The film charts the course of J. Edgar Hoover’s long and controversial career at the FBI, from humble beginnings, and ends with his lasting legacy in the form of a strong government agency and the eternal condemnation of those he has destroyed to get there. J. Edgar charts American law and order in his half-century of influence, from the early Communist scare in the form of political radical Emma Goldman, and ending with the outset of the Watergate scandal. His life is influenced by three key figures in his life: his mother (Dame Judi Dench), his lifelong personal secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and his right-hand man and rumoured lover, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer of The Social Network). We see the agency grow along with his power, and come to view his life’s work as a reflection of his own indomitable, unyielding personality. Directed by Eastwood with his usual deliberate pace and written by Milk’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the film adheres to Eastwood aesthetic and narrative speed so faithfully that the viewer doesn’t notice that a half-century has passed by, condensed into 137 minutes.
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| Clyde Tolson (Hammer) and J. Edgar Hoover (DiCaprio) |
Here’s where the film can lose its audience. Eastwood’s unhurried style has worked well with intimate dramas such as Million Dollar Baby, Changeling and Letters from Iwo Jima (still, in my opinion, his magnum opus), but by following Hoover around for two and a quarter hours, with intensity and all of the attendant quirks of an unbalanced, repressed man, the effect is of finding oneself trapped in a corner of a house party with a guest who doesn’t understand that just because he’s talking at you, that doesn’t mean that you’re actually paying attention to anything he says. Thankfully, DiCaprio is absolutely compelling to watch as he ages along with the character and starts to look, in heavy makeup, like a strong cross between Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles towards the end of his life. Tom Cruise might have cornered the market on playing intensity, but DiCaprio seems to have taken over that specialty these days. Thankfully, he infuses Hoover with an indomitable steel will that allows him to suppress any true romantic feelings towards anyone (man or woman) to the point that it manifests in thinly veiled contempt for humanity and increasing paranoia. DiCaprio, sporting a 1920s Brahmin accent that becomes increasingly out of place as the twentieth century progresses, continues to demonstrate why he’s fast becoming one of our greatest actors. Otherwise, I’d have left the room long ago.
The film’s art direction and aesthetics arguably enhance and detract from the proceedings. This is a film taking place in endless series of corridors, long hallways and grim government offices, with little to no natural light seeping through the obfuscated windows. The effect is that Hoover was a man so egotistical, that he was so obsessed with legacy, that his entire life has been a big setup for his own death. In that case, to service and burnish his public image into immortality, it appears that he has busily commenced embalming himself early by deadening all of his natural proclivities and making his surroundings into a sarcophagus. It’s rather coincidental and unfortunate, then, that the film proceeds at a pace that would make a funeral march lively in comparison.
