The hype for Scorcese’s Gangs of New York is ratcheted up a notch, and I for one hope it’s all true. Except for one little detail. In the interview, Scorcese says how he was struck with the similarities of what was going on in New York in the 1860s and on September 11, 2001. I see little similarity beyond the location. Is he is trying to say that the World Trade Center attacks are just another case of two tribes having a go at each other? If so, isn’t that a little relativist? Which tribe is supposed to mirror the west in the conflict–the Catholics or the Protestants?

Or perhaps we are meant to equate the violent poor–both the nativists and the Irish–as the losers of history as they are superceded by a more complex, modern society. This happens to have been the case, but there is little similarity between an outcome where extremists are trodden on, as in the second half of the 1800s in NYC, and where the extremists did the trodding, as on September 11.

I demand that this movie be much more complex than that. I really want to love it.

[Thu, Nov 21 2002 – 04:18] Jezza I think the reviewer is just a bit confused in his own mind about what he’s trying to say. It looks like he wants to cover the analogy but he’s just not sure exactly how it works. Don’t let a bad reviewer put you off.