Scorsese Finally Feels the Love By Jared Beck

The impossible has happened! After years of directing in Hollywood, and after six Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Martin Scorsese has finally captured the golden statue for his latest film: The Departed.

The preeminent director of gangster films, Scorsese has captured the life of Irish mobsters in contemporary Boston featuring an all-star cast (Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and even the loveable, huggable Anthony Anderson) in front of a back-drop of betrayal, deception, and vigilante violence. Seriously, how much better does it get than that? And this 64-year old man, the one who almost entered the seminary at the age of 14, has produced classic films and performances that will go down as some of the best in the history of cinema.
The man with the black eyebrows and silver hair seems to be able to generate nominations like nobody’s business.
It eventually took him 30 years to finally make it onto the Oscar stage as a winner, despite the fact that his movies have done nothing but produce Oscars, except for the Best Director. Robert De Niro took home the Best Actor in 1981’s Raging Bull; Thelma Schoonmaker, the woman who won an Academy Award this year for editing, also took home the Best Film Editing Oscar for the same movie. The movie garnered six other nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director; the movie lost out to Ordinary People, and Scorsese lost out to Robert Redford.

The Color of Money (1986) was nominated four times, winning once (Paul Newman for Best Actor, his only victory in eight tries). The controversial Last Temptation of Christ (1988) won Scorsese his second Best Director nod, but he lost once again, this time to Barry Levinson for Rain Man. Goodfellas, considered by many to be one of the greatest mob movies of all-time, was nominated six times, earning Scorsese yet another Best Director nomination. But only Pesci won that year (Best Supporting Actor); Goodfellas lost to Dances with Wolves and Scorsese was defeated by Kevin Costner for, you guessed it, Dances with Wolves. Costner continued on to a great movie career with Waterworld and The Postman, his films flopping more often than not.

Hell, even Scorsese’s attempt at horror, 1991’s Cape Fear, earned acting nominations for Robert De Niro and Juliette Lewis. The Age of Innocence, a costume-drama based on the novel by Edith Wharton, was nominated five times, including an acting honor for Winona Ryder (who went on to a brilliant career in shop-lifting). Casino (1995) earned a nomination for Sharon Stone, and even 1997’s controversial Kundun was nominated four times.

Gangs of New York (2003) was nominated 10 times, including Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Picture, and another Best Director. Too bad Day-Lewis lost out to Adrien Brody in The Pianist, the film lost to the musical Chicago, and Scorsese fell to Roman Polanski for The Pianist. 10 nominations, zero wins. Where’s the love? In 2004, though, The Aviator finally brought home some Oscars, but only five out of 11. Cate Blanchett won for Best Supporting Actress, but DiCaprio lost out Jamie Foxx in Ray, Alan Alda lost Supporting Actor to Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby, the film lost to Million Dollar Baby, and Scorsese lost to Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby. Despite that, the man with the black eyebrows and silver hair seems to be able to generate nominations like nobody’s business, especially for the actors and actresses in his films, but the Academy never felt the need to bestow any of the statuettes on one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed of all-time. Where was Scorsese’s love?

After branching out and bringing his directorial style to a number of different genre films, it all came back to his ability to direct the perfect gangster movie before his work could truly be recognized. While those movies are some of his most famous, and The Departed will surely be remembered as the film through which Scorsese finally captured his first Best Director, understand that he was never caged in by them, and that his skills go far and beyond gangster movies. Maybe the Academy should learn to understand that, too.