Dear Ross -
The most interesting and in-depth piece on GANGS OF NEW YORK I have seen so
far is by Alain Masson in POSITIF no 504, Feb 2003, pp. 6-8. A very dense
and lucid 3 pages. He begins by evoking and describing a number of the
visual strategies of the film - particularly shots that are in certain ways
illegible or strange - too short, or which play out in unexpected ways (he
cleverly asks: 'does anyone have the wound you expected?'), or sudden camera
movements 'into' nothing in particular. "The principal effect of these
devices", he writes" "is to separate the action from from its fulfillment in
the narrative: the more vivid it is, the less clear it is".
From this, Masson works up to his theme: chaos. And here his insight is very
close to your own. "One refinds here the antithesis proposed by RAGING BULL
between the brutality of the individual and the violence that society
organises around him". And later: "His events are only the monstrous,
spectacular exaggeration of the violence imposed by the State upon an
organic, religious and ethnic brutality". He proposes that Scorsese
expresses nostalgia for the "lively confusion" of individual violence. The
State, on the other hand, is "ill founded" since its "violence is less
natural". Masson rightly calls this a "rude lesson" on the nature of chaos.
Masson's piece hinges on the idea that such an analysis (I have provided an
indication of only a few of its moves) helps us to properly understand the
final shot of contemporary New York. Personally, I still have problems
taking this shot at face value, combined with the U2 song, because this coda
seems so devoid of either irony or critique! In fact, the ending disgusted
me. 'These are the hands that built America' offered as a triumphant rock
anthem, indeed !!
Adrian
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