Catholics love a paradox. Maybe that’s why they love Martin Scorsese.
This is a man who met Pope Francis multiple times, who has made projects about Christ, missionaries and the lives of the saints, who did the Spiritual Exercises with James Martin, S.J.. But he is also famous for films about the worst of humanity: difficult, violent men who sell their souls cheaply and don’t count the cost until it’s too late. He is, most likely, the first name you think of when someone brings up Catholic filmmakers; he was also accused of being anti-Christian for his 1998 film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which EWTN founder Mother Angelica called “the most Satanic movie that’s ever been filmed.” Martin Scorsese contains multitudes, to say the least.
“Mr. Scorsese,” the new five-episode “film portrait” on Apple TV+ directed by Rebecca Miller, examines the many contradictory facets of Scorsese’s artistic persona. Miller takes us on a chronological tour of Scorsese’s career, with interviews with collaborators, friends, family and Scorsese himself, all the while offering insight into his creative process, philosophical preoccupations and personal growth. We see Scorsese the director, but also Scorsese the father, the lover, the friend, the sinner, the penitent and, yes, Scorsese the Catholic.
The series begins with Scorsese’s childhood in New York’s vibrant Italian neighborhoods, growing up around the wiseguys and marginal crime figures who would one day populate many of his films. His local church, St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, was right down Mulberry Street from the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan’s Little Italy, a popular mafia hangout. From an early age, he learned that the sacred and profane can and do exist on the same block.
In interview segments, Scorsese describes his youthful Catholicism as a relief from the chaotic, often violent world of the streets: “There was serenity and there was ritual and I was a part of the ritual.” After his parents, his first mentor was a young parish priest, the Rev. Francis Principe, who encouraged his love for art as a way of imagining life beyond the neighborhood and inspired him to (briefly) pursue religious life.
Of course, it was another vocation that claimed his heart. And while it isn’t described as such until the penultimate episode, it’s clear throughout that Scorsese views filmmaking as his vocation. “You have this gift and you’re utilizing the gift, and that’s a sacred thing,” he says.
But if Miller’s portrait is a hagiography, it’s a complicated one. She presents Scorsese as the archetypal auteur director, full of talent and passion and a preternatural visual imagination. But she also shines a spotlight on his many close collaborators and how their work creates what we understand as Scorsese’s style. There’s Thelma Schoonmaker (the Oscar-winning editor who has cut nearly all of his films since college), screenwriters Paul Schrader and Nicholas Pileggi and stars like Daniel Day-Lewis (who is married to Miller), Leonardo DiCaprio and, of course, Robert De Niro.
Alongside his triumphs, Miller shows us his struggles, professional and personal: the films that flopped, the “Last Temptation” boycott, the broken marriages, his penchant for sacrificing relationships for his art. Actress Isabella Rossellini, who was married to Scorsese for four years, describes him best, in a phrase that serves as the title of the series’s third episode: “I always say Marty is a saint-sinner.” His saintliness appears in his lifelong spiritual hunger, which finds its most obvious expression in films like “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Kundun” and “Silence.” When a studio executive asked why he wanted to make “The Last Temptation,” Scorsese responded, “I want to get to know Jesus better.” But like the Mafia club down the block from a cathedral, he is constantly drawn toward sin, and the stories of sinners.
Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver,” Jake LaMotta of “Raging Bull,” Jordan Belfort of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the gangsters of “Goodfellas,” “Mean Streets” and “The Irishman”—Scorsese’s most iconic “heroes” are violent and morally reprehensible. Some critics accuse him of glorifying them, but that is only because his films are so deeply immersed in their perspectives, refusing to view them from an objective, judgmental distance. He tells Miller that he is compelled by the stories of “the despised, the dispossessed.” Discussing “Raging Bull,” Scorsese’s friend and collaborator Jay Cocks uses language from the Gospel of Matthew: “Loving the least of these. Marty found a way to love this guy…. Marty was not only capable of finding it, but transmitting it.” We’re not meant to approve of Bickle, LaMotta or Belfort—but Scorsese invites us to experience a profound, almost scandalous, empathy for them.
The diversity and complexity of Scorsese’s career also provides the series with its biggest problem: namely, that there just isn’t enough time to get into it all. Consequently, some of his films get short shrift (“After Hours” and “Cape Fear,” notably, and “Hugo” goes entirely unreferenced). By the time we reach his most recent film, the staggering “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the series is in wrap-up mode: We see behind-the-scenes footage of the production, but the film itself receives no proper discussion.
We also only get a brief glimpse into Scorsese’s remarkable work with the Film Foundation, the film preservation nonprofit that he founded that has restored more than 900 films, some thought lost. This, too, is a part of his vocation: a reverence for film as an artform that feels sacramental. That the series doesn’t dig into it feels like a missed opportunity.
Because the series profiles a living artist, it also has no real ending. That leaves the finale feeling a little abrupt, but I’ll admit I took some comfort in it as well. Over the course of the five episodes, you get a sense of Scorsese as a man on pilgrimage, fumbling toward something holy, beset by obstacles and detours but always finding his way back to the road again. “But by the time you understand your faith, you’ll be dead,” he says in the final episode. “The only thing is, you keep making progress.”
The journey isn’t over yet. Martin Scorsese still has progress, and movies, to make. Thank God for that.
“Mr. Scorsese” debuts on Apple TV+ on Oct. 17.
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