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Title: J. Edgar
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is some brief strong language as well as some references regarding J. Edgars sexuality. Recommended for ages 14 and up. |
Thirty nine years after the death of J. Edgar Hoover, people remain fascinated by him. He was a very private man who didn't let people know much about his personal life, but he sure made it a point to know yours. For him, information was power, and the more information he had about you the more he could control you. Clint Eastwood's “J. Edgar” is likewise a fascinating film despite the fact that there's no way he could know whether half the stuff in Dustin Lance Black's screenplay is true. There are strong rumors that Hoover was a cross dresser who also happened to be a closeted homosexual. The movie doesn't delve into the crossdressing seriously, but it does believe the rumors of his sexuality.
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However, don't take this to mean that this is a movie that is about a closeted gay man. This is a movie about an intensely private man who created a system that would suppress people's freedoms including his own. Growing up his mother (Judi Dench) would tell a young J. Edgar that he was going to do something special and restore glory to the family name. Years later he is grown man (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), and his proudest achievement is a card filing system he developed at the library. He's so proud of this, he even brings a date to the library to show her how well the system works and how much easier it is to find books.
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This is not a personal man, so things things like marriage and going out to drink with friends is a foreign concept to him. The closest relationship he has is with Clyde Tolson (Arnie Hammer), who he dines with, vacations with, and shares his secrets with. The movie doesn't show them having sex, but it does hint strongly at a loving relationship. It does show Hoover dating women though, which seems to be in conflict with his bachelor lifestyle. It's the relationships that make “J. Edgar” such a strange film to watch. We sense that J. Edgar is not what he claims to be, but he's so private he won't even open up in his personal life. We get the feeling that he loves Tolson, but even in private he won't toy with those feelings.
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After all, you never know who could be listening in on you or watching you. He would know, seeing that he perfected the bugging system after all. He also perfected using fingerprints to hunt down criminals, which is still being used to this day. Eastwood directs this movie as a character study rather than a history lesson. He has to. Very little is known about the real J. Edgar other than the fact that he had a lot of power for forty five years, and used it ways that may or may not have been unethical or legal. We know that if you put him in the same room with the President of the United States, he would have more power than the President.
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DiCaprio is at the top of his game in one of the best performances of the year (as well as his career). If there is a fault with the performance it's that it keeps the audience at arm's length and we never truly feel for him. Course, this may be the par with the screenplay. So little is known about J. Edgar, that this has been qualified as an ‘Original Screenplay' rather than as an ‘Adapted Screenplay.' This means “J. Edgar” is a lot like Oliver Stones “JFK” in that it's a fun ‘what if' scenario, and on that level it plays its cards well. As a personal drama though it flounders a bit, and for some this might be the films undoing. Regardless though, J. Edgar Hoover was a complicated and fascinating individual, and “J. Edgar” captures this fact as well as any movie possibly could.
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