gonna grow you a place safer than this

I know people constantly bemoan the constant cuts back to ice pick joe’s subplot. It’s dreary and unpleasant and adds to the movie’s stupid long runtime, adding nothing to the plot from a pragmatic perspective, but I think people fail to understand how much it encapsulates the themes of goncharov.

Throughout the plot, it’s implied that joe was an american who immigrated to italy to reconnect with his roots. He is in many ways in indictment of the great american melting pot- how we romanticize the concept of diaspora to fit our own cultural narrative. Joe mentions that when he first moved to naples he had his bike stolen within a matter of minutes- a blatant reference to the 1948 italian classic bicycle theives. He went to italy to reconnect to his roots, and got exactly what his family left italy to escape: a life of crime and poverty.

This is why ice pick joe’s dogs are so important: he’s a dog of the mob! He represents the fate every other character in the movie is attempting to avoid. Yet he dies on his own terms with a smile on his face, his german shepherd running away into the woods. The symbolism of this is obvious: he’s been cut loose. Despite how much Goncharov did to avoid meeting ice pick joe’s fate, joe got the one thing goncharov wanted: his freedom.

People may say he’s a bad guy for all the people he killed and the crimes he committed, but ice pick joe’s only real crime was being italian.

All the clock symbolism in Goncharov was so well done. If you read into the narrative and assume that Goncharov is pining after Andrey, all of the shots of Goncharov glancing down at his pocket watch makes so much more sense.

Andrey is doomed to die from the beginning of the film, we all know that. He chose this life. But it we pay attention, Andrey himself never actually looks at a clock. Sure, during the bridge scene, we can see a giant clock tower looming over him in the background, but that’s for us to see, not Andrey. It’s to remind us that he’s running out of time. Andrey already knows that. He’s aware that, if he doesn’t make the right choices regarding his deal with Ice Pick Joe, he’ll be a dead man.

But why does Goncharov keep looking at his watch? He’s not a part of the deal with Ice Pick Joe. His fate isn’t decided. But, like I said, Goncharov is obviously in love with Andrey, and he knows that Andrey’s time is running out. And you might be thinking, “Aren’t Goncharov and Andrey enemies?” Well, yes. But that’s because they’re supposed to be, it’s what’s expected of them. Andrey joined Slippery Steve in the train heist, and Goncharov was chosen to stop them. They were forced into the roles of enemies.

But when Andrey is almost knocked off the top of the train, Goncharov saves him, clinging onto his hands and refusing to let go. This is obviously showcasing Goncharov’s love for Andrey, and how he won’t let his feelings go. His feelings are why he keeps anxiously glancing at clocks, fearful of the approaching day of Andrey’s death. It’s eating him alive. Time is his worst enemy.

Most of Tumblr completely misunderstands Ice Pick Joe’s function in the narrative as a whole, and it’s absolutely infuriating. He’s not just some guy with an ice pick, but rather the driving force of the film’s narrative and themes. It is impossible to understand the interplay of machismo, homosocial relationships and male loneliness and alienation from society without the crucial through-line of Ice Pick Joe as a foil to Goncharov himself.

Goncharov can never be whole, as evidenced by the always missing stop watch in the second half of the film, his core character costume piece. Goncharov feels like his stopwatch is critical to his sense of self and identity, as using it to count and time his acts of violence was the thing that allowed access to the world of men when he was just a boy. Losing it therefore loses part of himself. Whereas Ice Pick Joe, in the pivotal scene where he saves himself from death on the mountain by finally using the ice pick for its intended purpose instead of the world of violence he was born into, becomes whole as he sheds the need to conquer nature, thereby shedding his need to conquer ppl.

All this to say that Ice Pick Joe is far more complex than Tumblr gives him credit for.

you weren’t born trans, you saw ice pick joe in goncharov when you were 12 and that’s why you are the way that you are

do you ever think about how ice pick joe was the only one who saw how sofia was struggling, when everyone else was busy fighting bigger battles (as if there were any bigger battles than this)?

do you think about how he didn't know how to help her--how could he who had spent his whole life steeped in blood?

do you think about how he waited and watched and offered his violence, the only thing he knew how to offer, knowing full well it wasn't what she wanted or needed?

do you think that maybe, if it brought a single smile to her face when those were so few and hard to come by, maybe that mattered? maybe it mattered more than anything else?

“ice pick joe perfectly encapsulates the same brutality as the other characters, the only reason people have issues with him is because he isn’t viewed through the eyes of someone who loves him” i say into the mic.

the crowd boos. i begin to walk off in shame, when a voice speaks and commands silence from the room.

"she’s right," they say. i look for the owner of the voice. there in the 5th row stands: martin scorsese himself.

I know most of the fandom is enthralled by how the relationship between Andrey and Goncharov develops (and I am too! it's a beautiful film, with a compelling power dynamic!), but I really think we need to talk more about Ice Pick Joe.

and more specifically, we've gotta talk about his ice pick, and how he uses it.

it's implied that he's killed a lot of people with that ice pick, but only one of those deaths is shown in the film. it's a hard scene to watch, and some people might want to skip over it, but I think the brutality is part of the point. there's a reason that it's played out with such excruciating detail.

see, ice picks are used as weapons all the time in movies, usually with a stab to the throat or ear, leading to a quick but bloody death. but in Goncharov, the scene is played out slowly, with Joe tying Amarro to a chair before almost carefully putting the pick through his eye socket.

sound familiar to anyone? it should. for a lot of reasons.

Amarro Fiamberti was the name of the first psychiatrist to ever perform a transorbital lobotomy. it was only due to his research that Walter Freeman was able to come up with his own lobotomy technique: one involving an ice pick.

Walter Freeman died in 1972, just months before Goncharov went into production.

and then there's the fact that Joe's ice pick is stolen (where did you steal it from, Joe? from whose operating table?) and the implications that he has his own struggles with mental health (the mention of his sister's murder, the humor he uses as a coping mechanism, the camera angles that give a sense of unreality to any scenes that are from his perspective).

I don't think any of that is an accident or a coincidence.

in my opinion, Ice Pick Joe's story is a tale of revenge - not against someone who wronged him, but against a medical procedure that wronged thousands of people.

and murderer though he may be, he's still my favorite character.