Once Upon A Time In America (Discussion Thread)

[JoshBRFC+]

On 06/01/2022 at 20:42, nudge said:

First of all, I think it's a gem and an underrated masterpiece that should be in the top lists much more often than it is.

 

I've seen it in the top few of several lists. 

I tend to agree with the films above it - Eg this list. 

[Spike]

I watched it 

notes tomorrow

[Spike]

I drank a bottle of win over this movie and didn't proof read.

Technically marvellous aside from many scenes have terrible audio syncing and mixing, from a script and narrative standpoint I hated it. Three hours of characters that I don't care about post-puberty, what was the point of it? That friends that don't have any chemistry apart and loyalty is good? It's not that it is boring, it's that it doesn't matter, I don't care about any of these characters, James Woods tries his best but the character ultimately is a nothing post puberty, he is close to Noodles, but he actually isn't, but he really does care for Noodles but he doesn't and then betrays him for literally no reason, two more friends that have no personality besides one of them having a lazy eye. And then we have Noodles, the loveable serial rapist with a conscious, I'm supposed to like this guy and root for him? Get the fuck outta here. Remember prohibition? Remember unions? We don't really go into any depth with any of it but trust us, it happened and it's important to these characters.

The ending was like watching a cheesy spy film with none of the humour, 'aha! I'm actually alive and a powerful politician! Please kill me' but alas our hero has loyalty and a moral compass and the rapist wins over the gangster in a moral victory by saying his friend is dead, and who cares about the other two. When the payoff became clear that Max is alive and well, I sighed heavily and was disappointed that this is the climax of the film, four hours of building up for this benign cliched ending, dammit it was obvious that Max was the antagonist from the first scene of the movie, and it disappointed in it's delivery, there is no buildup besides' DONT CALL ME CRAZY' and 'maybe I should get rid of you'. Ultimately a lot of things happens in this movie but very rarely do they have an cause and effect. The two cause and effects are the attempted assassination of Jimmy Connery (or whatever) and the Buggsy threatening the boys and then killing the annoying young kid, which ultimately are footnotes in the narrative in the movie.

YESTERDAY MY TROUBLES SEEMED SO FAR AWAY - I wish this movie was far away. Except the cinematography I loved that. 2 stars out of 5

[nudge+]

8 hours ago, Spike said:

 

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I drank a bottle of win over this movie and didn't proof read.

Technically marvellous aside from many scenes have terrible audio syncing and mixing, from a script and narrative standpoint I hated it. Three hours of characters that I don't care about post-puberty, what was the point of it? That friends that don't have any chemistry apart and loyalty is good? It's not that it is boring, it's that it doesn't matter, I don't care about any of these characters, James Woods tries his best but the character ultimately is a nothing post puberty, he is close to Noodles, but he actually isn't, but he really does care for Noodles but he doesn't and then betrays him for literally no reason, two more friends that have no personality besides one of them having a lazy eye. And then we have Noodles, the loveable serial rapist with a conscious, I'm supposed to like this guy and root for him? Get the fuck outta here. Remember prohibition? Remember unions? We don't really go into any depth with any of it but trust us, it happened and it's important to these characters.

The ending was like watching a cheesy spy film with none of the humour, 'aha! I'm actually alive and a powerful politician! Please kill me' but alas our hero has loyalty and a moral compass and the rapist wins over the gangster in a moral victory by saying his friend is dead, and who cares about the other two. When the payoff became clear that Max is alive and well, I sighed heavily and was disappointed that this is the climax of the film, four hours of building up for this benign cliched ending, dammit it was obvious that Max was the antagonist from the first scene of the movie, and it disappointed in it's delivery, there is no buildup besides' DONT CALL ME CRAZY' and 'maybe I should get rid of you'. Ultimately a lot of things happens in this movie but very rarely do they have an cause and effect. The two cause and effects are the attempted assassination of Jimmy Connery (or whatever) and the Buggsy threatening the boys and then killing the annoying young kid, which ultimately are footnotes in the narrative in the movie.

