floodgates

Dandenong Ranges National Park, Australia

“As in all Scorsese films, the camera—its movements, the swift and powerful swing of its address—is also Scorsese’s preoccupation. The director’s concern above all is the plastic element of art, both with regard to painting, the film’s ostensible material, and to cinema, Scorsese’s lifelong project.

As a filmmaker, Scorsese leans in—his stories are grandly operatic and his fingerprint insistent. Rather than presenting a frame that compels an audience to find the action (as in the deliberate panoramas of Antonioni, for example), Scorsese allows the audience to see only what the filmmaker chooses to display in bold, kinetic flourishes. And because Scorsese’s knowledge of film is encyclopedic, he can employ all of cinema’s tools when he is inspired.”