J. Edgar (2011) – review
J. Edgar has come in for some fairly harsh reviews. And I'm not sure why, it's everything you could want from a biopic.
In telling the story of J. Edgar Hoover – the controversial figure who was head of the FBI for 38 years – Clint Eastwood has put together a film which is some ways odd and in other ways conventional, but always entertaining.
It takes a similar narrative approach to the recent The Iron Lady, with an elderly Hoover looking back on his younger years and life's achievements as he dictates his biography. But it succeeds in pretty much every area that The Iron Lady was a failure. J. Edgar is cinematic, it has a believable central relationship, paints a complex picture of a conflicted and controversial man and is relatively informative about the history of the man, the bureau and the surrounding politics.
Now, I didn’t know a huge amount about J. Edgar Hoover and this perhaps enhanced my enjoyment, I was taking it in as a film, rather than a historical re-enactment. Some reviewers have found it to be uncritical of the man himself, but I think there was enough there to suggest his abuses of power, manipulative ways, and high opinion of himself whilst still creating a character that was in some ways likable.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays the character well, particularly in the youthful years when the FBI was first being established. He plays Hoover with an absurd sense of self importance combined with a naive exuberance for the mundane (he gets very excited by organising a library). He is in thrall of his mother and has no friends. It's an odd proposition for a central character, but he becomes likable because of his flaws and is humanised by the few relationships he forms.
Firstly there's the controlling mother (Judi Dench) and then there is his career-long secretary (an excellent Naomi Watts), and most significantly Armie Hammer's character Clyde Tolson. Tolson becomes Hoover's right hand man and they form a very close friendship, with gay overtones. Heavily rumoured but never proven, their potential affair is picked up by screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who also wrote Gus Van Sant's Milk) and taken as a central theme. Tolson is clearly in love with Hoover and Hoover probably feels the same, but his strict personal beliefs about his conduct and the domineering upbringing of his mother don't permit him to reciprocate. It's a work of fiction, but it plays well with the other themes of the film: Hoover is a complicated man who is never easily read. It also provides some touching moments, particularly towards the end of the film.
J. Edgar isn't perfect, but it's impossible to fit in a balanced opinion of a person alongside all the achievements and political developments of a 50 year career. What Clint Eastwood and Dustin Lance Black have done is take a few facts, a few rumours, and some potentially interesting characters and throw them all together to create something that works as a movie.
Rating: 
