Is there a better actor than Daniel Day Lewis? Gangs of New York is a classic tale about a great city maturing and expanding outside of the old guard.
Immigrants were viewed as free loading vagrants, tossed back onto ships to fight our insane civil war. Politicans would encourage people to vote 4,5 even 20 times per election. And then there was the important matter of irish migrants vs the anglo-saxon gangs who hated them.
In many ways, the immigration issues in Gangs of NY are similar to what we face today with Mexico. The big difference was that we encouraged lots of immigration back then, for the war, for settlements, and for growth. Now we just need dish washers and people to man the lawn mowers.
This is an epic film, one of the best ever made.
http://www.2015auditions.com/gangs-of-new-york-tv-series-casting/
The gf (ms. heckler) says that Joaquin Phoenix is better
It looks like a great film, but I can’t understand a fucking word he’s saying.
Daniel Day Lewis reappears from anonymity every 5 years to humbly collect another Academy Award. What does he do with all his down time you ask? Just master woodworking and shoe-making of course.
If you can afford to find My Left Foot (1989) on VHS at your local Blockbuster it is also worth a watch.
Love this movie and fascinated by how history repeats itself even as cultural contexts change. I understand the point you make about the difference of immigration past/present from a growth and political perspective, and it seems the value and need of immigrant work remains unchanged. People migrate to the U.S. because people in the U.S. need immigrant workers. The message in media that there are “too many” immigrants is meant to veil its intentions, whether it be a narrative of invitation or turning “them” away. The idea of turning immigrants away or “sending them back” is meant to vilify immigrants and in the process devalue migrant labor in order to support the idea they should not receive basic human rights. i.e. “Illegals.” Although our country’s invitation in the past fostered immigration at the turn of the century, in reality migrant labor had little to no rights during that time. We devalue migrant workers and the work they do because we need migrant work but don’t want to give them basic rights they are afforded if they were citizens or considered valuable. For context, read any of Upton Sinclair’s works, he said “There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where everything he desires is behind the bars, and the man remains outside.” Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Upton Sinclair wrote great stories, but saturated in communist drivel. Oil! could have been written by cold war Soviets.