THE POLITICS OF SCARFACE

“You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, ‘That's the bad guy'.” - Tony Montana, 'Scarface' (1983)

Brian DePalma's 'Scarface' (1983) is as much a political statement as it is a fantastically lurid gangster movie. Perhaps it was more the influence of screenwriter Oliver Stone that led the film in this direction as a popcorn dialectic on Castro communism versus Reagan's capitalism and the futility of both ideological outcomes as a way of profiting the individual, in this instance the irredeemable, Tony Montana played magnificently by Al Pacino.

When Tony Montana arrives along with fellow 'Marieletos' off the Mariel boatlift of 1980 from Cuba to Florida, he is a man hardened by a bloody civil war back home. Upon finally setting foot on American soil (after being detained in a refugee camp), Tony feels an immediate sense of entitlement to the 'American Dream', mainly for the murders he's carried out killing communists working under the Castro regime back in Cuba. He wants his pounds of flesh back in hard cash and tangible assets as payment for him defending his spurious concept of freedom versus governmental tyranny. The irony, of course, is that Montana will ultimately become as insanely despotic as any grisly war lord in South America or the Middle East and in his way, just as bloodthirsty, though not without one fleeting moment of conscience where the lives of innocent children are concerned.

Re-making Howard Hawks's original 1932 movie for the 1980s posed an interesting artistic and stylistic challenge for DePalma, who was clearly keen to return to the more operatic/melodramatic tropes of the gangster genre and move away from the rarefied approach that Coppola's 'Godfather' movies had staked out for themselves. With Stone updating the political/cultural identity of the central protagonist to reflect the conflicts that America had been waging post WW2 against Russia, Korea, Cuba and Vietnam, this 80's 'Scarface' certainly made a potent statement about the ultimate futility of believing you can win these wars by simply rewarding the enemies of those foreign regimes with green cards, naively believing they will adopt the values of your own country. The ultimate truth regarding 'Scarface' though is that Tony Montana would always be in it for himself under any societal or political circumstance, either in Cuba or America or wherever. In this sense he is a more primal beast in his way of surviving, not dissimilar to the prowling tiger he shows off to his guests in his luxury compound after marrying Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer). Montana is non-ideological even when events that shape the direction of his movements are inherently political. He is always the same hand to mouth street kid that grew up in a poor municipio and maintains the defiant belligerence of an aggrieved child all throughout the movie.

"Corruption lives in luxury." - Oliver Stone

Of course, in contrast to Tony's illegal journey to the 'top of the world' via the Miami underworld, is the legal route that his mother and sister have taken to gain entry to America. When Montana turns up unexpectedly at his mother's poor looking house she is horrified and wants nothing to do with her criminal son. His sister, Gina, on the other hand is in thrall to Tony's street glamour and confidence and wants to be close to him, perhaps as a (sort of) replacement for their father who abandoned them. Gina wants what Tony can provide with his increasing wealth and power and Tony wants Gina to remind him of something pure amongst the darkness at the heart of his own soul and the unsavoury world he inhabits. The two are drawn to each other like moths to the flame, and both will be destroyed by this sibling reunion for two very different reasons.

As the story charts Tony Montana's rise from the street to the mansion, we see the gangster migrant burn through everything close to him like a fizzing stick of dynamite about to blow up. Family and friendship are all sacrificed on the pyre of Tony's dance of death with the American Dream as he finds he cannot ever truly sate his appetite for greed. "The World Is Yours" slogan emblazoned on a Goodyear Blimp that passes across the Miami night sky is not only a direct reference to the original 1932 'Scarface' but also a perfect credo for Tony, who believes that he deserves everything he can claim as his own on this earth like a cocaine fuelled Midas.

This hollow emptiness Tony discovers in his own heart of darkness by the end of the movie is, in fact, the timeless emptiness that has carried despots, rulers (criminal and political) throughout all of history.

When an irresistible force such as you
Meets an old immovable object like me
You can bet just as sure as you live

Something's gotta give
Something's gotta give
Something's gotta give

From 'Something's Gotta Give' - Johnny Mercer

But perhaps the most sobering lesson of 'Scarface' is that whatever power structures are in place, the renegades like Montana who act on their own moral authority will always find their way through the cracks and do whatever it takes to chart their own path to power. Of course, the politics of drugs play a big part in Tony's story where the white powdery commodity that brings him great riches also brings about his ultimate ruination like a self inflicted wound. If, according to Marx, capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction then so, too, cocaine provides the leaves for Tony's destruction. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' is an ancient proverb that makes sense until you throw the variable of cocaine into the mix. Tony fails to heed the warning given to him early on in the film when Elvira warns him not 'to get high on his own supply' and if we see cocaine itself as the perfect metaphor for both the pursuit of power and the American Dream then it explains why the final blood-splattered scenes of the film play out in the fever dream, Grand Guignol way they do much like an exploding dam of Tony's pent up excess.

In summary, it occurs to me that if Tony is forged from communism then he is killed by capitalism; his fatal mistake was in believing that the sheer will and determination of his own character could compete with the sociopolitical forces that rule over all of our lives, whether we like it or not.