The online discourse around the movie has isolated Peggy’s lack of dialogue as evidence of Scorsese’s supposedly old-school sexism; the fact that she speaks just seven lines becomes a focal point of performative wokeness, proclaiming the film just another goombah bro revelry. But this interpretation is shallow, supposing that dialogue alone gives a character an inner life—or that silence can’t be strategic. Though my life might seem far removed from the gangland squabbles that drive the film, I can relate, deeply, to the ways that Scorsese, screenwriter Steven Zaillian, and Gallina and Paquin, render the theme of parental estrangement: I know what it’s like to grow up under the thumb of a father who believes that tenderness is beneath him, who only understands that might makes right, even—or perhaps, especially—if it’s cruel. As a child, I sat at many a supper table, studying my father, waiting to feel that slight, plucked wire vibration that I knew could, often would, escalate into a very bad mood.
If anything, Scorsese subtly frames some of the early family dinners from Peggy’s perspective, though she doesn’t speak a word. The camera circles the table, where the Sheerans eat, their faces locked in rictuses of forced cheerfulness, all to appease Frank—who has just curb-stomped a grocer for being rude to Peggy. The camera stops briefly, holds tight on Gallina’s face, which does not mask itself, reveals its pensiveness; then, the camera widens again to show De Niro’s Frank at the head of the table, full of kingly certitude. The moment is a perfect, claustrophobic reflection of what it’s like to live with a petty tyrant of a father. I know the power of silence precisely because my father wielded it against me: When he wanted to inflict an Old Testament-level of devastation, he would stop talking to me. As in not one word. For days. For two weeks. Silence can be far crueler than screaming. So, when I was an adult, when I wanted it to be known that I would never forgive him, I did not scream my throat into pulp. I gave him nothing. Only silence was boundless enough to contain my rage.
Even though "The Irishman" isn’t exactly a conventional family drama, it still uses the father-daughter dynamic to make some very clear, unequivocal points—most compellingly, it never pressures Peggy into the kind of big, cathartic moment that will likely lead to some kind of reconciliation, and, with that reconciliation, a redemption that Frank doesn’t deserve. The movie knows that reconciliation isn’t a happy ending; after all the people Frank has betrayed and murdered (including one of his closest friends, Jimmy Hoffa), after all the pain he’s caused his family, there can be no happy ending. While I understand that this is an objectively devastating, coal-dark truth, I still find a tiny diamond of validation in it: Sometimes, staying angry is the right choice, the only choice. The film anchors its moral certitude in Peggy’s prolonged rejection of her father. To interpret the depth of her characterization exclusively through the number of lines she’s given seems willfully myopic—it negates the richness of her interiority and insists that only overt displays of boldness define a Strong Female Character™.
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