If you take Clint Eastwood’s word for it, J. Edgar was a complicated, sad man. After having sat through 2:17 of Eastwood trying to tell me the story of the quintessential FBI Director’s life, I’m sure of many things, but less sure of many, many more. As with any biopic, you have to take everything that you see with a grain of salt — as historically accurate as the writers may try to be, if they weren’t there, the story can never be 100% perfect. But in the case of J. Edgar, the problem is once you’ve realized how little you can trust the narrator, you are left wondering if you can believe anything you’ve seen.
Before the bad, though, let’s talk about the good … and there was a lot of good. Leonardo DiCaprio was incredible as J. Edgar Hoover. Previously, most of the time Hoover is seen on screen, he is generally painted in one stroke: a one-dimensional villain/hero with little-to-no depth. DiCaprio shows us all sides of the enigmatic man who irrevocably changed law enforcement in this country. DiCaprio’s Hoover is conflicted about who he is, torn between feelings he has been taught to repress and his drive to craft the world in his mother’s image. When we find Hoover at the end of the film, it is a man that we can’t help but feel sorry for. The one prevailing thought that stayed in mind throughout the narrative was that you do not need to be a good man to be a great one. I think you have to view Hoover as a great man, despite his myriad flaws.
The rest of the cast was brilliantly put together. Armie Hammer plays Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s lifelong confidant and partner. I most enjoyed Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, the woman who protected all of Hoover’s secrets, even after his death. Many other familiar faces popped up throughout the film, most notably Josh Lucas as Charles Lindbergh and Dame Judy Dench has Hoover’s mother Anna Marie. They weren’t the only ones, though, as folks like Ed Westwick, Jeffery Donovan, Stephen Root, Lea Thompson, Michael Gladis and many of your favorite small screen stars also had small roles.
Overall, though, I was disappointed that the whole of J. Edgar was not as great as the sum of its parts. The narrative was incredibly disjointed. I am as much a fan of non-linear storytelling as much as the next guy … no; I’m probably a much bigger fan of non-linear storytelling than most people on the planet; but it didn’t work here. Little things don’t make sense; the story starts with Hoover dictating the history of the FBI to Westwick’s Agent Smith. Smith though is just the first of several biographers, changed with no rhyme, reason, or explanation as to why different people were participating when it seems that Hoover and grown to trust Smith. Another example was a scene early on, where the audience is lead to believe that we’re seeing a flashback within a flashback, where Anna Marie is telling Edgar what a great man he will be. Instead, though, Anna Marie is talking to her younger son while Edgar sat across the room. I’m sure that these decisions and transitions made sense in the editing room, but on the screen they fell flat
J. Edgar did take the time to ask some difficult questions, and make some interesting parallels to current times. Hoover claimed to have saved the nation time and time again, combating threats against our national security by pushing the boundaries of federal law – if not completely blowing past them – and his agency’s mandate. He was only attempting to protect the nation in the best way that he believed that he could. In many instances, those actions were reprehensible, like his efforts to blackmail Martin Luther King (unsuccessfully) and seemingly every sitting President from Roosevelt to Nixon (apparently successful). Much of the good he did, like putting the FBI on the cutting edge of forensic science, is forgotten in the blowback of myriad questionable decisions he made in his tenure as Director.
In that respect, I guess J. Edgar succeeded. Once we saw just how broken this man was on the inside, it cast his career, successes and failures, in a completely different light.
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Nov 11, 2011 @ 00:01 EST5EDT
