the activist who introduced the concept of political correctness into the contemporary debate, would not know what to think of . Committed to the environment, progressive, alleged feminist, anti-racist and philanthropist, DiCaprio meets with the Pope to talk about immigration and climate challenges, travels to Indonesia to denounce the scorched earth policy of palm oil producers, spends 43 million dollars protecting the mangrove forests of the Galapagos Islands and dedicates another 15 million to campaigns in favor of native American peoples.
On the other hand, as Scaachi Koul reproaches him in , he travels the planet in private jets that pollute more than some Central African republics, “he spends his life aboard his close friend’s fleet of superyachts” and continues to cultivate his reputation as a merciless womanizer, always on the arm of supermodels of whom he has several decades.
If there is any coherence that must be recognized, according to Koul, it is that for 35 years he has been demanding the right not to be coherent, to live by his own rules, without making concessions or paying tolls. The fascinating thing in his case is that a lifetime dedicated to ignoring with contempt the rules of other people’s conduct does not seem to have taken its toll on him. Not even in this era of fierce hyper-scrutiny on and off social media.
The self-indulgence, the gradual disconnection from reality and the excessive and toxic lifestyle that have ruined (in part) the reputation of and have barely made a dent in that of DiCaprio, even though he has incurred reputational risks not very different from those of Depp. The fact is that Leo has been shouting to the world since the early nineties that these are his principles and the world has ended up buying this contradictory product, at times hateful but almost always genuine, with a reluctant, almost guilty fascination. His last appearance at the Oscars, with a mustache, an enviable but natural face, without obvious signs of desperate attempts at rejuvenation, a body that does not follow the current dictatorship of CrossFit and an always relaxed, almost ironic face, proves it: DiCaprio is perhaps the last patriarch of Hollywood, legitimate heir of those stars (Bogart, Grant, Stewart or Wayne) who stayed out of controversies or knew how to overcome them with charm.
The Autumn of the Patriarch
I admitted it a few years ago: “I still like Leo DiCaprio despite myself.” What’s more, Hyman acknowledged in a burst of painful sincerity, “I can’t even imagine what I would have to do to stop liking him.” We love him, the journalist suggested, because we continue to see in him the enthusiastic, vulnerable and beardless Jack of . But also because the bearded, contradictory and lackadaisical man he has become seems to us a worthy heir to Jack. And because, Hyman concludes, “loving someone, on screen or off, is about being willing to let them take you places you didn’t want to go.”
Of course, not everyone is equally forgiving. Arwa Mahdawi, in , argued not long ago that the insistence of many powerful men on having relationships with women much younger than themselves is still an annoying patriarchal residue that does not deserve any indulgence. “Leo,” Mahdawi exhorted him, “why don’t you go out with someone your age?”
It seemed to the journalist nothing short of an outrage that DiCaprio was there shortly before she turned 25, a red line, always according to Mahdawi, for a man “who only seems to feel comfortable with women with a prefrontal cortex that is not fully formed,” perhaps because he is not looking for life partners, but rather “admirers or disciples.” But what really upset Mahdawi is the brutal and machirula complicity that the breakup aroused on social networks. Jokes like: “Titanic turns 25 and Leo celebrates it in the best possible way: looking for another girlfriend under 25.”
To , It doesn’t matter that DiCaprio has specialized in offering vicarious experiences to men much less attractive than him (the trophy girlfriends they can’t aspire to, the asymmetrical adoration relationships they can never have): he is the Jack of Titanic and, furthermore, he has every right to do what he wants with his life: “Okay, he likes young, pretty women. So what?” She even finishes her reflection by putting her cards on the table: she also likes “young and handsome” men, but they have become a luxury that she can no longer afford.
The loneliness of prime numbers
Stacy Lee Kong, Friday Things, Despite everything, the private life of that fifty-something man who makes films in Hollywood should worry us, because it is a symptom, and a rather worrying one. Kong found it shocking that the brief relationship between DiCaprio and the 19-year-old Israeli model Eden Polani once became the object of ridicule, ridicule and gossip in the media and networks. Jokes, generally complicit with DiCaprio and cruel and inconsiderate with Polani.
Kong goes one step further and introduces a rather curious graph about DiCaprio’s sentimental and sexual life from which it is deduced that leaving his girlfriends when they are about to turn 25 is a pattern of behavior and not something that happened by chance in the case of Camila Morone. A pattern, in any case, that has already been broken, because his current partner, Vittoria Ceretti (Italian and, of course, a model), is about to turn 28.
The question, in any case, is why DiCaprio has managed to survive reputational crises that would shatter the career of any other public figure. When he is accused of being a celebrity who takes advantage of his position and the naivety of very young women, he does not respond, but he does admit that “emotionally” he feels like “a 35-year-old man,” hence his Peter Pan syndrome. When it is stated unequivocally that he does, he does not respond. When accused of doing so, he does not respond. When he is criticized for his intense relationship with Jeff Bezos, at whose lavish wedding he appeared, with his everlasting golf cap, his baggy jackets and his electronic cigarettes, surrounded by the owners of the most polluting companies on the planet, he limits himself to saying that, perhaps appealing to our intimate knowledge that friendship has reasons that reason does not understand.
The hero of silence
In reality, DiCaprio almost never responds. He does not accuse reputational crises because he ignores them. Scaachi Koul has a theory: “He is not worried about the responsibilities of stardom because he never wanted to be a star.” He is enthusiastic about cinema and wanted to act since he was a child. He achieved it at a very early age and, achieving success far above any previous expectations at the age of 18 (in 1993, with Who does Gilbert Grape love? with Johnny Depp), he chose to keep only the positive part of that sudden fame, from the private jet trips to the exclusive parties until dawn and the dates with top modelsand ignore the rest.
Hence, he seems to be the contemporary superstar least concerned about his reputation and image, who has acquired an aura of authenticity that is proof of scandals, controversies and inconsistencies and who continues to seem to many to be something like a human being in this era of robotic, mellifluous and papier-mâché idols. If he appears on the networks it is not to defend himself from the attacks that bounce off his impregnable armor of indifference, but to tell us things like that making a guy who despises science and does not believe in climate change the president of the United States is equivalent to giving up thousands of years of human evolution.
Koul also adds that if we still like DiCaprio it is because we met him when he was a very competent youth actor and, in a sense, he has never stopped being that. His career is solid and many of his characters (Gilbert Grape’s brother, Jack, the Wolf of Wall Street, the amnesiac detective of Shutter Island, the tormented cop Departed) They remain memorable. He has proven it again with One battle after another. A film that has brought him back to the Oscars, where he attended exhibiting his relaxed indifference to everything divine and human and on the arm of another girlfriend. Model, of course.
