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Thread ID: 5903 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2003-03-30
2003-03-30 21:42 | User Profile
Review: "Gangs of New York"
A film review of "Gangs of New York" I found on the web.
**Movie Review: "Gangs of New York"
I finally saw "Gangs of New York," and I wish that I had gone much sooner. "Gangs" is an absolutely magnificent movie, the best movie I have seen since "The Two Towers." It is Martin Scorsese's best movie -- ever. Better even than "Taxi Driver," which has been my favorite of his films until now. But "Gangs" is now closing its run in theaters all over the country, so see it if you still have the chance, for it is an unforgettable experience on the big screen.
I am in general agreement with Erik Meyer's letter about "Gangs" posted on the V-DARE site (http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_010503.htm), and I recommend that you read it.
"Gangs" is the story of the conflict between two criminals, Bill "the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day Lewis) and Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo di Caprio), in New York's "Five Points" during the American Civil War. Bill the Butcher is the head of the "Native Americans" gang, fighting for the interests of those who descended from the original settlers and founders of the United States against recent immigrants, primarily from Ireland. The immigrants are represented by the "Dead Rabbits," a gang led by "Priest" Vallon (Liam Neeson).
The prologue of "Gangs" is set around fourteen years before the main story. The Dead Rabbits and the Native Americans meet to settle, by the "ancient laws of combat," who has control over Five Points. The battle is the most savage and gut-wrenching I have seen on screen since "Braveheart." In the end Priest Vallon is mortally wounded and then dispatched by Bill the Butcher while young Amsterdam Vallon looks on in horror. Orphaned, he is taken to a reformatory, where he nurses his resentment, gets into a lot of fights, and dreams of revenge.
All grown up, Amsterdam returns to New York, joins Bill the Butcher's gang, and gains first his trust and then his love, becoming the son he never had. And the love of Bill the Butcher is not something to be spurned. Not because he is a dangerous criminal who might take revenge, but because he is a truly heroic and noble man, one of the most remarkable characters in film and literature -- ever. And his portrayal by Daniel Day Lewis is one of the greatest film performances -- ever. (Given the mounting exposure of Jewish evil in the world, it only makes sense that Lewis and Scorsese were passed over in the Oscars. The Jew Brody received the Best Actor and the Jew Polansky the Best Director Oscars for what must be the six millionth holocaust flick, "The Pianist.")
Torn between his feelings for Bill the Butcher, who is the greatest man he has ever met, and the dead father he barely knew, Amsterdam chooses revenge. Not that Amsterdam is unable to appreciate Bill the Butcher's greatness. But in the end he succumbs to his own smallness. His chosen method of revenge is equally small and cowardly. Instead of meeting Bill the Butcher in open combat, as "Priest" Vallon did, Amsterdam tries to assassinate the Butcher "like a sneak thief" with a throwing knife while he is celebrating the anniversary of his victory over the Priest.
It is an act of revenge that dishonors not only Amsterdam, but also his father, who was cut from the same noble stuff as Bill the Butcher. The Butcher respects him as the "only man he ever killed worth remembering." It is a brutal irony that Priest Vallon was better honored by the man who killed him than by the son who avenged him.
The assassination fails, and Bill the Butcher leaves Amsterdam alive, to experience the shame of his cowardice and defeat and perhaps to recover his honor, just as "Priest" Vallon once let a defeated Bill the Butcher live to redeem himself. The Butcher's mistake is that such tactics only work against honorable men, and Amsterdam Vallon is not an honorable man. Amsterdam Vallon is supposed to be the hero of this film, but he is utterly despicable, and he never redeems himself in the end.
"Gangs" proves that director Scorsese is a genius of subversion. Like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver," Bill the Butcher presents a coherent and compelling critique of the society of his time. And like Travis Bickle, Bill the Butcher is portrayed as a psychopath and a criminal. But both Bickle and The Butcher are alienated and "maladjusted" because they are idealists frustrated by the corruption of the world around them. They take to violence only because society falls short of their ideals. They see violence as the only way to restore the proper order of things. They are instruments of a higher justice, a justice that requires the system be overthrown.
