Did anyone else think DDL's performance is completely one-dimensional?
A growling, violent man with one facial expression and not a whole lot else. Very little character development if you ask me.
shareA growling, violent man with one facial expression and not a whole lot else. Very little character development if you ask me.
shareyou're silly
shareAre you kidding me, fully 3 dimensional.Not a cliched "villain" , he is actually likeable.
shareNo I did not, for several reasons. Bill the Butcher defies classification as an archetypal bigoted villain. There's actually an idealistic side to him. He genuinely sees himself as a gatekeeper of America's future. He genuinely believes in preserving what his father fought for. Also, his ruthlessness toward outsiders does not seem to extend to the children of Irish immigrants. Remember how right after he kills Priest, he says the son should be sent to a decent school? Remember how he takes care of Jenny after she becomes an orphan? There are some flaws in this film, but a simplistic portrayal of Bill the Butcher? No, that's not the case here.
shareOP must have also missed the multiple scenes where Bill paid homage to the Priest yearly on the anniversary of that fight. I think Bill was one of the most interesting villains that I've seen in a movie like this.
share[deleted]
Funny how we all see things differently.
I came here (watching the movie again now) to see if there was several 'omg what an actor!' threads going.
DDL has a way about him that no matter what the role is, you almost find yourself hanging from every word he speaks. His words and his expressions are legendary IMO.
As he's sitting there telling the cop to go find whoever killed this poor little rabbit...the rage and tears in his eyes, the almost shaking limbs...its magic to watch.
Dont get me started on 'There will be blood' either....wow what an actor!
DDL is a British De Niro version (since De Niro is in fact mostly Irish).
I mean look at their faces and heads, they actually resemble each other somewhat, and have similar physical types.
To understand a performance you need to understand the character. Bill the Butcher (at least in this film) was a man who didn't exactly know what his purpose was but he knew he loved his country and what it stood for. He was obviously raised with a bias towards his native kin and with a bias against foreign folk, but all that withstanding he was a proud, strong man who did what needed to be done to preserve America as he knew and loved it and he believed in what he believed in with a zeal and passion that not many men today could fathom. Today, such a man is hard to even conceptualize. Someone whose ambitions encompass nations, not just households. DDL played the part as well as any man of the modern era could and I would dare say better. He portrayed--nay, became, if only for a brief period--Bill the Butcher as the deeply hurt and powerful man he was / is. Bill the Butcher had no ambitions but preservation and self-defense--he was an animal. He acted on instinct from the moment he even knew what ambitions were--foreigners overran the populace and replaced his goals with their own, and from then on, he became an avenger. Someone who could only strike back. He knew what his kin were and what his country was and he fought against those who would change that which he knew. He fought against progression that hurt honored, beloved traditional... it is something that modern day conservatives like myself understand well.
Before I go on too long, I guess my tl;dr (look it up if you don't know what it means) is that DDL BECAME Bill the Butcher. I could understand it well... some of you may not, but ask yourselves this (if you think his performance was one-dimensional): do you know anybody that is so passionate about anything? Do you know anyone who would give their life for a cause... TRULY? If not you cannot say with certainty that Bill the Butcher was portrayed "one-dimensionally". If we take the word as it is, one dimensional means with one purpose. A line is one dimensional and it only goes in one direction, as a man with one purpose would strive for one goal and one goal only. Bill the Butcher's goal was for the preservation of his nation and its people, and DDL in my opinion might as well be the second incarnation of Bill. His performance was spot-on.
Again, to understand a performance is to understand the character being portrayed... if you know little of the subject matter than how could you possibly say the performance was "this" or "that"? Maybe I am insane. Maybe not. But this is what I have gathered having just fully watched the film for the first time. Perhaps I need time to reflect on everything first...