YESTERDAY MY TROUBLES SEEMED SO FAR AWAY - I wish this movie was far away. Except the cinematography I loved that. 2 stars out of 5

 

 

Have you read the first posts in this thread where @Viva la FCB and me discussed the opium dream theory? I would say the narrative makes by far more sense then from that perspective and the story actually gets the meaning.

[Spike]

28 minutes ago, nudge said:

Have you read the first posts in this thread where @Viva la FCB and me discussed the opium dream theory? I would say the narrative makes by far more sense then from that perspective and the story actually gets the meaning.

That would make me hate it several times more and make even less sense from a character motivation.

[Spike]

I changed my mind three time in this movie. Pre-intermission I thought it was a pretty good movie, after the intermissions I thought it was okay and by the third act I was starting to dislike a lot of it.

[Viva la FCB+]

9 minutes ago, Spike said:

That would make me hate it several times more and make even less sense from a character motivation.

To be fair I think its the only way it does make sense. Like you said the entire "twist" of  James Woods character having pulled one over on noodles for seemingly no real reason to torture him for 30 years and then ask him to kill him doesnt really add up. However it does make alot of sense it how noodles would try to come to grips with getting all of his friends killed and trying to rationalize it in his own head. Personally I think that entire end sequence with James Woods is what ties everything together with the opium. It almost doesnt seem real simply because it isnt. The garbage truck scene at the end where he may or may not have gone in to the clearly very vintage cars driving by afterwards. The entire reason for jumping around in timelines also supports it imo. If you rethink and go through everything that transpires thinking about it in this way I think will change alot of peoples perspectives. 

[nudge+]

9 minutes ago, Spike said:

That would make me hate it several times more and make even less sense from a character motivation.

How come? For me it would make perfect sense. In reality, Noodles calls the police anonymously which leads to all his childhood friends getting killed. He's understandably feeling guilty and regretful about it, so goes to the opium den to get rid of the feeling, and under the influence of the drug, his guilty conscience creates a bizarre surrealistic story where instead of being the man who hurt the love of his life and got his friends killed, he turns out to be the victim of Max's crazy plan, and Deborah forgives him. 

[Spike]

Just now, nudge said:

How come? For me it would make perfect sense. In reality, Noodles calls the police anonymously which leads to all his childhood friends getting killed. He's understandably feeling guilty and regretful about it, so goes to the opium den to get rid of the feeling, and under the influence of the drug, his guilty conscience creates a bizarre surrealistic story where instead of being the man who hurt the love of his life and got his friends killed, he turns out to be the victim of Max's crazy plan, and Deborah forgives him. 

 

5 minutes ago, Viva la FCB said:

To be fair I think its the only way it does make sense. Like you said the entire "twist" of  James Woods character having pulled one over on noodles for seemingly no real reason to torture him for 30 years and then ask him to kill him doesnt really add up. However it does make alot of sense it how noodles would try to come to grips with getting all of his friends killed and trying to rationalize it in his own head. Personally I think that entire end sequence with James Woods is what ties everything together with the opium. It almost doesnt seem real simply because it isnt. The garbage truck scene at the end where he may or may not have gone in to the clearly very vintage cars driving by afterwards. The entire reason for jumping around in timelines also supports it imo. If you rethink and go through everything that transpires thinking about it in this way I think will change alot of peoples perspectives. 

Because it makes no sense to me that they would die on a booze run. This is something they had been doing for twelve years, and now a week before the end of prohibition, they or the cops or someone escalates it to the point of a punch of people dying? I don’t buy it. 

[Spike]

I also don’t buy the dream thing because why would he blame his best friend in an attempt to reconcile his guilt? More likely he’d blame one of the Italians or Sharkey

[Spike]

Again I don’t think this movie is bad per se, it isn’t for me and I can understand why other’s would like it but I have serious issue with the script, the main problem is that the dialogue and characters really kinda suck for me.

[Spike]

Also I was so irritated by the sound mixing I almost turned it off in the first minutes with the telephone ringing, I despised that scene. I get it is meant to be the hazy dream recollection of his opium stoned nightmare but it was so loud and constant it aggravated me. It should have been muted background noise to give the dream sequence an ethereal quality

[nudge+]

7 minutes ago, Spike said:

Because it makes no sense to me that they would die on a booze run. This is something they had been doing for twelve years, and now a week before the end of prohibition, they or the cops or someone escalates it to the point of a punch of people dying? I don’t buy it. 

