J. Edgar

I first watched this in the theatre. I thought it was fascinatingwhich is why I purchased the blu ray dvd of this movie.The fact that J Edgar Hoover came up with the card catalog system inthe Library of Congress was interesting. Before the internet and computers,that saved countless minutes for millions of students searching for a book toresearch on in the future. This was used in every library in every State. Everyoneshould be grateful for that. The movie showed why he was fearful and strictwhen it came to enforcing the law. Anarchists and communists were thoughtto be a threat to the country. In the case of the anarchists in the early 1900s,they were a major part of history that has been virtually forgotten. The bombingsand threats to those in power can be seen clearly in the movie because of the anarchists.The shooting of the veterans parade and killing of World War I soldiers by anarchists hiddenon top of buildings, should be a parable on todays world.Nothing really changes, it just comes and goes, sometimesin circles. The idea of the movie is that he took it too far. A case can be made thathe didn't. The Bay of Pigs is overlooked in the movie and the wars in Korea and Southeast Asia. Notto mention the countless interventions in middle and south america or latin america.Clearly the government and the citizens also took the threats seriously. Yet, the moviedoesn't seem to go into this subject and seems to focus solely on the actions of one man,clearly taken out of context in the movie. I'm not sure if they were trying to make him look bad or what.They could have showed more of his accomplishments in the later years I believe. J Edgar Hoover had nothing to do with these typesof wars or interventions during the 1950s up to the early 1970s. He just secured the country from within, whichis what the FBI was suppose to do. So what exactly haschanged you may ask. Other than it seems to have gotten more bloated and powerfulin regards to the law than it has ever been, with each new threat towards us from any country or any one person.Maybe we can look upon this movie and notconjure up these thoughts but to look at it from the perspective of J Egar Hoover. To understandthat he did the right thing during the time he was living. Whatever faults he had and whateverhe could not reveal about his personal life at the time is revealed in the movie, but we shouldkeep in mind the good that he brought out.

This film is one of Eastwood's best directorial efforts, with its cool, detached mise-en-scene and muted, paled out monochrome cinematography (not warm colors, but cold, glassy grays and gun metal blues; the period set and costume designs are on target but not at all engaging as is any episode of "Boardwalk Empire", which is as accurate but titillatingly so, and thus the violence in "Boardwalk" is aestheticized like a Smithsonian diorama come to bloody life; I believe "Boardwalk" could have been influenced by "J Edgar"}. Instead, Eastwood makes that verisimilitude of Hoover's world seem like an absolute alien place, somewhat nauseatingly uncanny. This is fitting, since the past literally IS an alien place we did not live in. The violence of "J Edgar," unlike "Boardwalk," is mostly implied (fleeting and few are the scenes that let us see it, such as the savage beating by Hoover's agents of a communist in a bomb factory that the FBI raids), so the violence, I felt, is all the more horrifying because instead of seeing it, we get to FEEL it as it insinuates itself through the prism of a psychotic protagonist into our democracy, souring freedom and liberty and dissent with Hoover's pathetic paranoia and self righteousness. The violence ultimately is not physical but cultural and political: America is taken apart by this man, and we imagine, all the men like him; taken apart piece by piece and one blackmailed president at a time until in the end both Hoover and the United states Bill of Rights are misshapen, twisted, bloated, stiffened to a sclerotic and arthritic crawl across the rooms of the offices shown on the screen.What a horror film. I was caught off guard by just how horrified it made me feel. DiCaprio is perfect for the role of Hoover, because DiCaprio has always even in the full blush of his brat pack youth (the pansy 'Romeo and Juliette' romp he did years back, for instance and that insipid 'Titanic' crap that made him a celebrity) he always had a barely discernible thickness about the jaw and neck that came to the fore in "Gangs of New York" and then leaped full up in his face in later films), and the weight of his increasing gravitas as an actor (His work with Scorsese, for certain!) comes through roaring as his Hoover characterization ages, thickens, and fills out. It's like the Sinatra transformation America saw from the thin youth-fullness of Frank in "From Here to Eternity" to a hardened, round headed aging Frank in "The First Deadly Sin." It is stunning to see DiCaprio get aged and transformed as Hoover--as if we are looking at DiCaprio tapping into some part of HIMSELF that he will age into naturally in his own future.Supporting roles are competent here, but the tour de force is DiCaprio, and he carries them all, carries the production itself, across the finish line on his own two shoulders. It seems fitting. The monster who was Hoover did much the same with the real FBI: in his evolution into a golem. This film only benefits from Eastwood's decision to let everything in it, from actors to set and costume design, to soundtrack, to cinematography, revolve around DiCaprio's gradual transformation from a callow, awkward, virgin youth to an old, closeted, shuffling but shrewd manipulator of men's souls.Yes, I admit, as much as I am raving about this film I punked out, I couldn't finish it; it made me feel so horrified that, like watching the Zupruder film, you might have to turn away before the morbid, terrible end of it when Kennedy's head blows apart and lovely Jackie Kennedy scrambles across the back of the limo, no, NOT trying to save herself but horribly, trying to retrieve the pieces of her husband's head. It's real, it's true, but after a lifetime of seeing the Zupruder film I can no longer watch it all the way to the end. I had to stop watching "J. Edgar" for the same reason--I baied out on the final twenty minutes. I mean that as a tribute to this film, however, not a rebuke. It was so real, so true, so terrible, that I couldn't bear it. What greater achievement can we expect from real art works?