Billed as a film portrait, Mr. Scorsese, the new five-part Apple TV+ series from director Rebecca Miller, is as detailed a look at perhaps the greatest living American director as we're ever going to get. A hagiography in the truest sense, the series spends the majority of its time on the peak years of Martin Scorsese. That's a wise choice, frankly.
The surprises here are not the outcasts committing bloodshed, qualities we expect from Martin's unflinching efforts, but moments of tenderness near the end of Episode 5. The series feels like a journey through hell, with Martin rowing the boat down the Styx and cackling at us as he relates the sins that got him sent underneath. That he escaped hell, to have children, a family, and a purpose in caring for his current wife as she fights Parkinson's, is something of a miracle of a story, and one which this binge-worthy series captures so well. As always with Scorsese, the suffering leads to meaning, in art and in life.
The extraordinary first two episodes of Mr. Scorsese are where we see the familiar story of how Martin Scorsese's world-view was shaped by his physical limitations due to asthma as a child, his upbringing in and near the Catholic church, and his youth in Little Italy in Manhattan. Spending time on Martin's storyboards for imaginary films from his youth, Rebecca Miller takes a luxurious approach here, and a viewer can't help but marvel at what a portrait we are being given of Martin Scorsese, finally. The intimacy is captivating, especially so when childhood friends join in and corroborate Marty's stories of violence and strife in the neighborhood.
By the start of episode two, Robert De Niro has entered the picture -- literally -- and further details are provided on very specific points of inspiration for Johnny Boy in Mean Streets (1973). "All This Filming Isn't Healthy", the title of this episode (a line from Michael Powell's seminal 1960 film Peeping Tom), hints at the toll his work was beginning to take on Martin Scorsese. The emotional and mental energy of his youth gives way to an intensity of work, and a drug habit which nearly kills him. Without belaboring the point, Miller lets Scorsese share what details are necessary to understand the severity of the situation. And through the use of smart split-screens, violence and blood on screen sync up with the talking heads telling this story of Marty's life as a director. It's a neat technique that Ms. Miller wisely doesn't overuse here in this series. The judicious split screens remind us that this is a portrait of an artist so entwined with his creations that to separate them would be unthinkable. The violence around him -- and within him -- is part of what informed his art, clearly, and at least a part of the making of it given his temper and unhealthly habits in the Seventies.
Even as Scorsese stretches his craft to make Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in 1974, his motives are not just further success but because he needs to challenge his own skill set, and learn how to understand women (he's been married five times). That strength with actors carries into the work with Jodie Foster in 1976's Taxi Driver. Miller smartly spends as much time on the acting from De Niro and Foster in that production as she does on Martin's technical achievements in the film. While Taxi Driver stands as a masterpiece, and one that's been covered to death already, Rebecca Miller at least manages to surprise a viewer with a few new angles from which to approach that work and the creators behind it.
The partnership with De Niro continues in 1977's New York, New York, something of a failure in professional terms, and on to Raging Bull in 1980. As we know, Scorsese nearly died before that. The story of De Niro coming to see Scorsese in the hospital to convince him to make Raging Bull is one of not only artistic redemption but personal salvation. At his lowest due to health issues and drugs, Scorsese needed that hand extended, and the friendship and partnership between these two is still one of the great legacies in American cinema, and an example of true friendship among peers. Marty and Bob retreat to the Caribbean to work on the script (and get Marty well), and that journey provides this series with an emotional center; it's not just that Marty and Robert made great films together but that they were friends from the old neighborhood who saw in each other a trusted peer. Raging Bull explicitly links pain and salvation, and, as we learn from the backstory on the final Bible verse which ends that film, Martin Scorsese was the blind man made to see again. While Marty almost made himself into a suffering saint of cinema when he almost died in the late Seventies, Raging Bull, and the making of it with De Niro is what saved him from the abyss and brought him into the light again.
This third episode is titled Saint/Sinner and that dichotomy is a familiar one for anyone who has seen a single Scorsese film. It's especially relevant to the concepts behind Raging Bull (1980), his obvious masterpiece. Chronicling the suffering of Jake LaMotta, Scorsese hits another peak in his career. The technical virtuosity on screen, thanks in no small part to editor Thelma Schoonmaker, here detailing the editing process in wonderful specifics, is one part of what makes the film a classic. The themes of the thing -- that duality within a human between the sacred and profane -- is what gives De Niro an angle to portray what one potential producer of Raging Bull called a "cockroach" (Jake LaMotta). And what Mr. Scorsese does so very well is let those themes gestate in a viewer as this episode progresses. As Jodie Foster so eloquently says of Scorsese in one talking head moment, a "lack of moral closure is his signature as a filmmaker." This is why LaMotta is portrayed with as much sympathy as Christ. Marty's fascination with finding the humanity in the "underground man" as Kael termed it in her review of Taxi Driver, is his strength as a director. They are all outcasts, even Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence (1993) later, and that POV is one we see Scorsese bringing to work after work over the course of Mr. Scorsese.
In the end, Mr. Scorsese works precisely because Rebecca Miller presents Martin Scorsese as he might present a character in one of his own films where the personal suffering has meaning, and the art is the result. Whether that suffering is, as in Marty's case, sometimes self-induced, is beside the point. What matters is that Mr. Scorsese explains how he made this art, what inspired it, and -- most importantly -- what it means to Mr. Scorsese. Marty's a man who's not only chronicled the loss of humanity, the loss of diginity, and the lowest moments of existence, but a man who's seen the other side and emerged into the light. And Mr. Scorsese shares that personal journey of Marty's so expertly that a viewer comes away with a new appreciation for Marty's path as a director, and new angles from which to view the many masterpieces he's shared with us.
Mr. Scorsese premieres on Apple TV+ on October 17, 2025.
[Photos: Apple]