Frankly, I don't find it hard to imagine that a booze-run car chase could end up in a shoot-out with the police. They might have been doing it for years, but I imagine for it to run smoothly, they had certain corrupt officers and other people in their pocket who got their cut to look the other way, so they could avoid any similar confrontations. With Noodles calling the higher-ups directly could have ended in a large scale police operation (which also would have probably been one of the last operations for the prohibition agents, too - and their tactics of "shoot first, ask questions later" are pretty well established historically... so extra motivation for them), which always has potential to end up badly. 

 

12 minutes ago, Spike said:

I also don’t buy the dream thing because why would he blame his best friend in an attempt to reconcile his guilt? More likely he’d blame one of the Italians or Sharkey

A classic case of narcissistic blame-shifting. In psychology, it is quite well established that an abuser will often shift the blame to the victim, even going as far as to project themselves as the victim and the actual victim as the one who actually committed the abuse. It's a great defense mechanism for a fragile ego to avoid responsibility and avoid having to reflect on one's behaviour and shortcomings. 

14 minutes ago, Spike said:

Again I don’t think this movie is bad per se, it isn’t for me and I can understand why other’s would like it but I have serious issue with the script, the main problem is that the dialogue and characters really kinda suck for me.

That's actually great, because it gets the discussion going  I can understand why people wouldn't like it, and if they come up with actual arguments and explanations of why they feel that way (like you did), then it's exactly what I'm looking for in a film club... That's why I prefer watching movies like that for a discussion, as they usually generate strong opinions in both directions of the "like-dislike" scale.

15 minutes ago, Spike said:

Also I was so irritated by the sound mixing I almost turned it off in the first minutes with the telephone ringing, I despised that scene. I get it is meant to be the hazy dream recollection of his opium stoned nightmare but it was so loud and constant it aggravated me. It should have been muted background noise to give the dream sequence an ethereal quality

The telephone one I can 100% agree with, it was doing my head in. I was watching the movie with my headphones on, so for a while I actually thought there's a telephone ringing somewhere in my house, even paused the movie to make sure  

[Spike]

2 minutes ago, nudge said:

Frankly, I don't find it hard to imagine that a booze-run car chase could end up in a shoot-out with the police. They might have been doing it for years, but I imagine for it to run smoothly, they had certain corrupt officers and other people in their pocket who got their cut to look the other way, so they could avoid any similar confrontations. With Noodles calling the higher-ups directly could have ended in a large scale police operation (which also would have probably been one of the last operations for the prohibition agents, too - and their tactics of "shoot first, ask questions later" are pretty well established historically... so extra motivation for them), which always has potential to end up badly. 

 

A classic case of narcissistic blame-shifting. In psychology, it is quite well established that an abuser will often shift the blame to the victim, even going as far as to project themselves as the victim and the actual victim as the one who actually committed the abuse. It's a great defense mechanism for a fragile ego to avoid responsibility and avoid having to reflect on one's behaviour and shortcomings. 

That's actually great, because it gets the discussion going  I can understand why people wouldn't like it, and if they come up with actual arguments and explanations of why they feel that way (like you did), then it's exactly what I'm looking for in a film club... That's why I prefer watching movies like that for a discussion, as they usually generate strong opinions in both directions of the "like-dislike" scale.

The telephone one I can 100% agree with, it was doing my head in. I was watching the movie with my headphones on, so for a while I actually thought there's a telephone ringing somewhere in my house, even paused the movie to make sure  

When it boils down to it, ‘would I recommend this movie’ is the biggest barometer, even more so that ‘did I like it’. And for this movie… I would recommend it to certain people, mainly those interested in crime cinema, I can think of three friends of mine, I know one would hate it, another would probably like it, and the third is a flip of a coin.

On a side note, I just watched Vanilla Sky and it was okay but I think it did the dream nonsense better than this movie, even if Vanilla Sky spells it out like the alphabet in the final scene. 