Hollywood would never allow the sentiments of Travis Bickle or Bill the Butcher to be uttered by heroes, but they think it safe to put them in the mouths of villains. Smugly conventional people will, of course, dismiss anything said by a criminal or a "psycho," no matter how coherent and compelling. But people with minds accept the truth no matter who speaks it. People of honor admire heroism no matter who displays it.
Bill the Butcher is a far more articulate hero than Travis Bickle, and "Gangs" presents a far more complex criticism of American society than "Taxi Driver." According to Bill the Butcher, America is not an "idea" like freedom or equality. It is not a political or economic "system" like capitalism or democracy. America is an organic community, a community of blood: a community purchased by the blood of its founders to safeguard the blood of their posterity. Bill the Butcher's father spilled his blood fighting for America. Bill the Butcher was born in this country. And that, to his mind, should count for something. He has a birthright, a blood right, not a mere abstract "human" right that does not distinguish him from a Hottentot or a Papuan.
Because of his philosophy of Blood and Soil, Bill the Butcher is opposed to immigration. He sees immigration for what it was then, and what it is now: A tool by which raceless, rootless men dispossess Americans of their birthrights. In "Gangs" the two representatives of this type are Abraham Lincoln and Boss Tweed.
In a brilliant sequence, Scorsese shows how Lincoln's men took desperate young Irishmen right off one boat, enlisted them in the Union army to dispossess Southerners of their birthrights, and then loaded them onto another boat -- while at the same time offloading coffin upon coffin of his victims. This is why Bill the Butcher throws a knife into a poster of Lincoln at a performance of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." He sees that Lincoln's artificial "Union" devoted to the "proposition" of equality is the mortal enemy of an organic community based on blood. The blood of White men is more valuable than the blood of negroes. So there is no reason for White men to die for the freedom of negroes.
Boss Tweed uses immigrant votes to defeat nativist candidates, running the same people through the polls again and again until the votes cast outnumber the potential voters. Don't laugh. That is how your votes are being nullified today.
Another category of raceless profiteers on immigration are the businessmen who use it to depress wages, paying an Irishman a nickel to do the job an American once did for a dollar. Nothing, apparently, has changed.
The main objects of Bill the Butcher's wrath are the Irish, but it is clear that he opposes the Irish because they are immigrants, not the immigrants because they are Irish. Indeed, the man in the film he admires most is Priest Vallon, and he employs Irishmen in his gang. This is important to note, because one effect of "Gangs" is to exacerbate Irish resentment against the American establishment and a mindless attachment to open borders, because, after all, the Irish were unwelcome immigrants too. Just for the record: I love Irish people, Irish literature, and Irish folk music. But that does not blind me to what I like to call "the Irish Question."
There is an Irish Question for the same reason that there is a Jewish Question: the Irish are good at holding grudges, and they have carried their grudge against the English to America, directing it against the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who founded and used to run this country. The divisive presence of the Irish was an important factor in the rise of our present Jew-dominated system, and although the Irish are slated for eventual extermination along with the rest of us, they still enjoy a higher status in the propasphere than any other White ethnic group.
That's why we all know when Saint Patrick's Day is, but not Saint George's Day. That's why on television and in the movies so many of the positive White characters (crusading liberal attorneys, meddling social workers, sensitive cops, and all manner of career girls) have Irish names. That's why the multicultural "Rainbow Confederates" of the League of the South promote the myth of a "Celtic" Confederacy in a pathetic attempt to align themselves with a Jew-approved White ethnic category, which in effect would assure them only of being on the LAST cattle car to the extermination camps.
In this context, Amsterdam Vallon can be seen, not merely as an individual Irishman, but as a symbol of the Irish Question. He has inherited a grudge. He is sick with self-pity and eaten up by resentment. He tosses his Bible in the river when released from the reformatory, but uses the Catholic Church as a rallying place when it suits him politically. He even prays for victory. In his resentment against Bill the Butcher, the American of Blood and Soil, he allows himself to be used by Boss Tweed, the rootless System man, to strip Americans of their birthrights. He is too stupid, or too blinded by his own pettiness, to see that the system he is aiding will in the end destroy him and his kind too.
