This is the most underrated mob movie ever! It was released in 1990 at the same time as "Goodfellas" which understandably grabbed all the attention. I would put it in a league with that, the Godfather movies and others as top ten gangster movies. (The singular masterpiece "On the Waterfront" stands alone as unchallenged number one.) The ensemble acting compares with all the greats. The friendship between co-protagonists Terry Noonan (Sean Penn) and Jackie Flannery (Gary Oldman) is incomparable and heartbreaking. Penn quietly emanates the deep, restrained sadness and interior conflict of undercover cop Noonan who strives to be loyal to his friends as he infiltrates the mob. Oldman is outstanding as a wild, drunken, fight-loving, endearing Irish lowlife. This puts the film also in the top ten best buddy films. But there is more: rock solid performances by stalwarts like Ed Harris, John Reilly, John Turturro. The stunning natural beauty of a young Robin Wright only enhances the poignancy of her heartbreak as she longs to escape her family background with an "uptown job," therapy and her romance with Terry. By the way, the chemistry between Penn and Wright on screen is not artificial: they started an affair and conceived a child while making the film.
It may be the saddest movie I have ever seen. Even though my Irish Catholic world (devout, serene, respectable) is far from theirs, they are still "my people" so I took the movie personally. They felt to me like dear, doomed cousins. The sadness operates at different levels, which indwell each other.
It is set in the lower Manhattan West Side, "hell's kitchen," in the 1980s as that world was disappearing due to gentrification. And so, there is a dense cloud of hopelessness about the entire thing. Much of Jackie Flannery's rage is against this loss. In this, the movie might serve as an enactment of the disappearance of the ethnic (in this case Irish), Catholic, working class neighborhoods that disappeared from our cities over the last decades of the 20th century. The sentimentality and nostalgia is heavy and very Irish. You feel like you are at a wake, you have drunk too much, and you are starting to cry. And the sadness is very specific, personal, concrete...in each character.
Oldman's performance as Jackie is off the charts: he seems so familiar. Angry, alcoholic, reckless, fearless, impulsive...yet you become endeared to him. And you don't know why. You just like him. Reilly plays their childhood friend: addicted to gambling, he is in big trouble but has a gentle heart that evokes tenderness from Terry, Jackie and the viewer.
The Penn/Wright romance is flaming, tender, respectful, but excruciatingly poignant. Each is seeking to find..."the state of grace." They want freedom from a past of violence, inebriation, deceit, betrayal, crime, and heartbreak. They are desperate for peace, stability, integrity, loyalty and quiet. Terry is a conscientious cop. Kathleen has moved uptown (above the 40s), has a decent job, and is in therapy. Their attraction to each other is cosmic. But the situation is impossible: he is infiltrating her brothers' mob.
In the key, revelatory scene towards the end, Terry, with tears, reveals his soul to her. He explains that this entire idea of him infiltrating the gang was an enormous mistake. He unveils the meaning of the movie's title. "You believe in angels or the saints or there's such a thing as a state of grace. And you believe it, but it's got nothing to do with reality. It's just a fuckin idea."
Here we come to the heart, the tragedy of the movie. He, and she, and everybody really, is seeking for this "state of grace." But it is, for them, unattainable. Terry wears a cross around his neck throughout the entire movie. This is important. There is nothing in the movie faintly approaching genuine Catholic piety. But they talk about the Church: rosary, priests, etc. Two scenes unveil the Catholicism beneath and around the entire drama.
Terry and Kathleen are unable to find Jackie when he is in big trouble with the Italian mob and the police and is intoxicated and then they find him in the Church. They sit together and intimately recall as children hiding together in that Church. They grieve their murdered friend Stevie (Reilly) as Jackie stumbles around, damaging the Church irreverently in a drunken stupor, saying he is "making a saint out of Stevie." I confess that I wept in the scene. The feeling of loss, of sadness, of longing was unbearable. They long for a lost state of innocence and peace. Vaguely there is some sense that the Church is attached to this longed-for state.
The finale of the movie crystalizes this sadness. (Spoiler alert!) In the wake of so much violence and death, the St. Patrick's Day parade is passing St. Patrick's Cathedral, bagpipes playing, and Kathleen (Wright) is alone in the crowd, her lovely face blank and impassive.
The parade signified the tragedy of the Irish: the loss of faith. We see this in Ireland itself today. But also, largely, among our own Irish-Americans. This is the sadness of our time. The loss of faith.
It is my view that an Irishman or Irish-American who embraces his Catholic faith is a prince, a warrior, a sage...however flawed! But an Irishman without faith falls into despair. He is a nobody. Remember: we Irish were for centuries serfs, slaves under the English.
{ Aside: contrast cinematic presentations of the Italian and Irish mobs. The former has about itself the elegance, the stature of Italy: fine wine and food; gorgeous women; the Renaissance; stigmatists and mystics; the Vatican; the Roman empire. The latter are low class: drunken, fighting, crude, and low on class. Contrast "On the Waterfront's" Johnny Friendly (loud, vulgar) with Pacino and Brando as the Corleone's. A small but telling scene in "State of Grace" has Frankie Flannery (Irish mob boss Ed Harris) at a sit down in a good restaurant with Italian boss Borelli (Gambino-Genovese type guy.) Frankie brushes the crumbs off his table onto the floor. Borelli calmly, authoritatively tells him: "Frankie, don't make a mess." By contrast with a classy Italian mobster, the Irish guy is sloppy, crude, loud, impulsive and usually drunk!}
Yes, there are Irishmen who are good writers. They make tough boxers. They do well in middle distance running. You do want them as police, firemen, soldiers, and FBI agents.
But even at their best, they are a waste if they remain in the "state of sin." That is to say, in disbelief. That is to say: in toxic, dysfunctional patterns of betrayal, deceit, dishonesty.
The perennial appeal of the gangster movie is, in my view, that the drama always revolves around betrayal and loyalty. The magnetism of the mafia is the code of loyalty. But that code, based on the immoral, inevitably turns into betrayal. The mob protagonist always encounters a dilema of loyalty: Terry Malloy (Brando) turns against the brother and mob boss who betrayed him to be loyal to something good ("On the Waterfront"); the youthful protagonist in "Bronx Tale" finds loyalty to the mob boss (Palmitieri) contradicts his filial fidelity to his father (DeNiro); "Donnie Brasco" has the real life undercover agent "going native" and loyal to his antagonists; and of course the multiple drama lines of the Godfather saga.
And so, theologically, we ask: What is the state of grace for a Catholic. It is fidelity. It is the fidelity of God to us: absolute, manifest in the crucifixion of Christ, in the abiding Eucharistic presence. It is our own flawed, often failing loyalty to our own: spouse, vows, family, our God and his Church.
The power of the mob movie is the drama of betrayal and fidelity.
The power of "State of Grace" is the longing for that fidelity.
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