Top Ten Films Of The Decade: Number 1: Gangs Of New York

I always feel funny telling people that Gangs Of New York is my favorite film. Not just of the decade but of all time. I’m not usually self conscience about my tastes (Anyone who wants to write about film and is, is in for a short sad career) but when I’m talking to real hardened cinephiles as opposed to their happy cousin the movie buff or geek and mention that Gangs Of New York is my favorite film, there’s always that one second beat of “Is he fucking with me.” And then that realization that I’m not followed by a nod and forced smile. Suddenly I’m not in the game anymore.

Its as though I’ve mentioned that my favorite novel is by Tom Clancy, or my all time favorite album is “Dookie”. A kind of cautious, “You do know there is other stuff out there…” attitude coupled with a faint whiff of disdain.

But in the end this is all somewhat beside the point of why I love this film so dearly and deeply. It’s the last tactile epic. The last time that all the sets need to be built, the last time all the costumes need be sewn and the extras actually be there. The last time that the streets that the characters walk on stretch out not merely in your minds eye but in actuality covering entire city blocks. That era, the grand tradition of Hollywood that caused Griffith to raise Babylon over Sunset Blvd, to have DeMille rebuild Egypt no more then ten miles from where I type this, that made Lean march out into the desert, and Peckipah blow up Mexico, and Herzog drag that steamship over the mountain. That era of filmmaking of not just impersonating wonders but actually creating them is over now. As Lucas informed the befuddled Scorsese when he visited his old friend on set, “They can do this all on computers now."

In the face of so many ones and zeros its perhaps not hard to find an echo between Bill’s final lines and what will almost surely be Scorsese’s. Scorsese whose films I love above all others. To the point where even though it’s deeply Pupkin to say so, I consider him to be more of a favorite uncle I happen to have never met, rather then just a favorite filmmaker. To the point that I actually avoid talking about them with people because I take it all so personally. Insult one of Ford’s or Keatons, or Kurosawa’s films and we’ll disagree and discuss. Insult one of Scorsese’s and you may as well be insulting a member of my family. And though he remains a deeply active and relevant filmmaker its probable that he has more films behind him then infront of him. Almost Thirty. I don’t care it’ll never be enough. But when he goes he can go saying, “At least I die a true filmmaker.” One who never compromised a whit.

I’m not saying cinema is dead, or even that the epic is (The fact that Fox has officially ranked up more money then God thanks to Avatar would seem to dissuade this). I’m merely pointing out that it has been changed irrevocably. That’s OK the history of cinema is the history of Irrevocable change. The decade that begun with Gangs Of New York though, is now in the land of Avatar. Where the characters and land on which they walk has never even come remotely close to existing. It’s a landscape completely of the mind and the imagination, and I’m sure it will show us wonderful things and terrible things, just as the old style has shown us wonderful things and terrible things.

But ask yourself in twenty years will anyone even know how to make a film like Gangs Of New York? Will anyone even understand why you would want to? When I say I love Gangs Of New York best, it’s because to me it is synonymous with me saying I love the cinema best.

How fitting then that a film about the ending of eras should be in and of itself the grand ending of an era. As I said, my faith in the future of cinema is strong, but oh how I love to go back and look at its past, and how beautiful it all was.