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Martin Scorsese’s The Departed has unquestionably been both a critical and a commercial success. But why has the film’s buzz died down so soon, and will this have an effect on Scorsese’s chances of finally winning that Oscar that has so eluded him? Moviesay.com investigates.

A month ago, on October 6th, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed arrived to the US cinemas surrounded with buzz. Critics quickly hailed it as a masterpiece, and audiences subsequently propelled it to the top of the box-office. With Scorsese’s directorial skills and a cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga and Alec Baldwin, all this was probably not a huge surprise to anyone.

The film has since continued to do well in the box-office, and more importantly enjoys a high 93% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, and a very good 8.5 rating at IMDb. Moreover, the film has been favourably compared to Scorsese’s earlier classics such as Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Clearly, then, the movie has been a success in both financial and artistic terms.

But what about in terms of Buzz? How much discussion has the movie actually generated? We here at moviesay.com are primarily concentrating on the amount of discussion movies generate online, and the current view there is perhaps not quite as rosy as one might imagine.

As expected, The Departed took a top spot in buzz rankings after the weekend of its release, although at one point it actually looked like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning would surface as the winner. Buzz itself topped at little over 100dB for The Departed — a rate not seen since the release of Snakes on a Plane (which went all the way up to 120dB, actually). Scorsese’s movie continued to dominate the charts also the following week, with only Grudge 2 coming close to threatening the top spot.

However, from the third weekend (October 20th) onwards things have been far more quiet for The Departed. It first, rather interestingly, lost the top spot to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, despite of the latter not making much of an impact in the box office. Similarly, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige both ranked higher in buzz than did The Departed at the end of the weekend of October 20th. Moreover, not only did Scorsese’s film lose places in the top 10 list, but also the buzz level itself came crashing down.

While it is, of course, natural that the amount of discussion a film generates drops after a few weeks following its release, in the case of The Departed this drop has been surprisingly steep. The film went in just a few days from enjoying a high 80dB rating to the low 30s and 20s that it is now holding. While buzz levels in general are quite low at the moment (see buzz rankings for movies now in theaters), it is perhaps telling that at the moment of writing The Departed only narrowly beats The Devil Wears Prada in the rankings; and Prada came out at the end of June this year.

This, of course, begs the question why this should be the case. And the answer, it would seem to me, is not extremely hard to find. It is, most probably, the three already-mentioned quality releases from October 20th: Marie Antoinette, Flags of Our Fathers and The Prestige. Each of these films, I would imagine, lured in audiences who had seen and were discussing The Departed, and with so many new films now to discuss, the amount of talk about The Departed suddenly took a plummet.

All this, of course, makes one think of the Oscars. Scorsese has, after all, been all but robbed of the honour before, and many critics are now saying that this, finally, should be his year. But if the amount of discussion remains as low as it is now, will that have an effect on the Academy voters? Will they remember The Departed come January? Of course, the promotional race for Oscar votes has not yet truly began, but unless the producers behind The Departed take some action, the current buzz levels would not seem to guarantee that Oscar for Scorsese.

There is, of course, much more to movies than awards, box-office, or even discussion. But for many it would be a shame to see Scorsese once again “lose” an Oscar.