Retrospective: The Departed (Patreon)

“A lot of people had to die for me to be me,” says Frank Costello, Jack Nicholson’s leering Boston gangster in The Departed. Costello has every institution in Boston — and by extension America — under his belt: the state police, the F.B.I. for which he plays informant, and the post-Spotlight Catholic Church. Costello is not the classic Edward G. Robinsonesque gangster who must be put down to reimpose the social order; he is the social order. His slur-laden monologue that starts off the movie is a series of reactionary platitudes peppered with flakes of historical grievances — “I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me”, “a man makes his own way. No one gives it to you.” Costello is a diasporan son who’s come to embody all the vices of his adopted country. His grievances are just a way of claiming legitimate power.

The city of Boston is Costello’s lackey. Costello incessantly touts his ability to do everything himself, to the point that when he suspects a rat in his gang, he says “past days, situations like this, I kill everybody.” He’s not the individualist he likes to think — Costello has an entire city doing his bidding. Costello’s murder by his protege/foster son/rat in the police force Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) doesn’t stop The Departed dead in its tracks. The power play continues; it’s just lost its grounding center.

Boston is a particularly interesting location for this kind of story. It’s obviously maximally different from Hong Kong, the setting of The Departed’s source movie Infernal Affairs. But even more crucially, it puts Martin Scorsese on unfamiliar territory. Goodfellas, Mean Streets, and Taxi Driver are all innately New York movies, with a current of nostalgia running through all of them. Scorsese doesn’t have that relationship with Boston — he approaches it clinically, as a society for him to dissect rather than his life-long companion. There’s no Travis Bickle or Henry Hill or even Rupert Pupkin for him to cling to — Scorsese simply has to face Boston as it is.

And this is clearly liberating for Scorsese. The Departed moves at a stunning clip, partly due to Scorsese’s lack of nostalgic familiarity with his surroundings, and also because of the brilliant work of Thelma Schoonmaker, the greatest editor in film history. Even Scorsese’s nightmarishly frantic Bringing Out the Dead doesn’t thunder ahead like The Departed. It’s simply unlike any other Best Picture winner in recent memory (also man, remember when movies like this won Best Picture?). William Monahan’s script is a well-oiled deception thriller (possibly the best screenplay ever written for a Scorsese film) of a caliber with All the President’s Men, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and The Handmaiden. Certainly Infernal Affairs’ brilliant premise helps: a gangster infiltrates the state police while a state cop goes undercover in his opposite number’s gang. And instead of being a contrived mess like that could become, Scorsese turns out the most polished movie of his career.

The Departed is the story of power ultimately leading to death. By the time the credits roll, all the main characters have become the Departed. There’s no distinction between good power and bad power; all things are contiguous in Marty’s world. And what could be more Catholic than that? Maybe Scorsese is a Bostonite after all.