[nudge+]

7 minutes ago, Spike said:

When it boils down to it, ‘would I recommend this movie’ is the biggest barometer, even more so that ‘did I like it’. And for this movie… I would recommend it to certain people, mainly those interested in crime cinema, I can think of three friends of mine, I know one would hate it, another would probably like it, and the third is a flip of a coin.

On a side note, I just watched Vanilla Sky and it was okay but I think it did the dream nonsense better than this movie, even if Vanilla Sky spells it out like the alphabet in the final scene. 

Have you watched Alejandro Amenábar's Abre Los Ojos prior to watching Vanilla Sky? I remember not being able to watch Vanilla Sky because of Tom Cruise (completely irrational hate of mine), but I always wondered how it compares to the original...

[Spike]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

Have you watched Alejandro Amenábar's Abre Los Ojos prior to watching Vanilla Sky? I remember not being able to watch Vanilla Sky because of Tom Cruise (completely irrational hate of mine), but I always wondered how it compares to the original...

Nah, I hear it is better though. But Vanilla Sly is a fine movie, and has some fantastic scenes. Particularly every scene with Cameron Diaz and Cruise because they have great chemistry. I also like how the movie shifts tonally through each act, starting off as a romcom, then drama, crime, and finally sci-fi.

[Viva la FCB+]

I think personally thats why it was such a great choice to rekick off film club (despite being 40 hours long) is that it is absolutely going to be polarizing. Its absolutely not for everyone but that creates alot more dialogue imo.. that is of course is if more people do end up watching it 

[nudge+]

1 minute ago, Viva la FCB said:

(despite being 40 hours long)

Only 40 hours?   

[Bluewolf]

Well I enjoyed it overall... Didn't think I had seen it before until I started watching then it was obvious that I had but must have been a great many moons ago... 

I agree with the Opium theory that a lot of it was dreams where he felt guilt about his actions and needed that escape.. I found it difficult to really care about any of them as characters though, I never really got invested in them for some reason?, The only time I felt something was when young Dominic got gunned down and where they were all laid out in the street. It's as though I was watching a group of blokes from my bedroom window passing by the house and then later on hearing that some of them had died, a passing realisation that I had seen them earlier but not enough of an emotional one to cling on to it for very long... 

I thought it was well shot and the music and mood certainly captured the times where growing up on the streets meant being light of foot and quick of thought to help keep the pockets lined... Noodles also just seemed the type of character that was happy only living for the day where Max was far more ambitious which always felt like they had an uneasy alliance throughout.  Also I felt the rape scene in the car didn't have any real serious consequences for Noodles ( along with the shop robbery scene ) only having emotional ones conflicting within him over his actions and although you could feel the coldness from her when they met again all those years later there was no real hate there... I suppose the way that meeting scene panned out it was designed to be awkward and distant.. The phone scene also wound me up a bit, it went on for too long... 

Overall a pretty good movie no doubt about it but despite it's length couldn't convince me to get emotionally attached to them to want to watch it again.. In fact having realised that I had seen it before once I started watching it kind of shows that it didn't stick in the mind in a memorable sense the same way that say The Godfather or Goodfellas did... 

[Viva la FCB+]

1 hour ago, Bluewolf said:

 I had seen it before once I started watching it kind of shows that it didn't stick in the mind in a memorable sense the same way that say The Godfather or Goodfellas did... 

Idk maybe it's just me but I almost didn't really think of it as a classic gangster type film. It was more of a coming of age story and the friend group growing up together and what they built together.  Ultimately yes they did become bootleggers and where definitely cold blooded bastards but that was secondary if that makes sense?

[Bluewolf]

14 minutes ago, Viva la FCB said:

Idk maybe it's just me but I almost didn't really think of it as a classic gangster type film. It was more of a coming of age story and the friend group growing up together and what they built together.  Ultimately yes they did become bootleggers and where definitely cold blooded bastards but that was secondary if that makes sense?

Yea.. I wasn't trying to compare the film types as this was totally different to say Godfather or Goodfellas but more about the emotional attachment to the characters within the story... The only reason I watched this again was because it was the film of choice but it must have lacked something that made it memorable for me the first time round hence why I realised I had seen it before but it just didn't have the same overall impact on me as say the other two did for example... 

[Bluewolf]

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