The fact that the same System is at war with both Americans and immigrants is underscored by the backdrop of the film's climax: the great New York draft riots of 1863. When the System began to draft men into the Union army, but allowed the rich to buy exemptions, the poor rioted. Politicians and negroes were lynched; the military was called in to restore order; thousands were killed. Scorsese's handling of the riots is brilliant. (They were especially satisfying to me because he smashes and burns all the props and accessories from his worst movie, "The Age of Innocence." These were so obtrusive that the film seemed like a cross between Merchant-Ivory and the Home Shopping Network.)
"Gangs" has been criticized because the riots overwhelm and literally obscure the battle between Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam Vallon. But that's the point. The great tragedy of this film is the tragedy of the White race as a whole: We are divided by language, culture, religion, and ancient, senseless grudges, which drive the best of us -- the Bill the Butchers and Priest Vallons -- to slaughter each other, when we should be uniting to destroy the System that was, and still is, destroying us. **
2003-03-31 05:53 | User Profile
Great review.
I agree with most of what the author says. A couple of points:
I didn't think that this was a great film - certainly not Scorsese's best. The film lacked clear plot and character development - it meandered about a main point and to my mind sort of fizzled out at the end. The essence of the riot - as far as I understand it - was an Irish reaction against blacks. I understand that hundreds of blacks were lynched. This was a very important point that was whitewashed in the film. It illustrates the main point that while the Irish can come inside American society, blacks are really incapable of it. We really can't get along. The Irish are one sort of problem to American assimilation, blacks are quite another. There's a natural limit to assimilation, and while we may have come close to it with the Irish, and by implication with Scorsese's Italians, we clearly went well beyond the limit with blacks, as the lynching of hundreds of free negroes in New York illustrated. Scorsese pulled that punch, and to my mind the film is reduced for it.
I agree that the Irish question was an extremely important one in the 19th century. Lincoln believe that the new American ethny would come from the assimilation of all European peoples into the original Anglo-Saxon matrix. I agree with that point. America needed immigrants to settle quickly the west before it got settled by others and to staff its enormous industrial potential, and it needed those settlers to be white and Christian in order to have a chance at assimilation. To wait for natural population increase would mean to miss the train to greatness, and so Lincoln and others wisely chose to bring in massive numbers of European Christians, like the Irish, Germans, Italians, French, Poles, Ukrainians and others who answered the call.
It was a risky experiment: could the American nation assimilate all of them without turning into a Balkanized Babael? The only hope of success was to make sure that the immigrants were as assimilible as possible - they had to be white and Christian, that seemed clear. The main task of these new immigrants was to lose their former identities as quickly as possible and to become Americans; i.e. to identify with the original founders as their ancestors. The main job of the American state was to civilize the new immigrants and teach them American political traditions. For the most part the experiment succeeded. To the extent that the Irish remained Irish and nursed their old grudges, the experiment failed.
To my mind American history proves that you can take white and Christian Europeans of all stripes in large numbers and induce them with a little time to abandon their old loyalties and to become American through and through - recognizing Washington and Jefferson as their forefathers. While the Irish took a bit longer than others to assimilate - they're Irish after all - the experiment was a resounding success in nearly all respects. We have 200 million white Americans, and if it weren't for massive white immigration we'd be a much reduced nation facing a very big world.
Just as clearly American history proves that assimilation does not work with blacks and Jews. This is clear. I suspect the American experiment will fail with Mexicans, although the jury's still out on that one, but early indications indicate like we'll have a terrible mess on our hands from Mexican immigration.
In my opinion, we need to recognize that white Christian Americans are the core of the American ethny, no matter what part of Christendom their blood ancestors hailed from. I'm an American, and my spiritual ancestors are Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Lee. I'm one of the Butcher's boys, even though there's not a drop of English blood in me (as far as I know). America isn't a "propositional" country - it is a "blood and soil" nation as the Butcher insisted. It's just that the Butcher didn't realize that he could make the Irish his own.
