REVIEW BY LEE SUSTAR
Gangs of New York
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan
With Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Jim Broadbent and Cameron Diaz
At major cinemas
The events of the first week of July 1863 in America — from the Civil War's Battle of Gettysburg to the New York City "draft riots" just days later — were among the most decisive days in US. history.
This explosive combination of slavery, war, racism, immigration and class should be the ideal subject for an epic film. Director Martin Scorsese should have the talent and experience to pull it off.
Unfortunately, Scorsese's ultra-hyped Gangs of New York is a failure. Worse, it reinforces reactionary myths about the Civil War and revives terrible racist stereotypes from the dustbin of Hollywood history.
Leaving aside the movie's many historical distortions, the plot is an utterly predictable revenge tale in which a young Irish Catholic named Amsterdam (played by Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio) is determined to bring down the murderer of his father, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson).
For all its spectacle and technical prowess, the film is two-dimensional, with even important characters left undeveloped. Cameron Diaz, who plays Amsterdam's love interest Jenny Everdeane, suddenly morphs from a hard-edged pick-pocket and prostitute into a self-sacrificing defender of her fellow Irish Catholics.
The only character who makes this film watchable is the murderer — Bill "the Butcher" Cutting, gang leader of the Protestant "native Americans" who terrorise Irish Catholic immigrants into submission as they pour into New York City's old Five Points neighbourhood.
Brilliantly played by Daniel Day-Lewis, Bill the Butcher captures the essence of the immigrant-bashing, racist, America-first politics that you can still hear today in right-wing Republican Trent Lott's speeches. Bill spits vicious insults at the Irish, at Catholics and blacks — anyone who doesn't fit into his ideal Protestant America. Yet, like immigrant-bashers throughout US history, Bill doesn't let his hatred for Irish Catholics get in the way of making money off their backs.
Bill's closest collaborator is the head of the Democratic Party machine, William "Boss" Tweed (played by Jim Broadbent in the only other standout performance). Tweed shares the Butcher's contempt for the Irish — only he sees political advantage in herding them off the boat and into the voting booths.
Unfortunately, these performances are overwhelmed by the sheer bloat of the 165-minute film. And the film's historical insights are lost in what is at best confusion and at worst an apology for racism.
The film accurately portrays the mass attacks on government offices and mansions, as workers and the poor showed their outrage at the fact that the wealthy could purchase exemption from conscription. Yet the systematic lynching of blacks during the riot is seen as a tragic sideshow — even though, of the 110 people who died in the riot, the vast majority were African Americans.
Nor is there anything to suggest the fact that powerful New York Democratic Party businessmen supported the South in the Civil War and stirred up popular hatred of blacks — or that 25,000 New Yorkers volunteered to fight for the North anyway.
The omissions might have been tolerable had black characters been added to the film — former slaves or abolitionists, for example — who could have highlighted the contradictions of a race riot breaking out in a Northern city amid the Civil War. But African Americans in Gangs of New York have few lines and barely register as characters.
Little better is Scorsese's stereotypical portrayal of the Chinese as silent and inscrutable. (There were only a handful of Chinese people in 1860s New York, but Scorsese depicts them as a large community.)
Overall, the film comes dangerously close to endorsing the argument made by some of its characters — that Irish Catholics and whites generally were being drafted to fight and die in a war in which they had no stake.
For a more accurate — as well as more entertaining and inspiring — film about the American Civil War, rent a copy of Glory, the powerful 1989 movie about African-American troops in the North's army. And for a portrayal of the bitter experiences of Irish immigrant workers in the late 1800s, get the 1970 film The Molly Maguires out on video. Those interested in the history behind the events in Gangs of New York should seek out Iver Bernstein's book, The New York City Draft Riots.
Of course, a popular Hollywood film can't be expected to be historically accurate. The problem is that the movie focuses on historical detail while mostly ignoring the forces that shaped that history. And for its pretensions to be an epic, Gangs of New York just doesn't make it as entertainment, either.
[From Socialist Worker, newspaper of the US International Socialist Organization. Visit .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, February 26, 2003.
Visit the