Despite his legendary career, it's hard to believe that Martin Scorsese has only won the Academy Award for Best Director once. That was in 2006 for his masterful crime thriller, The Departed. It's certainly among his best films, and might be his greatest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio. The film also took home Best Picture, which remains the only Scorsese film to win the most prestigious Academy Award. Hell, it was so good it even earned Mark Wahlberg a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Although it remains Scorsese's most acclaimed film—by Oscar standards—fans of the film have a big problem with one of the director's choices.
That comes in the very final scene of the film. Matt Damon's Colin Sullivan—a crooked cop, who got literally everyone killed—comes home to his apartment with some groceries and finds Wahlberg's potty-mouthed Sergeant Dignam waiting for him in full scrubs with a silenced pistol.
"Okay," Sullivan says, before Dignam proceeds to shoot him and walk out of the apartment. The camera cuts to a view from the front door looking into the apartment over Sullivan's dead body. Then, the camera pans up out the window to Sullivan's view of the Massachusetts State House and a little rat runs across his apartment balcony.
Do you get it? It's because the whole movie was about searching for a rat in the police and a rat in the criminal organisation. Matt Damon was the rat? Now he's dead. And there's a literal rat.
For years, people have noted that this blatantly obvious symbolism kind of beats the audience over the head—specifically for the final scene of what was otherwise an incredible movie.
Now, one brave Kickstarter campaign wants to change that. Here's what Adam Sacks wrote in a campaign that—as of Wednesday—has raised $2,340 of its $4,000 goal:
Unfortunately The Departed has one huge problem. The movie ends with the painfully on the nose metaphor of an ACTUAL RAT crawling across screen. It's always bothered me that a movie as good as The Departed has such a cheesy ending, and I recently realized it could be fixed by digitally erasing the rat from the last shot.
What follows is a pretty impressive break-down of the costs and process for actually removing the rat and sending you a Blu-Ray version of the film with the superior ending.
I cannot sell any of these Blu-ray copies, because even though it's obviously a far better version of The Departed, I do not own the rights to the movie. So, if you'd like to receive one of the 50 limited edition copies, you'll have to contribute $70 or more. This will allow me to buy you a legal Blu-ray of The Departed, throw that disc away, replace it with my superior version, and mail it to you.
Honestly, with 29 days to go in his Kickstarter, it seems like Sacks can do it.
And if anyone has a problem with editing Scorsese's movie you can go fuck yaself.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
