Ideally, a film begins with a brilliant screenplay, which is interpreted by a discerning director and realized by responsive actors. In reality, this beautiful, delicate balance is rarely ever achieved. Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and written by Dustin Lance Black, comes pretty damn close.

This deft biopic tracks J. Edgar Hoover’s incredible 50-year tenure as director of the F.B.I. A master of the political game, Hoover’s brilliant (if questionable) tactics transformed his beloved bureau from a superfluous office with less authority than the local police into one of the most powerful institutions in the nation.

Even more intriguing is Hoover’s blighted personal life: This straight-laced workaholic lived with his strict mother (the ever-fine Judi Dench) until her death, never married and was possibly (or, as this film portrays it, probably) a closeted homosexual. At one point, the attorney general accuses Hoover of having not a single friend, to which the humiliated young man responds, “That is accurate.”

This soon changes, with the hiring of Clyde Tolson as assistant director. DiCaprio gives an exceeding careful, exacting performance, succeeding where many would fail in not only giving the audience a view into a notoriously closed mind, but keeping us rooting for this distinctly unlikeable character. Yet the film would still feel too cold without the poignant performance of Armie Hammer (formerly the Winklevii in The Social Network) as Tolson, who in addition being Hoover’s right-hand man, is also in love with him. The patient, ever-suffering Tolson is a mirror to our own frustration, always trying and failing to make Hoover see how quickly he is adopting the tactics of the criminals he ruthlessly hunts.

Eastwood crafts a dark, brooding atmosphere that both captures the cold, tense politics of Washington and reflects the impersonal, increasingly paranoid worldview of its protagonist. A film with such a long timespan and wide-ranging subject matter could easily feel flabby and formless; Eastwood reins the film into a tight stylistic framework that makes it clear why the septugenarian director is still stuck in the more attractively clean-cut ’20s.

Eastwood, DiCaprio and Black have created the equivalent of a cinematic souffle.

But despite the many impressive elements of this film, what lingers in one’s mind is the relationship, or lack thereof, between Tolson and Hoover.

Their relationship, though perhaps too reliant on doomed-love clichés, is heartbreaking, especially in light of the fact that such a pair would still be a near impossibility in the upper echelons of Washington.

– Britta Hanson