J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation for 48 years, from the dawn of Prohibition to the early years of
the Nixon administration. J. Edgar, the
patient new film from Clint Eastwood, with drained color that makes the events
appear as if shot through a haze of memory, opens with Hoover as an old man,
dictating his autobiography to an underling. Moving further into the past, the
film looks at the early days of Hoover’s career, slipping back into the film’s
present of his later days for juxtapositions and clarity. It’s a film that is
covertly about the failures of memory and persona, quietly setting up reasons
why the way Hoover tells it may not be the way it was. It’s a film about the young
man’s career, about how early single-mindedness led to early and lasting success
that pivots around the old man, quietly leaving behind a controversial legacy.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover across the long sweep of the
decades. It’s a mannered performance, and not always a convincing one, but it
plays to Eastwood’s restrained style. It’s clear that Hoover is a tortured, sad
man, warped by the expectations of his domineering mother (Judi Dench) and
society, driven to hide his own inner feelings, which only serves to trouble
him more. His deepest fears and urges are deeply buried, yet he seems to carry
them as a weight around his neck. Unable to find security in his own thoughts,
he sought to control the behavior and appearance of those around him, telling
FBI agents to buy new suits, shave, and exercise. From his position of power,
he felt driven to attempt to impose his own tight constrictions of moral and
philosophical obligations on society as a whole. He valued loyalty. He valued
trust. Yet he rarely reciprocated such qualities.
When the film sways away from Hoover’s career, it finds much
of interest in the two main personal relationships in his life. Early in the
film, we see him come into contact with a member of the Bureau’s secretarial
pool, one Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts). After going on three dates, he proposes to
her after hours in the Library of Congress. She turns him down, but accepts a
secondary offer to become his personal secretary. There is a mutual respect
between them, a friendship and a trust. But theirs is not a physical
relationship, nor is it one of apparent desire of any kind. When Hoover
proposes marriage, it is with the brisk formal tone of a business proposal. He
may not love her, but he likes her enough to have something like it. He thinks
she’s of “good character.” Getting married would be the right thing to do.
Instead, he hired a loyal, lifelong, employee.
The other major relationship in his life, according to the
film, is one Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). They were practically inseparable.
Hoover made him his second in command. Clyde stood by his side in countless
meetings. He helped him buy suits and ties. They dined together. They went out
on the town together. They vacationed together. The cared very much for each
other, but the film makes it clear that it was never quite love, at least not in
an easily externalized way. And yet, this part of the film feels to me like a
particularly tragic love story. There is love between them, yet some
combination of societal and maternal expectation prevented its fullest
expression. The emotions Hoover felt for Clyde were so buried and repressed
that it contributed to that weight that he carried with him, crushed his
personality down so that it could only harden, and make him more determined to
appear to the public as the man he wanted to be.
This is a complex film that covers many events, juggling
back and forth in time. At times this approach feels a bit sloppy and
confusing, choking off momentum. But what is occasionally lost in clarity is
made up for in the understated yet omnipresent sadness, and the sharp pangs of
echoes and reverberations caused by the juxtapositions. The film includes
Hoover drastically increasing the power of the Bureau, beginning with what he
feels is the Bolshevik revolution arriving on American shores, than continuing
his ascent by leading programs to fight gangsters and investigate the
kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. His methods were not always strictly
scrupulous. In his later years, we see him increasingly concerned with his
secret files, his wiretaps, and his blackmailing material that he began
gathering those many years ago.
We see a great deal of the man, yet the film naturally
leaves a great deal out. There is still the central mystery of who he is. The
screenplay is by Dustin Lance Black, who won the Oscar for 2008’s Milk, a bio-pic about the first openly
gay politician elected in America. J.
Edgar is not an open film, nor is it even, despite one of the central
implications, a film about a gay man. It’s a film that is closed off and
secretive. We can only speculate as to who the man was. He left behind only
clues. His contemporaries left behind only rumors.
Eastwood brings to the film his soft, quiet approach to
drama, his low-key pacing, and the ways in which actors are given the space to
breathe. (That is, when they aren’t locked in layers of old-age makeup).
Certainly, the film can rarely be considered flawless. You could call it rather
formless at times and the necessary elision of the middle of Hoover’s career
nonetheless leaves behind some questions.
But there’s just enough to appreciate here. J. Edgar is an interesting film about an interesting man. It
manages to make him a tragic figure, to render his inner life with a fair
amount of sympathy without once ever condoning the real poisonous paranoia he
brought to his office. It's a quiet drama of inner turmoil and the political made personal.
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