THE FUNERAL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In large part this is an old
fashioned anti-crime morality tale. Abel Ferrara
does some of his best directorial work to date in
this story of a family of three gangster brothers.
When the youngest of the brothers is murdered and
eldest has to avenge the crime, the family begins
to disintegrate. The dark piece of cinema, in tone
and in lighting, looks at each of the three
brothers, each with his own viewpoint on violence
and in an odd way his own brand of idealism. This
is a violent film, occasionally graphically.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
In 1936 the Tempio brothers are three small-time criminal enforcers, first generation immigrants from Italy. Ray (played by Christopher Walken) is by default the patriarch of the family and controls the others with a heavy hand. He is quiet and introspective. Chez (Chris Penn) is volatile and given to short emotional bursts. The youngest was Johnny (Vincent Gallo) who developed a social conscience and was leaning toward the Communists whose meetings he had visited. I say "was" since as the film opens Johnny is being brought into the house of his brother Ray in a coffin. Johnny has been murdered and Ray knows that it is his job to track down the murderer. This is not directly for revenge, but because in the philosophy he has been taught the killer has to eliminate anyone who might be coming after him in vengeance. These are the Old Country values that at the age of thirteen back in Italy Ray was told he must learn to run the family when his father died. His responsibilities at that young age included the cold-blooded execution of a family enemy. So Ray and Chez must find out who killed their twenty-two-year-old younger brother. The story is told in present action and in extended flashbacks. The screenplay by Nicholas St. John delves into the forging of the violent family with scenes from Ray's childhood and the action in the month or so leading up to the killing of Johnny. It also shows how the violence of the family poisons each remaining brother's family life. Ray is married to Jeanette (Annabella Sciorra), as intelligent as her husband and just as assertive. She rages against the pain while Chez's wife Clara (Isabella Rossellini) quietly bears all. THE FUNERAL is like a de-romanticized THE GODFATHER on a smaller scale, and often with more believable conflict and more realistic dialogue.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film was Vincent Gallo's performance. He plays with a certain tension just beneath the surface and has a lively performance style and an unforgettable--not to say "homely"--face. The face and style remind one of the early performances of John Turturro. Director Abel Ferrara probably has some of the best performances of any of his films in THE FUNERAL. He has overcome some of the self-indulgent over-acting in films like MS. 45. Some of the most effective performances come from the actresses playing the two wives, Annabella Sciorra and Isabella Rossellini, reacting differently as they see their lives unraveling as their husbands are pulled into the events that follow the killing. Only Christopher Walken, in the top-billed role, seems a trifle too reserved for the proceedings.
Nicholas St. John's screenplay has some nice touches. Each of the brothers has his own style of idealism and his feeling of how things ought to be. These interpretations are based in large part on each's views of Catholicism and each's responsibility to the family. Ferrara has a penchant for melodrama and this film has it, though it has always been hard to do a gangster films without a least some melodrama. Ferrara is a sort of outsider as a filmmaker. He was not aiming at making one of the great gangster classics, he just wanted to tell a superficially simple story and create some characters of some depth. This is not an ambitious film, but there certainly are some nice touches. I would give it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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