I said I’d see J. Edgar again and write about it, but I missed the moment to do that with the holidays and all.

So, a few words about a film I have been thinking about after only one viewing.  First of all, Clint Eastwood is on fire.  I can’t believe that he continues to make such interesting films at a time when most directors seem to lose creative oooooomph.  Yes, that is a technical term.

J. Edgar Hoover was a complex, driven, and incredibly powerful man who built an empire for himself at the FBI and used the resources of that empire to punish people who stood in his way or seemed disagreeable to him for a variety of reasons.  The film balances the public sweep of Hoover and his organization with an interiority of the man that feels authentic while the juxtaposition of public and private are almost enough to make a viewer’s head spin (in a good way, I think).

For me, J.Edgar does something remarkable in terms of point of view.  The film is an intimate character study that shows the audience glimpses into an enigmatic and deeply repressed man through some of the most important cultural and historical events of the last century.  In the end, though, it is those insights into the man and the early events that made him the man he became that stay with me and keep me engaged in J. Edgar.

One filmmaker I talked with about this movie lamented that Eastwood didn’t treat the relationship between Hoover and his longtime companion and co-worker Clyde Tolson more directly, but I disagree with the assessment.  The key to Eastwood’s Hoover is his repression, and that is encapsulated in the film by his mother and crystallized in the perfect scene in which she talks to her son of daffodils.  Not coincidentally, the daffodil talk follows a searing scene in which Tolson and Hoover confront the parameters of their relationship, a battle it appears Tolson wins in substance.

The film is a bit like a hall of mirrors, and this goes back to point of view.  We are seeing Hoover, to some extent, as he sees himself and presents himself, and this perspective is revealed to us as a perspective when Tolson calls Hoover on the dishonestly of his self-aggrandizement regarding Bureau investigations and arrests.  The audience revisits key scenes from the film from another perspective.

It seems to me that this is a fitting approach for this particular biopic, which is enhanced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Hoover and Armie Hammer’s turn as Tolson.  There is a lot to like about this film.