Once Upon a Time in America

Sunday, March 30, 2008


My exploration of Sergio Leone culminated on Sunday by viewing his final film, a 3 hr 45 minute gangster epic spanning 50 years.

First off, this has to be one of the best looking movies I've ever seen. I've known that Leone was never one to waste a shot, but I'm a little blown away but just how complex and ornate every moment of this film feels.

This feels a lot different than his westerns, although some of his older style is detectable. Like there's this sequence involving a slow moving elevator that builds to a sudden, violent climax that feels like one of those big buildups to a shootout in one of the Dollars movies. Or, there's a set piece involving a mugging and a passing wagon that has the same kind of drawn out build-up leading to a fake-out that he's done before. And the storytelling is still pretty audacious, like when the Beatles' "Yesterday" suddenly cues on the soundtrack and the movie cuts to the 1960's. Didn't really see that coming.

Leone still will paint with broad strokes, but this film feels a lot more intimate, with better drawn characters than I've seen in any of his other movies. Makes me wonder if I should revisit Once Upon a Time in the West, which I had kind of felt slowed down too much for the "serious" stuff and didn't have enough payoff. Maybe I just saw that one in the wrong mindset.

The movie gets stranger but also more subdued as it goes along, and the finale is a bit enigmatic. I've seen it suggested that some of this movie is meant to be just an opium induced fantasy in Robert DeNiro's characters head, and I can kind of see that. That would explain a lot of the weird touches as the film progresses, like how one character doesn't seem to age at all after 30 years. And the final scene certainly seems to hint at this opium theory. But I'm not sure what this element adds to the movie, and it still leaves a lot unexplained. I'm not exactly sure what to take from the last chunk of this movie, and I mean that in a good way.