Once Upon A Time In America

365 Films

Entry #157

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

Directed by Sergio Leone

              Here we finally come to the completion of Sergio Leone’s second trilogy with Once Upon A Time In America.   I will completely understand the confusion for I have not only left an enormous gap between blog entries, but I have also begun with Mr. Leone’s final trilogy of work.  It’s sort of like starting at the end of a puzzle and then waiting a month only to start right back up again at the end.  If that analogy works I’m going to submit it to urban dictionary so please let me know if it does in the comments section.  Magnum opus doesn’t even begin to describe Once Upon A Time In America.  It is a film so big that it can’t even be contained in its mammoth run time of three hours and forty-nine minutes.  A recent Cannes premiere of a four-hour plus cut only substantiates the theory that Leone had more movie to put in this than any single movie can take.  Fitting that it was his final film because I can’t think of a better send off for this larger than life cinematic presence.  Trying to condense a coherent series of thoughts from this film in the space of a few measly sentences is futile at best and insulting to the work at worse.  Therefore, I will attempt a sort of free form, free associative series of thoughts and observations on the final work of Mr. Leone and hope in some small way to at least inspire someone who stumbles on this blog to seek it out and make a night of viewing it.  In a recent conversation I had with a friend about the film he said it simply and rather eloquently: “That movie is a bummer.  That movie bums me out.”  That observation really got to the heart of the film for me because it is so wonderfully easy to spot the exhilarating spectacle of Leone’s filmmaking abilities.  The sets, the Morricone music (seriously one of the most moving film scores ever created), and the sweeping scope of Leone’s camera, collectively work their hardest to indulge in the kind of myth making he seems intent to destroy and burn to cinders.  It’s a similar approach to Once Upon A Time In The West only that film seemed to be clinging to one last vestige of hope for the way of a certain kind of life in the old west whereas this film is most decidedly an Eastern and one that seems to suggest the entire foundation of this country was and always will be rotten to the core.  Leone’s last three films all work as a triptych exploration of a land that seemingly both intoxicated and repulsed the Italian filmmaker.  And the elements that intoxicated him were more firmly situated in the fantastical Hollywood realm of our national psyche.  Once Upon A Time In America is the final attempt to wrestle both of those contradictory impulses to the ground.  Is it successful in doing so?  I don’t think I’m quite equipped yet to answer that question but what I do know is that, like a lot of the films on this blog, it’s boundary pushing imperfections make it the awe inspiring and immortal work of art that it is and always will be. If you’ll kindly indulge me in a bit of a rant, I would like to make the suggestion that perfection if highly over rated.  If anybody can remind me of a “perfect” film please do so in the comments below this post.  The idea has always been silly to me because everybody’s ideas of perfection are so wildly unique and personal that it seems a moot point to ever label a work as such.  To that extent, I also happen to find imperfect films usually more fascinating and much more rewarding in the department of conversation ignition.  Imperfect works are also always much more indicative of their creators because human beings are by definition imperfect so why should we ask our films, literature, or any other art form to rise above the status of their creators.  This is not to say people should stop seeking perfection, but only that in the pursuit of perfection does one ever push themselves beyond any standard definition of the word and into an entirely different stratosphere.  One where, in a film such as this for example, each cut seems like the work of human hands spilling open the contents of their brains and attempting to sort out the mess through images, music, and dialogue.  Those are the kinds of films that always attract me and they are why I’ll always return to Once Upon A Time In America.  Even if I never see the “complete” cut or whatever new permutation someone believes to be Leone’s final word on the matter, I’ll always recognize that film contains everything I love most about cinema.  So forgive me if this particular entry is entirely haphazard and completely without form or content.  I was trying to approximate the kind of feelings that this particular film inspires.  I don’t want to say it’s a kind of lost art of filmmaking, because somebody will bring it back someday.  But it makes the process of breaking it down element by element for a casual analysis very difficult for me.  I’m sure there is a plethora of great writing out there both pro and con for the film.  I just love this film for it’s championing of the myth of America but also its mourning of all the ways in which we, as Americans, have thoroughly failed that myth.