J. Edgar

Final Review
J. Edgar (2011)

John Edgar Hoover served as the director of the FBI (its first) and its previous incarnations for nearly 50 years.  Clyde Tolson served as deputy director during 40 years of Hoover’s tenure.  Clint Eastwood’s new film, J. Edgar, discusses the professional and personal relationship of these two men. 

J. Edgar Hoover is a name everyone in America knows (hopefully) before high school.  He is the figure most associated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which existed as we know it today since 1935.  The average American may not know the details of his reign, but his name still resonates dubiously in the ear.  And, of course, he is also known for being a cross-dresser.

J. Edgar depicts Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as a homosexual, which he was.  He and long-time FBI deputy director Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer) had a romantic relationship until Hoover’s death in 1975, at which time Tolson inherited Hoover’s estate.  The film also highlights the close relationship J. Edgar (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) had with his controlling mother, Anna Marie (played by Dame Judi Dench).  Screenwriter and LGBT rights activist Dustin Lance Black (Milk) portrays Hoover as a high-ranking Norman Bates, the creepy cross-dresser from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  (The actor who played Bates to great acclaim, Anthony Perkins, shared J. Edgar’s shyness around women and closeted homosexuality.) 

During this time he strengthened the Bureau, and his reign of it, through corrupt efforts.  Hoover maintained his position through blackmail.  He kept secret files with valuable information about countless government officials and public entities.  We will never know the contents of these files, as they were destroyed by his loyal, long-serving secretary, Helen Gandy (played by Naomi Watts), when he died.  All we know is this: what he had in those files was strong enough to make him untouchable by six presidents (eight if you count the eleven years he spent as director of “The Bureau’s” previous incarnations) and for nearly 50 years. 

And now for the worst of it.  Although Hoover was a homosexual, he would threaten to divulge the homosexuality of others, thereby ending their careers.  He assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy and attorney Roy Cohn (another closeted homosexual) with their persecution of suspected homosexuals and Communists during the 1950s.  All under the guise of protecting America. 

But the movie does not simply lambaste, nor does it lampoon.  Much like Tony Kushner did with Roy Cohn in Angels in America, and John Logan did with Howard Hughes in The Aviator, Black attempts to pull a man so beyond our grasp down into the palm of our hands.  J. Edgar tells the story of a complete human being – a product of nature, nurture, the times in which he lived, and the self he endeavored to create.          

“I would rather have a dead son then a daffodil for a son.”

Black blames Hoover’s un-accepting mother for his choice to remain in the closet, and for his treatment of homosexuals in America.  A key moment in the film describes this with piercing clarity.  “Daffodil,” explains his mother when she senses Hoover is about to come out to her, was a feminine neighbor boy who killed himself over being gay.  This experience helped to further cement J. Edgar’s unhappiness, and keep him steadfast in the closet until his death. 

DiCaprio plays the role stunningly well.  At times, we forget he is the actor many of us have known since we were old enough to know film.  We see a man struggling with stature and expectations.  We see a man torn between two worlds.  Armie Hammer is captivating both as a love interest, and as a balancing force in Hoover’s life and career.  Judi Dench gives an understated, underplayed performance that boils.

This movie is not only of a time, but, also, for our time.  The term “terrorists” is used in the film to more superficially relate the terrorist attacks of the early 20^th century to the terrorist attacks of the early 21^st.  Hoover’s justification for evasive methods to stop terrorism (also Communism) in his time is the same rhetoric we hear from conservative republicans today.  The right will agree with that perspective.  But then there is the homosexuality issue.  We see a mother’s refusal to accept her gay son, and the chilling way in which she does it, and (hopefully) we are sickened by this.  This is for the left.  The brilliance of this movie is one side can examine the other without feeling that uncontrollable urge to walk out of the theatre.

The screenplay is another grand achievement for Black, who can write a character in the closet as well as out.  He can also write on both sides of the aisle, which is an asset in a time when one side flatly refuses to listen to the other.