Film has begun to define me. I try to watch one film per day as someone who wants to study acting and film in college. I want to be prepared for when I move to New York and hone my craft, so I’ve been studying classic directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
I’ve been on a Scorsese binge, starting with “Goodfellas” and “The Age of Innocence.” All are American films, but “The Departed” especially reminded me of a similar story from when I came to America and started to assimilate into this culture.
“The Lion King” not only has an Academy Award-winning soundtrack by Elton John, but is also related to “The Departed” in a twisted way and connected to me. My grandma in Ohio showed my siblings and me only classic movies on bulky DVDs. “101 Dalmatians,” “Peter Pan” and “The Lion King” were the top movie night choices for younger me.
“The Lion King’s” villain, Scar, betrays his brother Mufasa by dropping him off a cliff. A similar betrayal appears twice in “The Departed” through the film’s double lives. Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan, who is secretly a mole for the mob boss Costello working inside the Massachusetts State Police, while Leonardo DiCaprio plays Billy Costigan, a police officer who goes undercover inside the mob.
At the end of “The Departed,” DiCaprio’s character dies by being shot in the head by a corrupt cop, only for Damon’s character to shoot that corrupt cop seconds after. In the final scene, Mark Wahlberg’s character, Sergeant Dignam, sneaks into Colin’s apartment and shoots him in the head as revenge for Billy and his fellow cops.
When I first watched “The Lion King,” I was probably just pleased by a “cute” movie. Though, after watching it a couple of times, I noticed how evil and full of betrayal Scar was. Deep down, I wanted to think I had been severely betrayed, but I wasn’t Simba, and my dad was still alive. It was an unrelated story, but a Disney American classic.
Days ago, I was watching “The Departed,” and once Damon’s character shoots everyone in that elevator, I started to wonder about all the times I’ve been betrayed. I’ve been betrayed by family and friends, but luckily, I haven’t been shot in the head.
When I was four or five at my grandma’s, I was becoming American by watching classic American cinema. When I was 17, watching “The Departed,” I was very American because I had been here for over 10 years and because I was watching a Scorsese project that shaped American cinema. When sitting in class today, I was fully American, and I thought that possibly American betrayal had seeped into me.
