J. Edgar
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Dustin Lance Black
Written by Dustin Lance Black
with Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts
2011
Given that you can normally set your watch by the character arcs in a Clint Eastwoodfilm, it’s odd that the immediate criticism of his biopic of J. Edgar Hoover is that there isn’t enough of a story. I don’t insist on a film being narrative-based or anything, but I do think that if a filmmaker chooses to make a film based on themes and ideas rather than a strong story structure, they need to make doubly sure those ideas are focused and well presented. And while Eastwood and writer Dustin Lance Black do make the FBI founder a suitably intriguing prospect, their critique is loosely arranged around a messy flashback structure that doesn’t really give the audience anything to hang on to. It’s full of perfectly sculpted individual scenes, but there’s no rise and fall of tension: each plot point is played at more or less the same level and just fails to generate any emotional response. Apart from the narrative difficulties it presents, the forty-year period dealt with in the film also leads to some dodgy make up jobs: Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover is covered pretty well (although I’m told by someone with a better eye than me that his hands were crap), but his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), is another story: even the stroke can’t explain away the fact he looks like he’s wearing someone else’s face. It's a slightly tacky feature that doesn't help you engage.
The cast is solid but straightforward, with DiCaprio the only one given much to do. He plays Hoover from the ages of 24 to 77, and through him we are shown a socially awkward visionary, a closeted and inexperienced homosexual, and an egotistical political zealot, with all three elements being given the old-age-reflective treatment as he writes his memoirs. The film follows two main strands of Hoover's life: his expansion of the FBI, and his personal relationship with Clyde Tolson. His friendship with Tolson is given precedence, as a romantic attraction between the two – suspected but unconfirmed in real life – is brought to the fore and serves as the film's emotional centre. While largely speculative and therefore quite likely exaggerated, I thought their relationship was nicely played: there’s a false moment when, prior to their one moment of complete openness, the point that they’re gay is carefully underlined with some bitching about tasteless shoes, but generally it’s all kept very low-key, and touchingly affectionate. His situation with his mother is another matter, though. I don’t know anything about the real-life relationship, but in this film it comes across as the stereotypical overreliance on a mother figure that seems to prefigure homosexuality in a lot of Hollywood affair. If it’s accurate I guess it’s excusable; what’s definitely not accurate is the ridiculous scene after her passing, in which he comes over all Norman Bates, putting on one of her dresses and sobbing on the floor in the foetal position.
While it makes for a lack of focus, the film’s care in covering both Hoover’s professional and private life, and interweaving them, actually leads to what I admired most about it. Though vigorously principled and insistent on the moral and professional character of the Bureau, Hoover’s greatest flaw is made to be his imposition of a personal code under the cover of protecting a historic way of life. His preoccupation with threats to the American way, initially from anarchists, Bolsheviks and the like, are seen to spread so that anyone protesting the status quo (Martin Luther King, for example), is deemed a subversive “radical”. Although Hoover at one point dismisses McCarthy as “an opportunist”, it is easy to draw a parallel between their similarly reductive notions of freedom, even if we accept that his motives were more pure. Eastwood’s Hoover is sympathetic in his eagerness and awkwardness, and the film is clear in stating the important progress in forensics behind which he was a driving force. But it also suggests a blind spot when it comes to the compatibility of his vision with the type of society he supposedly wanted to preserve. There’s a moment in the film when a line of Martin Luther King’s is given prominence, about the need for America to “rise up, and live by the meaning of its creed”, and the idea that the US Constitution is meant to enshrine everybody’s rights is obviously one still working its way through certain sections of American society. The film is at its best when it deals with this dichotomy in Hoover’s career, and ultimately paints him as a paranoid old man, doubting whether he has made his beloved country better, or worse.
Tom
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