MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

J. Edgar   Rated R

Directed by Clint Eastwood.  Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts

Photo: Warner Brothers
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

 The story of J. Edgar Hoover and his dominant influence on the Federal Bureau of Investigation would make for an interesting movie.  Unfortunately, J. Edgar is not that film.

The film starts off well enough with a flashback to 1919, showing how Hoover (DiCaprio), a librarian for the Library of Congress, was outraged by bombings of the Attorney General’s home as well as other attacks by Communist radicals.  Hoover is motivated to turn his skills at gathering and sorting information into developing a system for national security, including using fingerprints as part of a database.  Once Hoover gets going, his rise to the top of the agency is destined.  He takes credit for the capture of John Dillinger and other gangsters, events that will later be disputed. In the 1960s Hoover will tangle with the Kennedys as well as Martin Luther King Jr., using surveillance equipment and his agency in his opposition to their leadership.  This is interesting stuff.

Alas, instead of telling the documented story of J. Edgar, writer Dustin Lance Black (who wrote a great screenplay for 2008’s biopic Milk) spends most of the script’s 2 ¼ hr. running time exploring  J. Edgar’s psychological and sexual hang-ups.  J. Edgar is raised by a strong-willed mother (Judi Dench) who sees her son’s great potential.  When Hoover’s marriage proposal is rebuffed by Helen Gandy (Watts), he hires her as his personal secretary and she is loyal to him for life.  The film is the most speculative about Hoover’s close friendship with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) and intimates that there was a same-sex attraction that was a key component of their love for one another.

But it’s all made-up stuff, and I had the same problems with J. Edgar as I had with Oliver Stone’s 1995 film Nixon and 2008 film W.  I would rather have a film that goes gloriously over the top with fictitious stand-ins for historical figures (like 1998’s Primary Colors meditation on Bill Clinton or 1941’s Citizen Kane’s take on William Randolph Hearst) than a serious-minded “important” film like J. Edgar.

The cast members all give good performances, but I quickly found DiCaprio’s mannered speech as Hoover a tad hard to take; the pace of the film soon hits the same slow cadence and maintains it for the entire running time.  J. Edgar is evocative of 1941’s Citizen Kane with its flashbacks and attempts to discover the real man behind the legend.  It seems that there have been no improvements in ageing makeup in seventy years; in some of the later scenes, Clyde Tolson looks like the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt.  The film also goes over the top with the romantic tension between Hoover and Tolson, bringing in the strings on occasion.  The whole film is shot in a washed-out sepia that suggests that Eastwood really wanted to make a black and white film but couldn’t go all the way.  J. Edgar, I predict, will either be quickly forgotten or over time become a camp classic.  I was never a great fan of the real J. Edgar Hoover, but he certainly deserves better than this. 

Pitchfork/Halo Ratings:

Two halos Some good performances and set design can’t make up for the deficiencies of this docudrama.)

Two pitchforks: Confused sexuality, some strong swearing late in the movie.

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