As I re-watched Goodfellas for the umpteenth time on Wednesday, I tried to find things in it that I had never noticed before. Like a scene earlier on that featured Sammy Jackson, when they panned through the bar, or what Tommy is actually saying half the time - rather than just having his high pitched rambles as background noise to what is going on. One thing, however, that I found quite intriguing was the use of voice over.
Clearly, Ray Liotta was the main character, so his voice overs are not uncommon, and help us better understand the underworld, the characters, and what is happening on the screen. His wife is also important, and her voice overs are always about how life with Liotta is, and how, despite him being a gangster and abusive husband, she still loves him. The third person, however, that does voice overs is Tommy -- very early in the movie.
It inclusion of this mystifies me, as he is, without a doubt, the worst character in the film. Rather, he's flat wicked, with no redeeming qualities as far as we can tell. So why would Scorsese decide to use him as one of three voice overs in the film? The number three is frequently used, trinity, rule of three, etc -- because we have an affinity for three things that go together, but are distinctly different. If we look at what the characters represent, morally, and make an assumption that the inclusion of Tommy was intentional, perhaps we can find something else out that occurs in Goodfellas.
Despite his drawbacks, Ray Liotta is the voice of fact, plain and simple. He merely narrates, stating events that occur and predicting the outcomes of events. His wife is the voice of reason, explaining why she acts how she does and justifying his actions. Tommy is the voice of chaos, disorder and ruin, a plague to even those in the mafia. Order, reason, and chaos -- three things that belong together but are distinctly different. Maybe Scorsese did this intentionally, or after twenty plus viewings I am beginning to see things, but to me, its something worth investigating. Or at least considering.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is a really interesting analysis, Walter. It would work (if expanded perhaps to other Scorsese films) as a paper topic, too.
ReplyDeleteThat's something I never thought about with the voice overs. Really good red with that. I'm not quite sure about Tommy being the worse character (He seemed more like a caricature of gangsters from movies) but he definitely was a image of chaos in the movie.
ReplyDeletereally? you felt that way?
ReplyDeleteSee, i feel like the voiceover took something away from the cinematic experience. I mean, I know that because of the voiceovers we were able to know what they were thinking, and that it came into pay with the scene with karen and jimmy and how we thought that jimmy was going to have karen killed, but i felt detached from their reality.