Walter
2003-03-31 13:59 | User Profile
There is an Irish Question for the same reason that there is a Jewish Question: the Irish are good at holding grudges, and they have carried their grudge against the English to America, directing it against the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who founded and used to run this country.
"Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis." - Brendan Behan
[SIZE=3]Remember Fontenoy![/SIZE]
2003-04-01 14:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by Walter Yannis@Mar 30 2003, 23:53 **In my opinion, we need to recognize that white Christian Americans are the core of the American ethny, no matter what part of Christendom their blood ancestors hailed from. **
But there is no longer an "America".
It has been displaced by what is properly referred to as "Greater Judea"- as realms are named for their conquering elites rather than for the commoners (Frank-reich, Angle-terre, Chin-a, etc.).
The "core" needs to overcome and take command of itself.
2003-04-01 16:00 | User Profile
The problem with "Gangs" [which is still worth seeing if only to see the Five Points set that was built] is one that's apallingly common these days: it goes on too long. I've got nothing against 3-hour movies - in fact "goes on too long" doesn't refer to length but to pushing a good story beyond its margins for error. How many movies have I seen in the past 5 or 10 years that had me completely absorbed 3/4 of the way in, only to badly stumble by not knowing when and where to stop? TRAINING DAY, CASTAWAY, A.I., THE TRUMAN SHOW, FRAILTY, etc, etc. They all hit that wall, hard, and the first thing jarred loose is either your suspension of disbelief or your goodwill towards the film entirely.
Nevertheless, GANGS is a Scorsese picture, which means - even it meanders too long - it does so in an artistic and intelligent way. As with all of his period pictures, the past matters to him,and that's reflected in every area of the production.
2003-04-01 19:43 | User Profile
na Gaeil is gile I write as one raised by a father brain-washed by the brothers at West Catholic in Philadelphia. My father regarded himself an Irish nationalist despite never having set foot in Ireland . At one time I espoused the same values, but after some exposure to history switched almost entirely to the English side. Lately I have returned almost to the middle, but still slightly favor the English side.
**No account of the period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century could possibly be thought of as complete without some reference to George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. That a child of Irish immigrants would be named for the founder of the American republic has shown how far we are from that time. In the present era blacks have been the ones who honor American political figures although names like Malik, Abdullah, and Rasheed seemed to have supplanted old favorites such as Roosevelt or Jefferson. The Irish have settled for more mundane names like John or Matthew, or have reverted to the Gaelic Sean or Liam.
[color=blue]Plunkitt proudly recounted that when the Spanish-American War broke out, John J. Scannell of Tammany wrote Governor Black of New York state offering to raise a Tammany regiment to go to the front. Plunkitt to prove his boast that Tammany was always on deck when the country needed its services offered as validation the beautiful set of engrossed resolutions about this regiment which were on display at Tammany Hall. Plunkitt graciously allowed the Governor did not accept their offer, but took umbrage at the suggestion by Tammany's enemies the offer of volunteers was made only after the Governor made clear no more volunteers were needed.[/color]
Plunkitt's definition of patriotism did provide some insight as to what motivated these builders of the American dream. The highest form of patriotism was to be seen at the Tammany Fourth of July celebration when the patriotism of long suffering and endurance was displayed. Four or five thousand men would sit listening to speeches in the hottest place this side of hell for four hours all the while knowing that only two flights downstairs were beer and champagne to slake their thirst. The heat never bothered this crowd, but the real hero was the Grand Sachem. Unlike the ordinary Sachems who could remove their stovepipe hats, the Grand Sachem had to wear his silk hat the entire four hours in 110 degree heat and look pleasant. It was Plunkitt's considered opinion the life of one former Grand Sachem, Justice Smyth of the Supreme Court, was shortened by this Fourth of July ritual, and he added one Sachem refused the highest office because he could not work up sufficient patriotism for the four hour hat act. This obligatory display of perseverance and courage probably insured the leader of Tammany would be a son of the auld sod. (I cannot imagine an American of Italian or English lineage passing this test of masculinity. [color=purple]**God Bless the Irish **[/color]) [An obituary in the New York Times made no mention of Civil War Service for Plunkitt, though he was of age.]
