As historical enigmas go, none can top J. Edgar Hoover for sheer cuckoo quotient. The story of how an insecure, repressed man who transferred his neuroses onto an entire country ought to make a grand story. In Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, what we get instead is an occasionally well wrought study that tiptoes around its subject often to the point of inducing somnolence.
Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) play a shadow game of substitute musical chairs. Wanna know about Hoover’s ability to basically blackmail presidents into leaving him alone? All his meetings with several presidents take place off-camera. Instead we get a face to face with a hammy Bobby Kennedy as Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) outlines his clandestine file of Jack Kennedy’s extramarital affairs as backup that Bobby shouldn’t mess with him. Heard about Hoover’s strident opposition to homosexuality (gay FBI agents were summarily dismissed if discovered)? The film substitutes Hoover objecting to things like facial hair and pinstripe suits. Heard something about Hoover enabling Senator Joe McCarthy’s red baiting tactics? Left out of the film in favor of broader bromides regarding Hoover’s longstanding distaste for communism.
Even Hoover’s fixation on Martin Luthe King’s sex life, while somewhat artfully addressed in the film, is handled circuitously, as is the very subject of Hoover’s own gayness. The film acknowledges Hoover’s longtime attachment with FBI underling Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, The Social Network) as a restrained, chaste affair on Hoover’s part. His fixation on his mom (Judi Dench), who he lives with until her death, also figures prominently in his makeup. However, another type of makeup, of DiCaprio and especially Hammer’s, as gloopy-looking septuagenarians, rears its somewhat ugly head often. Only Naomi Watts (as Hoover’s longtime secretary and confidante) wears her ghostly makeup well enough to satisfactorily depict the transition to middle-aged. Unfortunately, a stretch-the-truth scene of her and Hoover’s early dating soils our perception of her for the rest of the film.
Hoover was not a nice man. There was practically nothing he wouldn’t resort to (blackmail, fabricated documents, the planting of false stories in the press, illegal deportations) to keep his power, which he justified by the steadfast assertion that he was keeping the country safe from threats both external and internal. J. Edgar gives us an under-baked glimpse into what motivated such an over-the-top personality but it should have been much more.
A noteworthy saving grace is an astutely multi-dimensional performance by DiCaprio that is all the more startling for its effectiveness despite the obstacles surrounding him. His effort propels a curiosity about Hoover that the film does more to launch than to satisfy.
5 Secret Files (Out Of 10)
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