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EDITOR'S PICK
Rating:
****
Controversy surrounds public servants. Especially those who create, deal and
manipulate the secrets of those in power. J Edgar Hoover, founding father of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), thus has to be one of the most
controversial figures in American history, making the effort to film his life
difficult.
Director Clint Eastwood surprisingly manages a sympathetic, non-judgmental
portrait of one of 20th century`s most enigmatic figure, a man who not only
guarded the secrets of America, but had many hidden inside his own closet.
The past, like Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) says in the film, guides the future.
And so, Eastwood creates a montage of the past and present in an attempt to
project a complete picture of a man, who was perhaps both good and bad in equal
measure, a man whose greatness was matched only by his excesses and
manipulations.
One of the greatest controversies about the life of Hoover was his sexual
orientation. Thus any film would have had to take sides, and Eastwood does. Yet
he does so with a gentle, kind touch, rather than an accusatory one that the
world has made it out to be. After all we no longer live in a time when being
gay was a crime.
The film does not shy away from proving him wrong either. He was perhaps wrong
to hide inside a closet. But he was also wrong about many things, including
Martin Luther King Jr., which the film shows. Yet, it does not judge his
arm-twisting and blackmailing tactics that he used to ensure that FBI grew from
strength to strength, to safeguard the security of his country.
A man of firm convictions, he is strong at all times. The only two times he is
shown crying, are during his mother`s death and after meeting Richard Nixon. He
has been able to manipulate presidents before him, but in Nixon he finally meets
his match and he copiously sheds tears, knowing what a vile man Nixon is. Now
that we can watch history from a distance, we see that he was right. And writer
Dustin Lance Black uses this to absolve J. Edgar Hoover of his past sins.
DiCaprio excels in portraying this strong, frail man. Yet he falters while
depicting the old age of this man and his excellent makeup fails to hide the
tonality of his voice and movement that remains the same even when he ages.
Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts do a much better job in this department.
Here is a man who witnessed some of the most momentous moments of the 20th
century, of a technological age and an age when social justice came of age in
the world. Yet here is also a man whose true contributions to these events will
never be known. From his life, and from the film, we can only guess what they
perhaps were.
Considering that the US emerged superpower in the same century, it would not be
wrong to say that he, more than any single man in American history, affected its
politics, and thus history in ways that even rulers can`t. He was indeed,
perhaps, the most powerful man of the 20th century. And yet, he was also a man
trapped in the expectations of his mother, hiding inside a closet. Whatever
weaknesses the man might have had, but that `J. Edgar` manages to depict all of
these, is the film`s greatest strength.