To establish a frame of reference for his interviewer Plunkitt dismissed heroism on the battlefield as something that passed in a moment and remarked tartly, "You ain't got time to be anything but heroic - ... What man wouldn't rather face a cannon for a minute or two than thirst for four hours". The name-parted-in-the-middle aristocrats were dismissed as do-gooders who made sure they were out of the city when the Fourth came. In sharp contrast Plunkitt remembered the 1904 celebration when Tammany originated the custom of giving each man who entered the hall for the celebration a small flag. The men waved their flags whenever they cheered and the sight made Plunkitt so patriotic he forgot about civil service for a while.
For those not willing to dismiss Plunkitt as just an unscrupulous scallywag the obituary of William Collins Whitney should provide some defense. The death of Mr. Whitney in February 1904 brought forth this encomium in Harper's Weekly. After noting his birth in July 1841 and his matriculation at Yale in 1859, the writer lauded Mr. Whitney for his competition in scholastic honors with William Graham Sumner and their sharing the prize for English essays. Upon graduation in 1863 Whitney bettered Sumner for the post of class orator. One wondered if the horrors or burdens of the Civil War entered his speech on commencement day. From Yale Whitney went to Harvard Law School from which he graduated in 1865. From Harvard he went to New York City where he joined forces fighting the ascendancy of Boss Tweed of Tammany. From this praiseworthy start he went on to become Secretary of the Navy where he started the build-up of the American navy. Returning to New York City he devoted himself to the task of consolidating the surface rails in Manhattan. The obituary writer thought it quite possible no American had been equipped to enjoy such pleasures as life has to offer. Very few Americans ever had the combination of great qualities of heart and mind that Whitney had.
In the entire article there was no mention of the Civil War. If Whitney's non-participation in the greatest and most important event in American history was of any importance, no hint of approbation came through in the article. Astute new-comers and immigrants, most especially Jews, quickly picked-up the cold fact that while many American bluebloods would decry such behavior in the lower classes, such lack of courage was perfectly acceptable from one of their own. Very few of the established lower classes would challenge the claim of the Whitneys to rule as they had long attained the deference that Americans give to wealth and those who possess it, almost with no regard as to how they obtained it. His classmate, Professor Sumner, had opined that millionaires are the product of natural selection acting on the whole body of men: "they get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society".
After the battle of Gettysburg when Morgan was drafted, he did arrange to pay a substitute $300 so that he need not expose himself to danger . When done on such a large scale, these briberies contributed greatly to the draft riots of 1863 when the immigrant and other lower classes reacted violently against what they perceived as an unfair quota system. The draft riots disturbed the affluent. Forty years later a history of Columbia University described the draft riot as a "formidable uprising of the unpatriotic, ignorant and vicious classes in the city". It must be noted that only three percent of those drafted reported for induction. The others received exemptions for health, paid for a substitute, or sought commutation.**
Establishment historian James McPherson of Princeton maintained that the poor bought their way out of service as easily as the rich.
Columbia's President was Nicholas Murrary Butler> **President of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, had taken to lecturing the men's Bible class of the Riverside Church in New York City about American responsibility and the world condition. Addressing Harry Emerson Fosdick and his congregants of the Rockefeller sponsored church, Mr. Butler told them that Thomas Jefferson opposed slavery and civil war resulted from that institution. The assembled were informed that they were citizens of the greatest most powerful nation on earth and one with the oldest and best-tested form of government. When Americans were told to mind our own business, they were instructed to inform those curs that "our business is the business of all our fellow men", and we would not stand by and permit slaughter, murder, arson because the offended did not happen to our brother or sister. This pretentious oratory was uttered in February, 1939 before war broke out in Europe.
