Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
11/13/11
Nobody
sets out to be a monster. It’s not generally anyone’s initial goal
in life to crush all who dare oppose them, to cut themselves off from all
normal human companionship or to accumulate power at the expense of all
else. These are the things that sometimes happen along the way, particularly
to those who end up accomplishing “great” things, like J. Edgar Hoover,
the founder of the modern FBI. There’s no question that his drive
to modernize American law enforcement was the cornerstone of all we now
believe about the way crimes should be investigated, and he build the small
potatoes, deeply political Bureau of Investigations into a law enforcement
behemoth that has helped to keep people safe for generations. There’s
also no question that he abused power in the way almost everyone who ever
gains too much of it does, picking and choosing America’s “enemies” and
using the tools at his disposal against them. Rumors have swirled
for years that he was also a world-class hypocrite, using rumors (and sometimes
truths) of homosexuality against his opponents when he may in fact have
been gay himself. All of the above are components of Clint Eastwood’s
new film J. Edgar, but it’s the last one that is its driving force:
Hoover (as brilliantly played by Leonardo DiCaprio), it contends, was driven
by an appalling childhood and a need to deny what he really was even to
himself that led him to strive both for greatness and adulation at the
expense of everyone in his path. It’s slow to get rolling, but once
it does, this is an unusually compelling historical biopic, one that mourns
the lost happiness of generations who lived their lives in the closet at
the same time it paints a fascinating portrait of the birth of modern law
enforcement.
The
aging J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) dictates his autobiography to
a series of underlings while dealing with present-day crises with the help
of his faithful secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and his loyal right-hand
Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). As the timeline shifts between the present,
the past he wants the world to know and the past he keeps locked away in
his head, we see how his ruthless, suffocating mother Annie (Judi Dench)
raised the sexually confused John Edgar to be relentlessly attentive to
detail, as in his project to help organize the filing system of the Library
of Congress before joining the Bureau of Investigations. In 1919,
his boss Mitchell Palmer (Geoff Pierson) was one of nine important Americans
targeted by Communist bombs, and the ambitious Hoover was put in charge
of a task force to get to the bottom of the radical menace. From
the beginning, he was drawn to two things: emerging forensic sciences
that were alien to most law enforcement bodies and the notion that knowing
a man’s beliefs could tell you if he was dangerous or not. When his
methods proved controversial, it was Palmer who paid with his job and Hoover
who took over with broad new power to select the agents of his Federal
Bureau in his own image. But it’s not a commitment to career over
family or a spotless educational background that draws him to Tolson:
no, it’s something more than that. The two men begin a chaste, decades-long
romance built on daily dinners and relentless dedication to the battle
against communism, the mafia and then finally civil right reform and the
march of history that’s passed them by. Clyde’s passion is for the
man more than the cause, but for J. Edgar’s purposes, the world never loves
him enough as he ruthlessly claims all credit for himself and battles everyone
who dares challenge him, particularly Robert Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan).
But no one lives forever, and soon the battle is over his legacy:
how can Hoover cement the way the future will remember him when he never
really understood himself?
Was
J. Edgar Hoover gay? If J. Edgar is to be believed, it’s very
possible he couldn’t have answered that question any better than we can.
The circumstantial evidence is certainly there in the form of his lifelong
relationship with Tolson, to whom Hoover left his estate after his death,
and who accepted the flag presented at his state funeral. And there
have been persistent, unsubstantiated rumors that he was also a cross-dresser
(handled briefly and powerfully here in one of the movie’s best scenes).
But what writer Dustin Lance Black (an Oscar winner for Milk)
does so effectively here is not so much present a case for this argument
(the movie accepts it as fact), but instead make the case that, if true,
it would certainly explain a lot. He’s crafted a really first-rate
psychological portrait of how repression expresses itself as ambition,
and you’d have to really be someone who makes regular pilgrimages to spit
on Hoover’s grave not to feel at least a little empathy for his wonderfully
fleshed-out characterization.
A big
reason for that is DiCaprio, who’s at the absolute peak of his formidable
powers. Yes, the makeup that allows him to toggle back and forth
through 50-plus years of Hoover’s life is amazing (seriously, it may be
the best old age makeup I’ve ever seen in a movie), but just as impressive
is the way he alters his body language to take us not just through all
the health stages of a man’s life, but also the arc of his hopes and the
way his stature diminishes as his fate locks into place. As written,
it’s a bravura role, and he makes the most of it, making us feel every
bit of the emotional torment of his social awkwardness, pining for a love
he can never have and the drive to replace it with success he can never
quite achieve because the bar he sets for himself is simply too high.
“The people” can never love anyone the way a person could.
The
three actors who share key relationships with him are also great.
Hammer does a great job building on his breakout performance in The
Social Network, completing the rare movie unrequited couple where I
felt equally for both partners. I loved how he lets you see over
and over that the Hoover in his mind is a better man than the real one,
and his heart breaks over and over as he’s let down by the things his true
love does in part because they can never be together. And while the
Tolson makeup isn’t particularly good, his body language as an old man,
particularly after suffering a stroke, is remarkable. Watts also
ages flawlessly, and I really liked her relentless devoted severity as
Gandy, particularly the way it cracks in one key scene where Hoover’s rage
at Martin Luther King Jr. reduces him to an insanely petty and foolish
attempt to blackmail him into refusing the Nobel Peace Prize. And
then there’s Dench, who can wither a human soul like no other actress,
and creates one of the all-time great Bad Movie Mothers: a single
speech about how she’d rather her son be dead than gay simply ends all
possibility that young Edgar could ever think of himself as anything other
than straight, no matter how much all evidence pointed in the opposite
direction.
The
film’s other historical performances are hit-and-miss, with Josh Lucas
crafting a wonderfully quiet and broken Charles Lindberg while Donovan
gets caught in that quagmire the Kennedy accent presents for actors trying
to play them convincingly. As is often the case in historical epics
of this stature, familiar actors flash by in the most fleeting cameos,
and it’s funny to see Gerald MacRaney and Robert Picardo utter a single
line each in uncredited appearances in the same courthouse scene.
I often
think it’s best to have an Old School director on this sort of project
to mute the crazed salaciousness with which it could be handled, and of
course Eastwood built the Old School. He skillfully embraces the
modern structural flourishes of Black’s script, getting so much added poignancy
out of the relentless contrast between young and old, past and present,
fact and speculation. And, yes, he does allow scenes to proceed at
their own pace, which is an asset once the story gets rolling, less so
in the early going, when I’ll freely admit to getting a bit heavy-eyed.
In fact, it’s only J. Edgar’s inability to hit the ground running
that keeps me from awarding it that last half-star: at its best,
this is a truly great movie, but at its worst, it does test one’s patience
waiting to get to the good stuff.
While
I’m interested in history, I wouldn’t call myself a buff, but for those
who’re fans of the saga of 20th Century Law enforcement, J. Edgar
is also a nice addition to the subgenre that includes Zodiac
and Public Enemies. Certainly Edgar
has a very specific explanation for that surprising end credit crawl on
Enemies about Melvin Purvis leaving the FBI so soon after the death
of John Dillinger. But whether you’re interested in the history,
the psychology or simply the high level of acting, J. Edgar is a
great and illuminating biopic… as long as you’re willing to wait out the
slow patches. |
