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8th November 2019
05:40pm GMT
In terms of research, what I have done is I have looked at the movie poster for a long time. Potentially for too long, but such are the demands of modern journalism. As difficult as it was, I also have not watched the trailer.
Why? Honestly, I can't answer that right now. It's just something that I needed to get out of my system. Mind your business.
Henceforth, here is what happens in The Irishman based solely on the poster for The Irishman.
Joe Pesci smells something in the air, both literally and metaphorically. He was mentally planning his evening meal's microwave specifications when his senses were arrested by a particularly potent pong. It is fart. Joe Pesci is quite visibly smelling a fart.
His eyes are glazed over as he's transported back to a time when smelly farts were a source of entertainment to him. As a youth, he would instruct his siblings to pull his finger, or carry out an impeccably-timed fart bomb manoeuvre, whereby he farts, catches the air in his hand and then throws the noxious gas into the face of his enemy. Those were simpler times. "As the saying goes, a fart can paint a picture of a thousand words", Pesci thinks to himself.
The fart starts to sting his eyeballs a little, allowing his decision to wear lensless glasses for fashion purposes to deservedly bite him in the bottom. He wanted to look like Colin Firth in Kingsman, a man he often mistakenly refers to as an Irishman, despite him being the most British man alive.
As the fart odour starts to dissipate, Pesci gets a note of tomato in the back of his throat. As the cogs start to turn in his brain, he remembers something. Actually, he remembers two things. First, he needs to get ahead of the Christmas card organisation procedure this year. Last year was a nightmare as he left it too late to get to the post office and ended up queuing for fifty minutes to get a dozen stamps. Secondly, there's only one person in this godforsaken city who farts a distinctive tomato scent. That man? Is Jerry Tomatoes.
He will spend the entirety of the movie trying to track down the elusive Mr. Tomatoes to bring him to justice.
De Niro is at the initial stages of smelling the fart here. He's clocked something, but uncertainty surrounds his nasal passages. He's noticed Pesci beside him sniffing up a storm and wants in on the action. He knows that one's sense of smell is best served when their corresponding mouth is closed, so he's begun that process in the above image.
We're seeing his brain computing in real time here. Within minutes, De Niro will realise that the scent is indeed tomato-based. Until then, he's in limbo. It's the calm before the inevitable storm. There's no going back at this point. De Niro is in deeper than he even realises. Over the course of the movie, he will take increasingly deeper inhalations using his hooter. His passion is investigation, and his nose is the instrument. There's crime afoot.
If you look deeply into Bobby's eyes, something else has caught his attention, something besides the fart. There's an area of concern just out of frame. Could this be the perpetrator of the fart? Will De Niro and Pesci team up to get to the bottom of the bottom expulsions?
The final giveaway clue in his character's arc comes in the form of Robert De Niro's tie. It's got white spots on it. But what else has white spots? Your tonsils when you're firmly in the throes of a nasty bout of tonsillitis, of course! He is going to be struck down with the viral infection, compromising his sense of smell and therefore hampering his ability to do sniff-based detective work.
In the end, De Niro will have to make a decision. Does he persevere through tonsillitis thereby losing his sense of smell for an unspecified amount of time, or undergo surgery to have them removed, thereby regaining his ability to catch the farting culprit? Frankly, I suspect the latter. But it might be worth watching the movie to be sure.
Oh okay. Oh. Okay. Hang on, Pacino definitely farted. Look at that post-flatulence expression. He's glowing. That's the face of a man that has been holding in an incredibly beefy fart all day at work and he's just clocked off and slipped outside to rid his bowels of the toxic gas.
His gaze is fixed on a seemingly important spot, but it's all just pageantry. He wants those nearby (namely Pesci and De Niro) to suspect that he is deep in thought, and therefore physically incapable of farting in that particular moment. It's an ancient technique that dates back eons. Pacino has done his research. This is evidently not his first offence.
There's a sliver of panic in his eyes. He's scared of the future and anxious about the potential of being caught out. That's why he's exclusively been eating tomatoes for sustenance. Jerry Tomatoes is a known farter around town, always leaving behind that signature scent. Not only is Pacino guilty of the crime, he's also guilty of trying to frame an innocent bystander.
Throughout the course of the movie, Pacino will join De Niro on their extensive hunt for justice. He will tamper with the evidence, dropping as many inconsistencies as farts along the way, all for a sick thrill. Eventually, he will be caught out. The foursome will be forced to share a hotel room after a clerical mixup. In his sleep, Pacino will drop a tomatoey fart and the boys will have him cuffed before he wakes. He will spend a life behind bars, sharing a cell with the titular Irishman, whose backstory we unfortunately never hear over the course of this 7-hour movie.
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