J. Edgar

Clint Eastwood tells Hoover through Hoover: the ageing director dictates his memoirs to hand picked young agents, and that dictation is the frame. The historian Beverly Gage says the arrangement is invented and no such sessions took place. The film distrusts him too: Tolson openly accuses Hoover of inflating his part in key events. The narrative alternates between the founding of the bureau, with the Lindbergh kidnapping and the forensic laboratory, and the old Hoover guarding what he built. Eastwood shot in 39 days and came in under budget. DiCaprio sat up to 6 hours for the aged Hoover makeup, and the last stretch is played almost entirely under prosthetics, which is where the drama takes its risk. The film has Hoover himself writing the letter sent to Martin Luther King. The historian Aaron Stockham notes that such a letter was written, but that Hoover almost certainly delegated it inside the bureau. The Academy gave it no nominations at all. DiCaprio was nominated for a Golden Globe in drama, and he and Armie Hammer were nominated by the Screen Actors Guild. A good fit if you want to watch how power is stored and hidden, with a narrator you know is lying. Not for anyone after settled answers about Hoover’s private life, which the film fills in with invention.