So I Rewatched The Many Saints of Newark...

that's the guy my Uncle Tony the guy I went to hell for what's up Soprano's fans Kino here when I made a video about rewatching The Sopranos again I knew I would have to rewatch The Many Saints of nework as well now I've talked a few times before about my thoughts on the film but it makes sense to take another look and see if anything has changed often times a movie can grow on you the more you watch it or you'll notice things that you didn't before that can change your perspective I can't watch this again a DVD this is the advanced bootleg these are the alate takes what are you going to call Copa with ideas on how to fix it so I sat down and rewatched the film hoping to Come Away With A New Perspective that I could use in the video however after watching the film again I still feel the same way I did the first time I watched it the film has a lot of flaws and really needed another pass in order to make the ideas of the script more coherent I can see what David Chase was going for with the movie but it just needed to be integrated more smoothly into the existing Soprano's Universe now I don't think it's as bad as people give it crap for or at least the problems that people bring up about the film are not the problems that I have with it in fact there are many elements like the acting and the visual style of the film that I genuinely like but the film does have issues that have not improved with time and I think those issues are worth examining again so one more time let's talk about the many Saints of Newark I I can't have this conversation again for those that never saw it I'll give a quick rundown of the film The Many Saints is a prequel to The Sopranos set in the late 1960s into the 1970s the movie follows dicki massanti the father of Christopher and a mentor SL Big Brother figure to Tony Soprano as Dicky deals with his family problems in the Golden Age of the mob he must also deal with the rising racial tension growing in Newark around this time all right let's start with what I like about the film as I said before the casting is really good alisand naola as dicki is extremely likable I can easily see how Tony looked up to Dicky growing up he just comes off like the fun but troublemaking older brother that all of us wanted growing up speaking of Tony Michael gandini also does an amazing job portraying the younger version of his father's iconic character James gandini unfortunately passed away from a heart attack in 2013 and it's honestly very touching that Michael got to honor his father's memory with with this role John Bernthal Corey sto and Vera farga all do a very good job portraying the younger versions of iconic Soprano's characters the only casting that really didn't do anything for me is John mararo as the young Silvio Dante it's the only performance that feels like a caricature which is weird considering that Jon had previously starred as the main character of Chase's first film Not Fade Away you would think that since they work together that close closely before Chase would have corrected his performance this time around but it may have been due to the fact that the mini Saints was actually directed by Alan Taylor which we'll talk about in a little bit before we get into what I dislike about the film though I want to talk about some criticisms of the film that I've seen that I don't agree with one criticism that is constantly thrown at the film is about the heral subplot a significant chunk of the movie is dedicated towards Harold's antagonism towards sticky and the growing wealth and Independence of African-Americans in Newark many people thought that the inclusion of this storyline was a waste of time and not relevant to a movie about The Sopranos which is prominently about Italians however I don't think that the heral subplot was fundamentally a bad idea I agree that it wasn't executed well but racial tension has always been a theme in The Sopranos it's a recurring detail in the show that the mafia uses black people both literally and figuratively as scapegoats for their crimes in the episode commendatory we see a family getting carjacked by some black guys the father then screams the n-word blaming them for the situation but we immediately cut from him to Tony showing that it's actually his operation that stole their car another example is when planning his hit on Tony Junior used black guy so that it wouldn't lead back to him Tony and Chris did the the same thing as well when they were planning their hit on Carmine senior I know these black guys from Irvington but that's the right idea it can never get out who whack the old [ __ ] now they utilized other people for their hits as well like the Italians they brought over from Naples but the guys also blame their crimes on black guys that don't even exist after Eugene beats up little Paulie veto says that they'll blame it on some black guys if anyone calls the police what I think I seen a couple of [ __ ] running that way oh yeah those two guys when Tony blendo is trying to cover up for the fact that he was injured killing Joey Peeps he makes up a story about getting jumped by some black guys you th your foot the other night [ __ ] Irvington two black guys jumped me outside a bar what half them locked up making grilled cheese you think there wouldn't be so many around to make trouble and of course when Tony is trying to hide the fact that he had a panic attack that forc him to miss a job he blames it on black guys as well the episode in question is also called unidentified black males black guys my ass he even extends to gumars when Christopher is hiding the fact that he's dating Juliana skiff behind Tony's back he makes up an imaginary black gumar so that he has an excuse to not bring her around she's black oh you're fing a shine she's hot too classy not that it would matter to Paulie i' still have to listen to all his racial [ __ ] yeah she would feel it too there's also a whole story arc in season 3 about Meo and Tony's relationship breaking down because he's racist towards her boyfriend and black people in general what is it my fault you're twice as likely to be robbed by a black that is so [ __ ] racist happens to be a [ __ ] my point with all of this is to just show that the relationship between black people and the mafia is something that The Sopranos actually explored