Martin Scorsese’s favourite scene from ‘The Departed’: “It’s very good, but it needs something”
No one has feared the idea of being a rat more than when watching the 2006 film The Departed, with the threat of microprocessors never feeling more sinister than when watching the word repeatedly hurled from the mouths of Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg. It is one of the most beloved films from Martin Scorsese’s filmography, with razor-sharp editing from Thelma Schoonmaker and terrifying performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and, of course, Jack Nicholson, who plays the feared gangster in Boston and the mastermind behind a number of gruesome crimes.
However, while the film is endlessly quoted and seems almost perfect to many fans, Scorsese reveals one scene that took a while for them to nail on the head.
Surprisingly, much of The Departed is concerned with rodents and the trippy minefield of which character in the film is the true rat, with both DiCaprio and Damon’s characters working for the other side while pretending to work for someone else. It’s an epic tale of manipulation, deceit and corruption, with Damon’s character eventually being exposed as being the ultimate traitor, but with whole new levels of rattery as it is revealed that his enemy is the true father of his partner’s baby, with the baby now being an inadvertent rat.
However, as the characters seek to discover the true identity of their enemies, there is one monumental scene in which Costello interrogates Billy about his allegiance, questioning his loyalties due to his past work for the police department. It is the definition of a nail-biting scene, with the audience being aware that Billy is a rat and that if this is discovered, Costello will relish in him being tortured and killed.
When describing the filming of this scene, Scorsese highlighted the main challenge of the scene, saying, “Bill Monahan’s script was very, very good. But with what was going on with the picture, up until that point, I felt that we could have gotten more, I just didn’t know what. So, after the four takes we did that night, Jack and I looked at each other and I said, ‘It’s very good, but it needs something’. That’s when he said to me, ‘I think he’s not scared enough’. So, I said, ‘We have another half-day on the schedule for this. Why don’t we do it again tomorrow and just see what happens?’ He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Think of anything you’d like, and we’ll see what we come up with.’“
Ultimately, the entire scene rests on the unspoken tension between the truth and what is being hidden, with the audience needing to believe that Billy is terrified for his life and the stakes of the task to convince Connelly that he is innocent.
However, with a bit of improvisation and added shoots, they eventually shot the scene that we can see in the final cut, with Scorsese saying, “So, the next day, we were shooting and suddenly he comes up to me and says, ‘I’ve got ideas!’ I said, ‘Good. Let’s go!’ And I didn’t know that he wanted to burn the table. I didn’t know he had a gun. He was looking at Leo and saying, ‘Are you the rat?!’ I just felt it was so important that Leo convince him that he is not the rat because he is the rat. He’s in that bar. They locked the door. That’s it. He’s dead. Everything can turn, if I don’t believe him. And he’ll make it such that he convinces him because he’ll keep going. I didn’t know about the Whiskey thing, or I would have put real Whiskey in there, but the fire would have been too much. The gun was enough.”
The unpredictability of Nicholson is the perfect addition to heighten the fear of the scene, with his erratic nature adding an edge that provokes such a strong reaction from Billy in defending his life. It is because of this that Connolly is one of the most frightening villains, and continues to be endlessly re-watchable in his ferocious energy and ability to terrorise audiences.
