At some point during The Departed's long and jarring ending, you might think to yourself, "This reminds me of Hamlet." Okay, maybe that was just me, but I think there's something to the Shakespeare comparison. There's no denying that the movie is a tragedy; after all, basically everybody dies. But it's more than that. The movie may be thickly and carefully plotted, but at heart it's still about the characters. There's Matt Damon's Colin Sullivan, a State detective who's secretly working for the bad guys, and Leonardo DiCaprio's Bill Costigan, the up and coming gangster who's secretly a cop. Both of their lives revolve around Frank Costello, the head mobster played by Jack Nicholson. I'm not going into the performances. Everyone's heard about how good they are and everything you've heard is probably true.
If MacBeth and Hamlet were about the dangers of ambition and indecisiveness, respectively, both of The Departed's protagonists share the tragic flaw of hiding their true identies. They do it for a variety of reasons, but the end result is the same for both Costigan and Sullivan. They slowly but surely fall apart under the pressure, and it's no surprise that the movie's climax (well, the first climax) finds them acting their roles when they finally should be revealing their true natures. Costigan tries to prevent Costello from falling into a trap he set while Sullivan leads the raid and ultimately kills Costello, his own father figure. Ironically, it's at this moment in the film that everything seems as if it's going to work out alright.Of course, it's a tragedy, so everything can't turn out alright, and we get the final act in which everyone gets what he deserves (or worse, as is often the case in these sort of tragedies). One of the things that everyone seemed to want to discuss was the rat at the end of the movie. Some have called it ham-handed and stupid. If it were an obvious metaphor, I'd be annoyed, but it's not like it's Jesus symbolism. It's just Scorsese reinforcing the idea that there are rats everywhere, even in places you wouldn't expect (like a balcony in broad daylight), and that they haven't been exterminated even though everyone's dead. Also, it's a way to get the audience to chuckle after watching four characters get shot in the head in about 10 minutes. Either way, it's not Superman Returns's Jesus symbolism, so I can't really complain.
Since I've kind of lost my tragedy focus (and I'm not sure exactly where I was going with it anyway), I'm going to keep going with my random thoughts. The one thing that I'm not so sure I liked was the soundtrack. Obviously, it's a bunch of great classic rock songs, but it was used very aggresively, with very active mixing. What I mean is, the songs frequently jump from quietly playing in the background of a scene to being the sonic focus of the moment. It's jarring, and presumably intentionally, but I'm not sure if I'm a fan. I guess it gave the movie a rougher, more brutal feel, but still, a little subtlety might have worked just as well.
More stream of consciousness: Some of the people I saw the movie with disliked the ending, saying it felt forced. I think it was earned. The whole movie is a bit unrealistic if you stop to really analyze it, but the movie doesn't really invite you to pick it apart. Even as the story gets increasingly complex and begins relying on a number of coincidences, it does so in such a way that it feels natural which, now that I come to think of it, is another hallmark of the Shakespearean (or even Greek) tragedy. I mean, Oedipus murdering his father randomly? What are the odds of that, right? It still feels organic in a strange sort of way, and you get the same sort of feeling in The Departed. So I say don't worry so much about whether it's actually plausible, because the movie says it is and there's no reason to argue. And check it out, I made it back to classical ideas of tragedy. Better quit while I'm ahead, right?
(More reviews, of Beck and the Killers, primarily, should be coming soon...)
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