The Meaning of Recognition by Clive James Page B

the mere
suggestion of terror is enough.
    How does he feel about that? Bad enough to need an analyst, the reassuringly husky Dr Melfi, played by Lorraine Bracco, who in
Someone To Watch Over Me
was married to an honest cop.
Theoretically she is on the side of the law here too, but there are complications. In
Analyse This
the mobster’s shrink was played by Billy Crystal, with hilarious results. Taking
over the same situation and spinning it out into a linking theme, Chase transforms a gag into a strange story of perverted love. Transference duly occurs and Tony lusts after her. She is suitably
revolted. Then she gets raped in the basement car park by a pizza joint’s Employee of the Month. The cops are useless. She admits the attraction of Tony’s power when she tells her
sympathetic but powerless ex-husband what would happen if she tipped off Tony about the rapist: her patient would ‘squash him like a bug’.
    Her feelings for Tony’s macho strength would give a strict feminist the horrors, but they are surely plausible, and therefore disturbing. She herself is disturbed enough to seek analysis
in her turn. (From Peter Bogdanovich, as it happens: showing once again, as he did in his film
Saint Jack
, what a subtle actor he is.) In the grip of the primeval instincts that it is her
job to stay detached from, Dr Melfi gets more and more screwed up: a token of the grim fact that any kind of entry into Tony’s orbit can have life-threatening results. As for Tony, his
anxiety attacks abate, but he has told her little about the truths that matter most. He has told her what was done to him – violent father, scheming mother – but tells her nothing about
what he has done to other people. A leitmotiv of his reluctant testimony to her is the question of where the ducks go in winter. This reminds us of Holden Caulfield, who wondered the same thing
about fish. But Tony is no young intellectual in the making. Mixing bright broads with his usual diet of rudderless goomahs, he is spiritually drawn towards higher thoughts, but profundity can be
undone in a moment by news that some idealistic agitator on a construction site needs straightening out with a baseball bat. Tony’s clever brain is just another muscle.
    The only but abiding complexity of Tony’s character lies in the way he must bring into balance two different considerations. Outside the house, his powers are unlimited. Inside it, he can
affect the behaviour of others only to a certain extent, because they know he won’t kill them. Vivid as it is, this is a real conflict, genuinely subtle and complicated, continually
surprising. Tony’s wife, Carmela, and his children A.J. and Meadow, are forever cutting down to size the very man who would take a long knife to them if they were not his property. Michael
Corleone can shut the door on his wife and children. Tony has to fight them in the kitchen for his unfair share of the lasagna. By comparison, Michael Corleone’s conflict between the evil of
his business and his highly developed sense of right and wrong is a mere excuse for Al Pacino to press his fingers to his weary eyes while the close-up gives us an opportunity to speculate about
the improbable things that have been happening to his hair.
    Tony’s crew are a study in themselves, and would remain so even if Tony were to fall foul of the Rico laws and die in gaol like Al Capone. (James Gandolfini’s agent has no doubt been
reminded of this during discussions about his client’s salary.) The supporting characters are developed and deployed through season after season. This is one of the areas in which the
advantage of a TV serial over even the biggest movie really shows up. A movie is always short of time. A serial can keep the corners uncut. Paulie Walnuts isn’t just a swept-back hairstyle
with a few threatening lines. Paulie has insecurities. His pop-eyed humiliation when a Mob boss from the big city fails to recognize him must rank high