Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Jazz Inmate (R) on June 05, 2007 at 11:07:45

In Reply to: RE: I don't "get" Scorsese posted by nyctc7@yahoo.com on June 03, 2007 at 07:34:16

Scorcese's thesis for much of his work was laid out at the beginning of Mean Streets in his own voice as the narrator:

"You don't make up for your sins in a church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullsh*t and you know it..."

The dialogue between Kietel and the voice of Scorcese continue, "Okay, I just come out of confession, right? Right. And the priest gives me the usual penance right, 10 Hail Mary's, 10 Our Father's, 10 whatever. Now, you know that next week I'm gonna come back and he's gonna just give me another 10 Hail Mary's and another 10 Our Father's and…I mean, you know how I feel about that shit. Those things, they don't mean anything to me; they're just words. Now that may be okay for the others, but it just doesn't work for me. I mean, I do something wrong I just want to pay for it my way. So, I do my own penance for my own sins. What do you say, huh?"

"It's all bullshit except the pain, right? The pain of hell, the burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite, and you don't f*ck around with the infinite. There's no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand, the kind you can feel in your heart. Your soul, the spiritual side, and you know the worse of the two is the spiritual."

So, armed with this philosophy, Scorcese sets about exploring sin and pain, honor, redemption and other important themes. He uses characters on the outskirts of societal norms as vehicles to drive the audience where he wants them to go. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy, Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull all were supposed to teach us something about society and something about ourselves.
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"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)