J. EDGAR, starring Leonardo DiCaprio

The man sitting three seats down from me was disgusted. He wanted Johnny Hoover to be a politically corrupt, buttoned-down, “arrest-‘em-all” prototypical G-man. He wanted Mr. Hoover to be the blatantly aggrandizing, harshly disciplinarian, don’t-take-no-for-an-answer Director of the FBI.

And he got all that. What my 3-seat-down neighbor couldn’t stomach was that Mr. Hoover didn’t ask and didn’t tell.

I hate that I am always introducing myself in these posts: “I’m a conservative Christian, born into Fundamentalism, raised during the bizarre social constructs of the eschatologically schizophrenic 70s, now easing my way into ‘Wow, God loves me; He really loves me!’” So, yeah, okay, I wish there was no sexual sin in the world. At the same time, I believe that far more damage is done by heterosexual sin than was ever done by the same-sex type. (Heck, far more damage is done by parents fighting in front of their kids than is done by homosexual activity.)

(Don’t get me going, but far more damage is done by speeding than by homosexual sin, and no, I’m not ordering sins from least to greatest as if they were fractions on a math worksheet, but just saying that conservative Christians like me have historically reserved a particularly Low Hell for consenting “sodomites,” as opposed to a slightly Higher-Level Hell for “regular” sinners like Texan judges who whip their teenaged daughters, like football coaches who do the naughty with little boys in the locker room, or men who sit three seats down who look at girly pictures on their PCs while their little old wives cry themselves to sleep and wonder if they should ask the kids to get the guest room ready because they’ve about had it.)

The man down the row from me, maybe is from the same sort of upbringing, although he grew up in the 40s, rather than the 70s, but still the only reason I didn’t say anything to him (as in, “Sir, do you mind?”) is that today is Veterans’ Day and you shouldn’t correct an old man on Veterans Day. Likely, he served, and my hat is off to him.

But someone really does need to point out to people of his ilk that if you are going to go all heebie-jeebie steroidally creeped-out because someone has tendencies you haven’t experienced, you need to put on compassion, or at least have the grace to get up and leave the movie and stop interrupting the dialog.

I am absolutely sure that Mr. Neighbor does not have the same response in a movie wherein a man is attracted to a woman who wants him, but he doesn’t take her sexually because it just isn’t the right thing to do, even though it’s true love and so forth. In that situation, the abstinence is honorable, heart-tugging, sacrificial.

Here, if our movie is to be believed, Mr. Hoover and Mr. Tolson, although sexually attracted to each other for decades, working closely together daily, and sharing great emotional, personal, and work-related intimacy through their youth and up until Hoover’s death, did not consummate the relationship physically. Moralists everywhere should stand up and cheer for this type of self-denial.

This movie is not all about Hoover’s sexuality, but it is clear that he spends a great deal of emotional energy throughout his life coming to terms with it. His mother would rather he be dead than gay, a take-off on the Andrea Yates idea that it was better to drown her five children than to see them grow up and possibly not be saved (“This way they’ll go to heaven; they’re under the age of accountability.”), and frankly, I have heard Christian women say nonsense like this. (Note to Moms: Don’t say hateful things like this.)

(More note: Paul doesn’t say, I wish all those Jews would die in infancy so they would be saved! He says, “Would that I could die for them!”)

Johnny Hoover wants so much to please his mother that he tries to find a wife. It doesn’t work out, but he is able to secure the platonic devotion of Helen Gandy, his personal secretary and gatekeeper for over 50 years. Miss Gandy never married, and upon J. Edgar’s death, she allegedly destroyed the supposed amassed secret files kept on the great, the powerful, the vulnerable.

Throughout the movie, we see various depictions of the capture of mobsters, the debacle of the Lindbergh baby, the rooting out of Communists who wanted the Red Flag flying over the White House, and we’re all glad Hoover and Company did what they could to keep us a Republic so that we can lunge at each other’s jugulars next November (and all the tedious months preceding) and then go back to our non-collectivized farms and our happy capitalistic lives, whether we’re Occupying some park or whether we’re paying an upside-down mortgage. (Texans, take heart, it looks as though you’re going to be able to keep your governor, and I say that as a person who didn’t watch the debate, but only felt the Shudder of Shame that rent the GOP to its underpinnings the other day.)

The movie is long (137 minutes), fairly dark (there are no bright colors anywhere), and at times sort of choppy—we go from decade to decade, back, back, forward, back, double forward, all the way back, quite a few times. But it holds together well. Judi Dench is spectacular, no surprise there, can’t wait for Skyfall. Armie Hammer as Tolson (sort of an anti-Winklevi, that is, humble, non-self-promoting, sweet) is engagingly authentic. He ages badly–seems to go from younger-than-Hoover to older-than-Hoover, but then, there was no Botox in those days. Still, the older Tolson looks as though he has been ravaged by an emerging-nation skin disease, so maybe prosthetic make-up has its limitations.

However, kudos to Mr. Eastwood for having the characters age through the movie, instead of using two sets of actors, as was disappointingly done in The Debt, though my sister disagrees, and she is often right.

It is fascinating to note the level of personal devotion given to Director Hoover. If he were the craven, blood-thirsty, powermonger history has gossiped him into being in our collective “memories,” the intense loyalty of his people would have faltered. No doubt the disloyal ones were standing in bread lines poste haste, but still.

I think one of the big take-aways here is that everyone is the same. Everyone is deeply flawed. Everyone is doing his best to do a good job at work. If you get to be in charge, you’re going to make mistakes. You might make enormous ones. Churchill, for example, is remembered for having a couple of hundred ridiculous thoughts for every one genius idea. But here’s one of the genius ones: the tank. Here’s another: making friends with FDR. So, we forgive him his backing of Eddy VIII because we ended up with George VI, and we let Gallipoli go because the flag that flies over the White House is not emblazoned with a swastika, can I get a witness?

Here, with J. Edgar, we have a flawed man who has the usual weaknesses of all men everywhere, but manages to get the job done. He brings scientific inquiry—The Crime Lab—to the FBI. He insists that a national fingerprint database is essential (teachers everywhere—and foster/adoptive parents for that matter—groan, but understand). He gives us the Expert Witness, and the Protected Crime Scene. Seriously, people, without these things, we have no Horatio Caine. We have no Doctor of Decomposition Science describing what would have been in Casey’s trunk had there been a body in there.

Now a word about Leonardo DiCaprio. Or not. There are really not words, are there, for a performance that makes This Old Fundy cry with compassion when a man is cross-dressing after the death of his mother. This is top-of-the-game stuff, and should result, if there’s any justice in the world, in Leonardo at least being able to think (he’s too classy to actually say outloud), “I’m king of the world” on February 26 at the Kodak Theater.

Leonardo should have had at least one Oscar by now—his Howard Hughes was brilliant, versatile, tortured; his Frank Wheeler a miracle of contained emotion; Billy Costigan, oh my word; Dom Cobb, are you kidding me? (okay, Colin Firth was amazing as G6)—but now is definitely his time.

Do not take your kids to this movie. There’s a bit with JFK that includes sighs and moans of a particular variety. There is actually more sex in the supposed JFK-and-Marilyn (or whoever) tape than there is in the rest of the movie, but it’s a bit graphic (if invisible), so keep the kids away.

Besides, they would not understand it. You’d have to spend hours before and after teaching almost the whole history of the 20th century, what led up to it, what resulted, to such an extent that you’d have bored yourself to death.

Worse, if you took the kids, they might see you have compassion for a emotionally vulnerable homosexual, and that would blow your parenting all to pieces. Wouldn’t it?