The 63rd edition of the BFI London Film Festival went out with a bang. After twelve days of such standout works as Pedro Costa’s Locarno winner ‘Vitalina Varela’; Robert Eggers’ gothic nightmare ‘The Lighthouse;’ Céline Sciamma’s masterful ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ and many more; its closing gala wrapped it up on a high note with one of the most awaited films of the year, Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman.’
In the last few weeks, we had been reading about the many controversies surrounding its long and difficult gestation; the involvement of Netflix; the use of a new (and arguably revolutionary) technology to de-age its protagonists (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci on top of their game); the current, changing state of cinema… But perhaps the biggest headline we can take out if it is that ‘The Irishman’ is vintage Scorsese, called to rank among his finest works. The director; his two stars (De Niro -who also came for one of the LFF’s screen talks- and Pacino) and the film’s producers, Emma Tillinger Koskoff and Jane Rosenthal, gave a crammed press conference to present the film.