Simply Perfect

Great Film overall

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

One of the most entertaining ways to learn about history is to see it unfold on the big screen. Sure, a good documentary can be very informative, but with those you're confined to seeing interviews, grainy stock footage and still photos. Some may use reenactments, but they tend to be hokey. The problem with Hollywood history, however, is poetic license. You really never know the historical accuracy of what you are watching. Sometimes, especially with a biopic, you kind of have to apply poetic license in order to make it more entertaining. Sometimes they succeed like the films "Frost/Nixon" (2008) and the George Bush biopic "W." (2008). Sometimes they are accurate and entertaining like "The Aviator" (2004) and "Ray" (2004). The problem with this film is that the facts surrounding the life of J. Edgar Hoover are contested among historians. Mix that in Tinseltown and there's no knowing what's real and what's not. In "J. Edgar" they clearly exploit the juicy rumors of his lifestyle that was taboo at the time, although after doing some research it seems as they these rumors have been disproved. The few facts we can agree on is that J. Edgar Hoover was the brains behind establishing the US FBI as we know it today, and he was a pioneer in forensic science, particularly in his contribution of initializing the creation of a fingerprint database. The film takes us through his life as he politically battles communism and the influence of the Bolsheviks, right through the presidency of Richard Nixon. What more, we learn from the movie that Hoover had a tendency of sensationalizing everything he did. He did it so often he truly began to believe the exaggerated version of events over what really happened. This only farther blurs the lines between reality and fiction. I'm normally not a big Leonardo DiCaprio fan, but I thought he did well with this role. Quite frankly I'm a little surprised he didn't receive more recognition for this role. I thought it was better than some of the other roles he's played that received more merit. I've never heard J. Edgar Hoover speak, but according to this film he had an accent I didn't care for. If that's how he really spoke then so be it, but it was kind of annoying. Hoover lived his entire life in Washington, DC so I'm not sure what the accent was. It sounded almost like Boston, but I think it was supposed to be a slight southern drawl. The bottom line is J. Edgar Hoover led an interesting life. Couple that with some creative screenwriting and you have an entertaining film. Just don't quote this move as a source in an intellectual conversation.

Clint Eastwood's films are extremely historically accurate. The academy and critics love his work and especially the way he manages to get the best out of his leading roles. That being said, his films also tend to be extremely long and very dry, J. Edgar was no different. J. Edgar Hoover was the man who started the FBI. He is the man solely responsible for creating a fingerprint database, cataloging and investigating forensic evidence at crime scenes, and he was also completely paranoid and spied on just about everyone he could. It was sad to see just how lonely, narrow minded, and repressed this man was his whole life. He was so narrowly focused his entire life, that he didn't seem to ever enjoy anything besides his work. As for the film, Leonardo DiCaprio gives another stunning performance, one that rivals all his other work. People who worked with Hoover, in his later years, say that DiCaprio was so good that it was like seeing Hoover himself back in charge. When he was first starting out, people thought DiCaprio was just another pretty face, who would do films like the Beach his entire career, but they couldn't be more wrong. He has emerged as one of the best leading men in all of Hollywood and J. Edgar is a prime example of this. You can't have a DiCaprio greatest hits compilation without including this performance, it really was that good. I learned a lot from this film and the performances were truly fantastic in every sense of the word. How DiCaprio's performance didn't get nominated for an Academy Awards is beyond me and does lend some credence to the theory that the Academy is bias towards him. As for the rest of the film, it's long, very long and parts of it just don't move at all. You'll learn a lot and from a historic stand point, I think this is one of those film everyone should see, but at times it's not easy to sit through. Don't expect much in the way of action, comic relief, or deviation. It's just a lot of vintage Eastwood, DiCaprio, and criminal justice history.

The drama biopic about the life of J. Edgar Hoover, the founder and longstanding head of the FBI, was released in November 2011 in the United States, directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, written by Dustin Lance Black, and edited by Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach. It stars Naomi Watts as loyal Helen Gandy, Arnie Hammer as longtime companion Clyde Tolson and in the lead Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover. It depicts one of the most powerful men of modern times in an unusually intimate way, showing that the man who seemed to have known everyone's secrets spend a lot of his time struggling with his own. As the title of the movie already indicates, the audience is invited to look at the vulnerable character rather than the man of power. Disregarding the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio manages to depict a man with many facets, creating someone who has always tried to hide his true personality, but never entirely succeeded in doing so, especially not in front of the people close to him, cinematographer Tom Stern has managed to create an atmosphere that invites the spectator to travel back in time. The combination of high contrast and low colour intensity is extremely effective and additionally supports the ageing process of the characters as they travel through time, drawing wrinkles on their faces to support the makeup artists' work, although especially Arnie Hammer doesn't seem to be transformed with the same love for detail as DiCaprio. Pans and tilts invigorate the camera work and give the viewer the impression to be in the scene, discovering one detail after the other, as if one is entering a world one is not supposed to see, which supports the feeling of secrecy that is significant for the whole film and Hoover's personality. The music, which is also composed by Clint Eastwood, is neither spiritless nor intrusive; it serves to underline important flashbacks and ensure smooth transitions, as the reoccurring voice-overs of DiCaprio do. All in all, J Edgar is a film worth watching; although it can never be said how close to truth Clint Eastwood has managed to come, he has definitely accomplished creating a sensitive picture of a man who, in the end, struggled with the same issues as everyone of us does: family, love, and at a certain point the fear of letting go.

a great director. a delicate subject. and a real good work. because it is a film about power- its price, its limits- more than a film about Hoover. it is an exercise of honesty about a man who creates and lead and transforms America. and the courage and subtle science to not present a statue but a vulnerable man, with obscure aspects of life, with desire to impose rules , the mixture of patriotic attitude and egocentric acts, the force who transforms people and events, the images of childhood as windows to the single man, the strange definition of family and the purpose who build a career, Leonardo Di Caprio in one of his splendid roles, all represents arguments for admire Eastwood's work.