again I don't actually think that the way it was executed in the film was good and the character of Harold was not welldeveloped but to say that the movie fundamentally should not have addressed the issue is nonsense to me another criticism that I do kind of get is that the movie gets several details from the show wrong there are several things that the movie presents that don't match up with what we learned on the show including characters ages for example Tony is only supposed to be around 9 or 10 years older than Christopher but when Chris is a baby Tony is already a teenager there are also several events from this era that we saw in flashbacks on the show or were told about by the characters and several of these events don't really line up with what we saw before for example we see the scene where Johnny boy is arrested at the fair in the episode Down Neck in that version Tony isn't picked up by the police like he is in the movie another example is when Johnny boy shoots Livia in her hair in the show Janice says that it was Junior and is gumar in the car with them while in the movie It's Dicky and Joanne now I think I kind of get what the film is going for it's meant to show that Tony and the other characters in the show are not reliable narrators even in flashbacks we're getting the events as Tony remembers them and memories can be inaccurate especially decades after the fact I I think that was meant to be one of the central themes when it comes to the movie for example in the show we learned from Christopher that DIY was an alcoholic and a drug addict between the coke the Vodka whatever the [ __ ] else he was squirting up his arm let's be honest about the great Dicky MTA Santi my dad your hero wasn't much more than a [ __ ] junkie however in the film we don't see Dicky using drugs instead when he's found dead they find pill in his pocket that he was getting for Livia the implication is that Dicky's reputation as a drug addict was the result of this misunderstanding and we're meant to question some of our assumptions from the show now I think that this is a good theme it would honestly make some of the choices of the movie make sense however there's a problem we actually see Dicky drinking vodka that he's hiding this kind of contradicts the idea that he wasn't an addict like Christopher said now we can explain this away as maybe being a one-off thing but it just leads to My overall problem with the film it's confused he doesn't quite know what it wants to say and these little details end up contradicting themselves another case is the character of Sally moltisanti Dicky's uncle in prison many people felt that these scenes were very weird and didn't make sense Sally is just such a strange character someone who killed a made guy but for some reason is still alive in prison and is also obsessed with jazz it was so off that many people including myself assumed that they were hallucinations in Dicky's mind a result of his guilt over killing his father sort of like Tony's hallucinations with Isabella in season 1 now I thought the same thing about dicki's story about coaching a blind little league baseball team the way this scene is shot it really makes it seem like it's a delusion that dicki has however at the end of the film we do see the blind kids at Dicky's funeral implying that he was actually coaching the team again you see what I'm saying about the confusing messages the film gives even when I try to give the film the most charitable interpretation for its odd choices it ends up contradicting those interpretations overall I think the film is a mess I've talked about this before in my David Chase video but Chase was always interested in the new Yark riots he's used it before in his other show almost grown and he famously always had an idea to do a film about the riots I was also always interested in the N riots I had wanted to make a either in fil film school or right after I wanted to make a movie about uh four guys who avoid the draft by joining the reserves and they get sent in a tank into the New York riots um and it changes their life he ended up incorporating those elements into the many Saints but unfortunately did not tie it in closely enough to the characters to make it a compelling Story one of the reasons for this disconnect is the fact that chase did not direct the film himself he unfortunately suffered from a heart attack before filming started and that along with his wife being sick forced him to step back from the project now Alan Taylor is a good director he directed many episodes of The Sopranos as well as other great television series I just feel that chase not being as involved due to his health concerns hurt the picture the movie also seems to have been a mess in editing it went through several iterations several things were cut from the original version such as the scene with Edie Falco as Carmela that would have opened the movie and I'm almost sure that Christopher narrating the movie from hell was a last minute Edition given how unincorporated it feels to the rest of the film you didn't go to hell however I do think that the film had potential all of the elements of a great story are here they just need to be reworked a little to give the characters and the plot a more tight narrative cohesion if you haven't seen it I recommend checking out this video I did where I rewrote the many Saints of nework to better incorporate all these ideas but no matter how the film turned out I'm still grateful that it exists the reason my channel is success ful is because of this film my first video to blow up was a video explaining who Dicky moltisanti was before the movie came out people started getting really into Soprano's content after the movie was announced and when it got delayed it allowed me to do my soprano log series that really helped grow my channel into what it is today so no matter my thoughts about the film's overall quality I will always be in debt to it and to David Chase I hope you all enjoyed this look back and stay tuned for more Soprano's content coming soon I don't know if any of you know this but moltisanti means many Saints Matt Joyce Uncle Mike Sam cedarland Celery Man ctis Von zarovich and [Music] Admiral [Music]

Channel: Pure Kino

Views: 106,710

Keywords: pure kino, kino

Id: Kahbyw7Sp1A

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024