Bringing out the Dead
Director: Martin Scorsese
Year of Release: 1999
I remember when this film came out thinking: Nic
Cage...Snake Eyes (the last film I saw him in - the DePalma flop fro
1998)...mmm, no thanks. Admittedly, I wasn't deep on the Scorsese bandwagon at
that point in my career. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed many of his films,
especially Good Fellas, Casino and Cape Fear (with deference to the original).
But he wasn't a Director whose films I would see simply because he made them.
Ever since Hugo and Shutter Island, I've started looking backward and
considering what I've missed. The King of Comedy, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and
Raging Bull, to name a few are films, with a little more weight and
understanding under my own belt, that I've gone back to and simply been
devastated by.
So here is Bringing Out the Dead - a long way from any
of the classics mentioned above, but still on the list of this great auteur's
work that I felt the need to explore. I was not let down. This is a Nic Cage
part - a bit looney, but still sad and lovable in his pursuit of peace within
the chaos he works as an EMT in NYC. He crosses the line between poetry and
brutal nonsense without much thought, overwrought by a schedule that doesn't
let him sleep, a dependence on alcohol and an inability to save anyone -- his
connection to his favorite drug: feeling like God.
The three acts via three drivers makes for a great
framing device. They're all excellent and paint Cage's mood beautifully. John
Goodman is his usual salt of the earth pile driver, somehow making us
comfortable with the horror of this world. Ving Rhames is cool as it comes,
abusing his authority in the name of the Lord to help make believers out of
non-believers. Then there's Tom Sizemore who, it seems, is just being Tom
Sizemore. And that's plenty and perfect for Cage's near departure at the end of
the film.
The music and radio calls to the drivers are constant
partners, filling in the ridiculous world outside the mobile sanctuary that is
the ambulance and playing for the viewer as another character, almost like
Wolfman Jack in "American Graffiti". The cinematography is, typically
for Scorsese, fascinating, hyper when necessary, dead calm with forced
perspectives like the two shot on Cage and Sizemore near the end of the film,
all to great effect.
I tend to enjoy stories with dark, spiritual and
psychological tones and Waking the Dead is rich with them.
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