How Two Three-Hour Tough-Guy-Hangout Nostalgia Trips Canceled Each Other Out

There was a time, not long ago, when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (OUATIH) and The Irishman were favored to showdown for the prize of Best Picture. Now that they’re not, we seem to be crediting the strengths of 1917 and Parasite while failing to address the ways that OUATIH and The Irishman canceled each other out.  

Both films are too-long elegies, career summaries, valedictions, modest regrets. Both are made by Italian-American directors and (barely) engage Italian culture, including Italian dialogue. Both are extended white cis homosocial hangs, minimizing women. Both are violent.

Fluidity with violence is crucial to how each director earned his rep as the pre-eminent artist-filmmaker of his generation (his peers weren’t as good with violence), who despite wins is somehow under-laureled by AMPAS. Each film uses career callbacks to step back and comment on all that.

Is every film about aging? Perhaps, but these, more. Both directors use unique gifts w/music to comment on character aging and the age of the transition from the 50s to the 60s to something else. Both are about nostalgia not only for the 60s but also, on reflexive levels, for the 70s (Irishman) and 90s (OUATIH), when its stars thrived.

Both films give credit to two male leads for affecting a major event of Nixon/Ford era: the Manson murders (OUATIH) and the disappearance of Hoffa (Irishman). But unlike normal biopic, not sure how we or characters should feel or what it all meant. Each is thus very unsettling (on purpose).

Are we meant to forgive/love these leads? Regret their obsolescence? Do tough guys with murderous reputations like Sheeran/Booth represent the good old days, or the age of Trump, or what? Were we better when such guys were running things? The films aren’t clear on this. Maybe that’s good for long-term staying power; it’s often bad for Oscar.

For a certain kind of critic/viewer, conflating these two excellent films would be like conflating their own children. They read this article and take offense, as though I accidentally switched their beloved kids’ names. But if these were two Korean films, many of these same critics/viewers would be the ones conflating. 

But why would the two films cancel each other? Well, next to each other, they seem less special, which prompts more viewers to say, “okay, a pair of three-hour films about a pair of aging white straight men on a hang for three hours, regretting some things…is that greatness now?”

The larger question for this year’s Oscars is how many of these viewers are Academy members. In theory, they should be many of the women, POC, and international members who AMPAS recently opened its doors to. But there is still a decent chance that the fabled “steak eaters” (literally in the case of The Irishman) could get their revenge and make one of these nostalgia-for-tough-guys-films into this year’s Best Picture. It’s just less likely because they both came out in the same year.

Speaking of canceling out, if OUATIH does win BP, some will say that Joker and Irishman canceled each other out: Scorsese versus Scorsese-lite confused the voters. Perhaps that will be true, although despite its 11 nominations I doubt Joker ever had a real chance at BP.

Bottom line: if OUATIH and Irishman lose BP, presumably to a far less nostalgic 1917 or Parasite, pundits will tell you that OUATIH or Irishman could have won in a year without the other, but not against each other, because of the above list. I’m just telling you first.