“One of my favourites”: Martin Scorsese on the movie which set the template for ‘The Departed’
If somebody was asked to name which movie set the template for Martin Scorsese‘s Academy Award-winning gangster thriller The Departed, then they’d be well within their rights to name Infernal Affairs as the standout candidate.
After all, the 2002 Hong Kong classic served as the basis for the legendary filmmaker’s remake, which features Tony Leung’s cadet tasked to infiltrate the local triads at the same time Andy Lau’s fresh-faced aspiring criminal is given the tough job of doing the exact same in the police department.
Of course, Scorsese rooted his own story in some semblance of reality after basing several characters on real-life organised crime figures who operated in Boston as part of the Winter Hill Gang, but for all intents and purposes, The Departed is a remake by the truest definition of the word. The term can often be used in a dismissive or derogatory fashion, but in this instance, it was spectacular.
It was injected with all of the style, flair, and visual flourishes that saw Scorsese become one of the all-time great directors, and beyond the narrative, both The Departed and Infernal Affairs can comfortably stand shoulder-to-shoulder as a pair of the 21st century’s top-tier tales of cops and criminals creating a complex web of intrigue, subterfuge, and backstabbing that leaves death and destruction in its wake.
As well as his incomparable talents behind the camera, the Oscar-winning director has an intimate knowledge of cinema history and is regarded as something of a historian in his own way, which makes it that much less of a surprise to find out a Polish-language drama from the late 1950s was singled out by the maestro himself as being the film that “set the template” for the film that finally won him the highest accolade in the industry.
Andrzej Wajda was described by Scorsese as “a model to all filmmakers,” with 1958’s Ashes and Diamonds singled out as “one of my favourites” and listed by the man himself as a companion piece to The Departed on Letterboxd. They don’t have much in common, to the untrained eye at least, but the Goodfellas architect has always seen cinema on a different level.
The movie finds a Polish assassin ordered to eliminate a Russian soldier he was in battle with side-by-side with just days before in the thick of World War II, causing him to question exactly what it is he’s supposed to be fighting for. Parallels can be drawn between Zbigniew Cybulski’s Maciek Chełmicki and both Leonardo DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan and Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan, the latter pair each finding themselves conflicted by the orders handed out by their respective higher-ups.
Or, as Scorsese put it, “The beautiful hero walks in to an assignment that will lead to his destruction.” That definitely applies to both of The Departed‘s main characters, which goes a long way to outlining just how influential Ashes and Diamonds was on a Hollywood hit that was released almost 50 years later.
