ONLY IN AMERICA
Clint Eastwood should be declared America’s National Treasure—at 80 plus the iconic star-turned-director is making challenging and rigorous cinema. Leonard DiCaprio is heading towards iconic status too—the actor has, in recent years, done such a range of difficult and memorable roles, that he is easily Hollywood’s finest. And he’s not yet 40, some of our muscle-flexing, Peter Pan-types need to learn from him how to handle their careers.
J Edgar is a fascinating look at the life of the man who once had America’s rich, famous and powerful living in fear of what the FBI could do with the dossiers they had on everyone in public life. J Edgar Hoover was the head of the Bureau of Investigation for nearly half a century, worked under eight presidents, which by itself is astonishing enough. What Eastwood has also tried to uncover, in a non-judgemental way, is the secret life of the man. It is, of course, speculative and one major piece of gossip about his cross-dressing, is unsubstantiated, which makes it all the more intriguing for the audience. But there are also the odd facts—he never married, lived with his overbearing mother and was possibly gay, though he was outwardly homophobic, racist, chauvinistic and would be labelled today as a control freak. Still, he had a lifelong male companion Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) and a female confidential secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), who had earlier turned down his proposal.
Eastwood’s film matter-of-factly deals with Hoover’s strange life, but never with salacious intent. What interests him and his screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who also wrote Milk) is the idea of man who created his own myth and never let the image falter. For a filmmaker what is also exciting is the seven decades his protagonist’s life straddles—seven eventful decades during which the US went through several tumultuous events. What is surprising is that nobody thought or making this film before, not just because of the bizarre life of the man himself, but because of the rich cast of celebrities he dealt with through his long career as super-snoop; people he browbeat and blackmailed without a qualm.
However, in steering away from controversy or refraining from psycho-babble shortcuts (like blaming his repressed sexuality for his nastiness) Eastwood makes his film curiously bland. It is a meticulously crafted but understated biopic, one that does not want to stick its neck out too much, or be unduly provocative. Which makes it distasteful for the people who suffered due to his tyrannical ways, his brutal suppression of political dissent, his Communist witch-hunts and his megalomania. Eastwood is too gentle on America’s most hated man.
Leonardo DiCaprio is fabulous as J. Edgar, though later, the feral look is buried under all that prosthetic make-up. Armie Hammer and Judi Dench are outstanding too. Some Oscar nominations definitely coming the way of this film.
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