THE DEPARTED is part of 21st-century Martin Scorsese retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image
THE DEPARTED (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, December 17, $15, 7:00
Series runs December 16-30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Queens-born auteur Martin Scorsese changed the face of independent film in the 1970s with such hard-hitting dramas as Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Taxi Driver, then proceeded to expand the notion of cinema as art with such 1980s and 1990s pictures as The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, and After Hours. His more recent output, however, has been vastly overrated, as evidenced by the first part of the Queens-based Museum of the Moving Image retrospective “Martin Scorsese in the 21st Century,” being held December 16-30 in conjunction with the release of the director’s latest film, Silence, which stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, and Liam Neeson. (The series accompanies the exhibition “Martin Scorsese,” a look at Scorsese’s career divided into Family, Brothers, Men and Women, Lonely Heroes, New York, Cinephile, Cinematography, Editing, and Music.) Scorsese’s best film of the new century just might be 2006’s The Departed, based on Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s awesome 2000 hit, Infernal Affairs. The relatively faithful remake moves the relentless action and intrigue from Hong Kong to the mean streets of Boston, where it is hard to tell cop from criminal. Just out of the academy, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) rises quickly to detective in the Special Investigations Unit, but he’s actually in cahoots with master crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (an excellent Leonardo DiCaprio), training to become a cop, is sent deep undercover (including a prison stint) to infiltrate Costello’s gang, with only Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Dignam (a very funny and foul-mouthed Mark Wahlberg) aware of the secret mission.
Sullivan and Costigan are like opposite sides of the same persona; in between them stands Costello — and Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a psychiatrist who is in a relationship with one and is doctor to the other. As both the cops and the criminals search desperately for their respective rats, no one can trust each other, leading to lots of blood and a spectacular finale. Nicholson has a field day as the aging gangster, chewing up mounds of scenery in his first film with Scorsese, who returned to peak form with his best work since 1990’s Goodfellas. The film was nominated for five Oscars, winning four, for Best Director, Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), Best Adapted Screenplay (William Monahan), and Best Picture, while Wahlberg was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The Departed is screening December 17 at 7:00 in the museum’s Redstone Theater. The series opens December 16 with the bombastic Gangs of New York and continues through December 30 with Shutter Island, the disappointing Howard Hughes flick The Aviator, and the good but overrated films The Wolf of Wall Street and Hugo in 3-D.