belly of wu’s pigs probably owed something to gangs of new york as well. i’m sure there have been other depictions historical filth but it’s usually done for comedy like it was in “the visitors” (the french version, with jean reno, about the medievals who travel in time).

scorsese is always important, his work is serious even when he fails or repeats itself. so yeah i’d rewatch this one some day to catch some new detail or another. i’ll also rewatch “casino” some day.

btw i think di caprio worked much better in both “wolf of wall street” (great) and “the aviator” where you could actually believe his face was that of the character. here... really hard to see him as a street tough.