“Mr. Scorsese” is a career-spanning overview of Martin Scorsese, broadly considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. The five-part docuseries, directed by Rebecca Miller, begins with an exploration of his childhood in the Italian American tenements of New York. Then, the series goes behind the camera, following the director through his days as a student at New York University in the 1960s to the making of 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Through archival footage and interviews with close family and friends, “Mr. Scorsese” probes the innermost thoughts of the Oscar-winning filmmaker – who holds the record for most Academy Award nominations for a living director – and his efforts to use art to grapple with life’s toughest challenges and questions.
The Monitor recently spoke with Ms. Miller via Zoom. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why We Wrote This
The docuseries “Mr. Scorsese” probes the innermost thoughts of the Oscar-winning filmmaker and his efforts to use art to grapple with life’s toughest challenges and questions.
Why did you want to make this film portrait of Martin Scorsese now?
I was really curious how his spiritual journey went with a fascination with violence in some of [his] films. How did that go together in one personality? … I had a feeling his Catholicism was somehow sewn into his work in a way that I didn’t completely understand.
What did working on this docuseries teach you about the tension between his Catholic faith and the violent scenes and themes that he explores?
He talks a lot about an obligation to tap into a truth about human beings. And that’s his North Star. … His dear friend [screenwriter] Jay Cocks talks about the way that he’s able to focus on a character like Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull” who is, in fact, quite a violent character without a lot of redeeming features, but he’s able to love him. Sort of like, “loving the least of these” [from Matthew 25:40].
In Episode 2, director Spike Lee says Mr. Scorsese is “a filmmaker who’s after the truth.” What do you think the truth is to Mr. Scorsese?
He’s asking these questions, which are the essential big questions that all religions really ask: What are we, and what is good and evil? The one thing I have noticed about him is that he is very honest with himself as a person, and that is really striking. [It] enables him to look really clear-eyed at the characters that he portrays and give them back to us so that we can see ourselves, for better or worse, in the films.
Storytelling in Christian traditions often emphasizes healing and redemption. Do you think his films try to contribute to our understanding of those qualities?
He approaches these things differently. For example, in “The Last Temptation of Christ,” his motivation was very simply to get to know Jesus better, and to explore the iconography, but through the idea of the man. In “Silence” [set in Japan during a period of Christian persecution], he’s really trying to heal what being a Christian is. … He’s looking at being a human being on the deepest level.
Brigitte Lacombe/Apple TV+
In the docuseries, there’s quite a bit of discussion of the “underground man” – isolated, angry young men who can’t find their way in society and react with violent outbursts. How do Mr. Scorsese’s characters help us understand what motivates people who lash out?
Paul Schrader, who wrote “Taxi Driver,” was very inspired by [Fyodor] Dostoevsky’s the Underground Man, and talks about the isolation and the sense, in the character [Travis Bickle], of being on the outskirts, being the wolf looking at the campfire from a distance. … We talk … about the link of humiliation and violence in “Taxi Driver” and that there seems to be a link between humiliation and violence often in real life as well.
Much of his work explores intense male friendships. In fact, some of his collaborators you interviewed shared how profoundly moved they were by these depictions. As a woman director, how did you come to create a documentary on his life and work?
Well, I was interested in his evolution as an artist, as a man, but also the evolution of his soul as well. I do think that that’s part of the story, too.
Are you talking about Mr. Scorsese’s transformation, almost a creative death, and then a rebirth?
Yes, in a sense. But also as you see how he’s living his life and his relationship to anger, his relationship to family, his peacefulness. … He talks about how in “Raging Bull,” the sickness of the main character, which is in his violence, has to do with a loss of his soul. So he’s the one who is bringing up the idea of the trials of the soul in a way.
A lot of your own filmography creates portraits of women’s lives. How has Mr. Scorsese helped women gain advancements in the film industry?
He works with a tremendous number of women. [Three-time Oscar winner] Thelma Schoonmaker is one of the greatest editors, I think, ever. She’s an icon. And she really began her career with him [as students at NYU]. In some ways, I guess you could say, they helped create each other. In “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” the editor, producers, and in many of the key positions he uses women. He has many producers, like Margaret Bodde, that he works with long-term and seems to have had, I think, a very positive impact. And not to mention the many actresses that he has worked with and really given them opportunities to create wonderful characters.
Mr. Scorsese’s body of work is so vast. Are there any films you wish you could have explored that you had to leave out?
Once we realized how close his personal life and his art life were through the interviews, we knew what our bullseye was. … Having said that, we do explore 32 films. I adore some of the documentaries that we did not explore. I adore “Hugo,” which we did not explore. But I don’t think I could have shaped it the way that it is and contained every single film, because then you end up with just a filmography, which is a kind of list. I had to keep true to the character of the film, which was really this dance between the personal and the art, and how the life and the art are continually creating each other.
What do you think Scorsese is trying to capture or reflect in his films about human nature?
I don’t think there’s one thing. I think it’s a question. And in a way, it’s said in the very beginning of the piece, What are we? Are we inherently good or not? What’s the frontier of the human being? How is it taken over by violence? How is it taken over by peacefulness? He’s asking the questions, and it’s for us to watch and, in a way, I don’t think this is a filmmaker who is offering us moral closure. But I also think that that’s part of why his films are so fresh and relevant now, rather than kind of closing and tying it all up for us. He really doesn’t do that.
“Mr. Scorsese” is streaming on Apple+. It is rated TV-MA, for mature audiences.
