{"id":2748,"date":"2002-12-26T13:50:31","date_gmt":"2002-12-26T13:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=505"},"modified":"2002-12-26T13:50:31","modified_gmt":"2002-12-26T13:50:31","slug":"gangs-of-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2748","title":{"rendered":"GANGS OF NEW YORK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saw \u0091Gangs of New York\u0092 over the holiday; it was a \u0091boy\u0092s night\u0092 as my mom and TG spent Christmas Eve cleaning up the mess (to be fair, I\u0092d cooked, and the boys had set up); and we wanted to go see something TG wouldn\u0092t kill me for seeing without her, so picked that.
\nFirst, I\u0092ll refer you to the post<\/a> below. In keeping with the theme of the film, I\u0092m going to go buy a Bowie knife and start bringing it to theaters; when I ask people to be quiet the third or fourth time, I\u0092ll ostentatiously start cleaning my nails with it. I cannot believe that a bunch of middle-aged, middle-class purportedly cultured people have such a weak grasp on elementary courtesy.
\nSecond, why do people being their six and eight-year old kids to moves that are this gratuitously violent?? And I\u0092m not talking Jackie Chan or even \u0091Matrix\u0092 \u0096 type \u0091cartoon\u0092 violence. Any movie that has a speech by a major character about how they cut out their own eye as penance might just be a movie that the kiddies could stay home from, don\u0092tcha think? We\u0092ve decided that Littlest Guy (at six) is too young to see LotR yet, and I don\u0092t think that\u0092s a bad idea. The talkative couple in front of us (as opposed to the talkative pair of ladies to our right and the talkative couple behind us) had brought their son who looked to be LG\u0092s age and he watched the gore with rapt fascination.
\nNow, the movie.
\nIt wasn\u0092t very good.
\nIt wasn\u0092t very good for three reasons: First, because it was waay too slow and self-important. Every scene seemed padded, like it had 5% of extra footage in the beginning and 10% on the end. And the sense of pace or orchestration just didn\u0092t come across to us. Second, because the plot and theme placed too much emphasis on the stereotypical elements (will he seek revenge or accept the fatherly love of his true father’s killer?) and not enough on the more complex human ones. And finally, because the violence, unlike the violence in Goodfellas or Casino didn\u0092t serve the story, it seemed rather like the story was there to set up the violence.
\nBut as a window into history, it was great. I’ll note that the real 19th century gang wars were more like brawls than the medieval melees, complete with edged weapons, that this movie suggests. And from the accounts I\u0092ve read, the Draft Riots were more narrowly focused on African Americans. But the \u0091feel\u0092 of the film for the look and presence of the streets and crowds was worth the price of admission (if you have the stomach for it).
\nThe racism of the nativists against the immigrants\u0085in this case the Irish\u0085was palpable, and it was fun to watch the political horsetrading that Boss Tweed engaged in as he tried to corral the Irish vote. Someday, I\u0092d love to see a great movie about a political boss, and about the low-level politics\u0085of licenses, jobs, and favors, that went into it. All the King’s Men<\/A> is the most recent that I can think of. I\u0092d love to see another.
\nI\u0092m ruminating on machine politics, and will try and put something together on it. Overall, I\u0092m wondering if breaking the back of the political machines has been a totally good thing\u0085and if in fact, we\u0092ve really done it.
\nBut the reason to see the movie is the imagery and language (and to a lesser degree, for Daniel Day-Lewis). There is a book\u0085Evidence<\/A>, by Luc Sante \u0096 that had the same kind of feeling of a window into the unsanitized past.
\nIt\u0092s also provoking further thoughts on race, which has been much discussed here and in the balance of the Blogoverse.
\nNow I just need to get some more time\u0085<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saw \u0091Gangs of New York\u0092 over the holiday; it was a \u0091boy\u0092s night\u0092 as my mom and TG spent Christmas Eve cleaning up the mess (to be fair, I\u0092d cooked, and the boys had set up); and we wanted to go see something TG wouldn\u0092t kill me for seeing without her, so picked that. First, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}