It's a colossal festival of mise-en-scene and editing effects of course. The usual sublime Scorsesian grammar. Everything is used there, slow motion shots, voice-overs, music, it's an exciting and mastered symphony of mise-en-scene. One could draw from it a complete manual for filmmakers short of ideas... The film is partially structured by a voice-over which takes place at the end of the story (or almost...), when Sam Rothstein explodes in his car and remembers his journey in Las Vegas which brought him to this result. There is therefore a meditative, memorial, self-reflexive, tragic form to this narration, which essentially takes place in the past, a bit like in 'The Irishman'.
This elaborate set up is applied to brutally violent and vulgar mafia characters. Like in 'Goodfellas', this is the sometimes difficult part with some Scorsese films, you have to spend two or three hours with extremely unpleasant, pretentious and dangerous characters. Faced with the spectacle of Nicky Santoro beating up someone, Sam Rothstein's disgust is visible, even though he is part of this world. Nicky, staring vacantly behind a smoke screen, is probably a little disgusted with himself, but that's his nature. The moral criticism of the characters is organically integrated into the film itself through their profound, personal and professional failure.
The opening credits created by Saul Bass, perhaps the best ones in the history of cinema, illustrate the Fall as the moral framework of the film, on the sublime St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach. Later, an aerial shot of Nicky Santoro's car driving in the desert to the Theme of Camille by Georges Delerue (taken from Godard's 'Le Mépris') on which a furious battery is then superimposed perfectly defines Scorsese's aesthetic and moral project. We are here at the heart of the Scorsesian desire to mix at the highest point of fusion the sublime and the abject, the sacred and the profane.
This elaborate set up is applied to brutally violent and vulgar mafia characters. Like in 'Goodfellas', this is the sometimes difficult part with some Scorsese films, you have to spend two or three hours with extremely unpleasant, pretentious and dangerous characters. Faced with the spectacle of Nicky Santoro beating up someone, Sam Rothstein's disgust is visible, even though he is part of this world. Nicky, staring vacantly behind a smoke screen, is probably a little disgusted with himself, but that's his nature. The moral criticism of the characters is organically integrated into the film itself through their profound, personal and professional failure.
The opening credits created by Saul Bass, perhaps the best ones in the history of cinema, illustrate the Fall as the moral framework of the film, on the sublime St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach. Later, an aerial shot of Nicky Santoro's car driving in the desert to the Theme of Camille by Georges Delerue (taken from Godard's 'Le Mépris') on which a furious battery is then superimposed perfectly defines Scorsese's aesthetic and moral project. We are here at the heart of the Scorsesian desire to mix at the highest point of fusion the sublime and the abject, the sacred and the profane.