Martin Scorsese Thinks America Is Being “Stressed” Just Like It Was Before the Civil War

Martin Scorsese does not mince words when asked how he feels about Donald Trump. “A disappointment,” he says. The director himself cares about compassion, “and what’s important in life between human beings. I don’t find this administration under Trump to have any of that. In fact, they relish in the opposite—to hurt people. And this is sad. Tragic. They say they aren’t, but they do.”

Scorsese returned—as he prefers to say—to Sicily this week to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Taormina Film Festival. (Scorsese’s grandparents are all from Sicily; they emigrated to New York in the early 20th century.) He participated in masterclass with film students, the red carpet with daughter Francesca, the awards ceremony, and then a screening of one of his most iconic films, Taxi Driver, in the middle of the night at the Teatro Antico.

In Taormina, Scorsese talked about his roots, vocation, and religion, as well as democracy in peril in a divided America. “My father was from Polizzi Generosa, my mother from Ciminna,” he told the students,.”For me to be here is not a visit—it’s a return. I learned so much from my family.” And again, “I grew up in New York immersed in Sicilian culture, in a very tough environment. Two opposite worlds coexisted around me: on the one hand, faith, compassion; on the other, organized crime. And perhaps therein lies the origin of everything I tell in my films: faith and gangsters.”

Scorsese’s up-to-date projects all have to do with religion. He’s making a up-to-date film about Jesus, a series on the lives of the saints, and a documentary on the tardy Pope Francis. Scorsese smiles often, even when he’s arguing.

“I’m still working on an approach to the story on Jesus in the contemporary work,” he tells a miniature group of Italian journalists. “And I think it’ll take me into next year before I have the proper approach.

“This goes back to the early ‘60s, where I wanted to make a film based on the gospels in the lower east side of New York—in the tenements and the slums where I grew up. I had it planned out, and I was beginning to be involved with some kind of filmmaking based in NYU—which are very small at the time, only 30 students. Now there’s thousands. We were going to do it in black and white, of course. And then I saw The Gospel According to St. Matthew. And I had to find another way.”

Scorsese met Pope Francis several times, he says, and is currently finishing his film nabout the pontif: Aldeas—A New Story. Naturally, the project was shot partially in Sicily—but also in Gambia, the Amazon rainforest, and other places. “It’s really about storytelling,” says Scorsese, “getting to be acquainted with other cultures, other ways of thinking and learning about people, learning about each other.” He was inspired in part by the Netflix miniseries Stories of a Generation – With Pope Francis, released in 2021, a project in which Scorsese also participated. “It was about advice from the elderly. I was one of the elderly.”

He objects to the focus on the new pope’s national origins. “The fact that it’s ‘American,’ I dont’t see it,” says Scorsese. “Whomever becomes pope, I see as the pope of all. It’s not Argentinian, Nigerian, Filipino: it has to be the pope of all.” Which is key to the entire enterprise. “The church at this point in time has to retain its soul and its heart, but at the same time include the world,” says Scorsese. “And I think from what I’ve read about him, I think he has the right approach.”

The most urgent issue is working for peace. “Peace is about knowledge, too. Peace is about knowing where the people are, and lessening greed. In a way, one doesn’t just make peace,—one has to deal with the problems of each person. You may not agree politically, but each one has to live. And so this begins the possibility of peace.”

Spirituality, Scorsese explains, has always been a key theme for him, not least because of the way he grew up. “When I was very young, one of the places that I found some kind of solace was in the cathedral downtown—St. Patrick’s. And there was a priest who was really good with us, a young priest who was very tough and strong and introduced us to literature like Graham Green, James Joyce, James Baldwin.”