Widely esteemed, Doctor Butler was president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Membre de l'Institut de France and the aggressively bellicose president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Conceived in the opening months of the Civil War and born in April 1862, Doctor Butler had a full life. He proudly wrote of his father's birth in 1833 and the marriage of his parents in October 1860. He noted that shortly afterwards Fort Sumter had been fired upon, and President Lincoln had called for volunteers. His father had been one of the first in Paterson, New Jersey to volunteer, but unfortunately was passed over because he was a married man. This did not deter his father who earnestly entered war work to support Lincoln and the cause. What he did was not specified by his son. In his autobiography Doctor Butler did not attempt to explain why his father was not motivated by the battle at Gettysburg and the perilous state of the union to try to offer his services once again. Towards the end of the war his father was publicly humiliated by having his name drawn in the draft. <span style='color:red'><i>By that time he had contracted an illness which made it necessary for him to provide a substitute for the few remaining "weeks" of the conflict. The illness was not specified by his son, and no mention was made as to what happened to the substitute. One must suppose the son got his red-hot patriotism from his father.</i></span> In the nineteenth century to become president of Columbia University one had to be an Episcopalian. To realize his ambition Doctor Butler abandoned his minister grandfather's Presbyterianism and embraced the faith of his betters. He had blessed the Spanish-American War by proclaiming America had entered it "in the most unselfish spirit and from the loftiest motives". He had run for Vice President of the United States in 1912 as a Republican against the tickets of his onetime chum, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Doctor Butler possessed what he called "the international mind". His admirers insisted he once steered England through a crisis in the House of Lords. At the onset of World War I Butler was a pacifist, but by the end he was demanding universal military training. During that war he had committed himself so wholeheartedly he had labeled Senator La Follette a "traitor" for his determination to stay out of the war.
In March 1939 Mr. Butler had unburdened himself to The Pilgrims Society of the United States and urged them to consider where the next capital of the western world would be located. Not surprisingly he had chosen the isle of Manhattan as the next capital of the western world. The seat of thought and of inspiration and guidance for the peoples of the planet would be right where he lived and worked. He told his fellow Pilgrims that the Bill of Rights would be the Magna Carta of the twentieth century and the choice was between despotism and the Bill of Rights. The 700 years of the Magna Carta would be supplanted by enlightened application by an energetic, inspired America. The myths of the nobility of the American upper classes have survived through the years. Within half a century the New York City of Butler had dedicated itself to becoming the capital of the third world.**
The American upper class has never had an aristocratic tradition save the ante-bellum South. We have been led by poltroons such as Butler, Morgan and now, the Jews.
2003-04-08 07:38 | User Profile
Gangs of New York deals with the tribal nature of man better than any movie made in the last 10 years. Ethnic tribalism is just one factor ,class tribalism of rich and poor , different "tribes" of police and firemen battling it out for turf.
I agree that the Daniel Day Lewis character is the unsung hero of the movie and the story itself proves him right on the dangers of immigration.
As much as ol' Marty might want to, the artist in him won't let him demonize such a character like a Jewish director would.
2003-04-23 02:38 | User Profile
Originally posted by rban@Apr 22 2003, 19:40 ** What this film proves beyond a shadow of a doubt is that most minorities who came to America were violent criminals who caused great harm to the nation. We would have been better off with peaceful Hindus all along. **
Hindus are much more peaceful. Burning a bride to death because her dowry is insufficient is one of the many customs that we should adopt from these superhumans.
"In Delhi, a woman is burned to death almost every twelve hours ...": [url=http://www.indianchild.com/dowry_in_india.htm]http://www.indianchild.com/dowry_in_india.htm[/url]
[url=http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nyt122600.cfm]http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nyt122600.cfm[/url]
[url=http://pub58.ezboard.com/fikonkarfrm3.showMessage?topicID=43.topic]http://pub58.ezboard.com/fikonkarfrm3.show...opicID=43.topic[/url]
Rban is a troll. No doubt about it.
2003-04-23 02:48 | User Profile
In regards to this movie, does the term "Token Negro" ring any bells? Can they make any movie without one??