Copyright
© 1999 by Michael Segers, All rights
reserved
Pardon me for
raving—well, that is half the title of this series—but it has been a long,
long time since anything in a movie theater has moved me quite as much as Martin
Scorcese’s Bringing Out the Dead. And that film hangs on a
make-or-break performance by Nicholas Cage, who just may be on his way to being
the most talented screen actor of his generation. The life of emergency medical
technician Frank Pierce, the character he plays in this film, is threatened
twice, and I was so captivated by Cage’s performance that I grabbed the arm of
the seat I was in and gasped audibly… both times. Pierce says that when
something good happens, everything glows. Well, look for the shine, because
something very good has happened: this film! Bringing Out the Dead, with
script by Paul Schrader (who teamed with Scorcese on 1976’s Taxi Driver),
based on a novel by real life EMT Joe Connelly, lacks a story with a neatly
structured beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it is a montage of scenes and
episodes that sketch the boundaries of the life of EMT Pierce who, at the
beginning of the film, is already pretty far down in the pits, but not so far
that the only way is up.
If you can tell which way
is up. During a night of Jesus, booze, and blood, Pierce’s religious partner
Marcus (Ving Rhames) says that "The first step is love, and the second is
mercy." That seems clear cut, but in the wacky world of these walking dead,
nothing is clear. Very near the beginning of the film, a dreadful dread-locked
street person Noel (Marc Anthony) is tied to a stretcher begging for water. Now,
why won’t anyone give him a drink? Because water may kill him. Later, he can
be coaxed back to the hospital only by the promise of a "termination
room" where he can choose how he wants to commit suicide. Even later, the
true act of mercy, of healing, involves Pierce’s taking on the medical
identity of a dying man and letting him die naturally. So much for maintaining
professional distance.
There’s not much distance
in this film, with Frank Pierce’s death and life spiritual quest confined to
the hell of the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan’s west midtown. He has
sacrificed a marriage to his job, which gives him the chance for something that
he compares to being in love, saving lives. But he has not saved anyone in
months. We are very much on the mean streets of Taxi Driver—the
meaningless sex and violence viewed through the windshield of a vehicle that
keeps its driver away from anywhere more so than taking him somewhere. The
difference is that Travis, the taxi driver, was a killer. Frank is a healer, a
healer in need of healing himself. Frank’s partners do him no good, give him
no answers. He doesn’t accept Marcus’s religious message anymore than
Larry’s (John Goodman) dream of being his own boss in the suburbs. He yields
to the adrenaline addiction of his third partner Tom (Tom Sizemore) but pulls
back when he sees what Tom has done.
Then there is Mary Burke
(Patricia Arquette, in real life Mrs. Nicholas Cage), daughter of one of the
barely living that Frank brings to the emergency room. A sometimes drug addict
who has not spoken to her father in three years, she waits around the hellish
hospital, where she and Frank continue to run into each other, sharing
cigarettes, pizza, and pain. In many ways, this film reminds me of Cage’s
previous outing, Eight Millimeter, but there is a significant difference.
While private eye Tom’s relationship with his wife (Catherine Keener) provided
a moral ruler with which he could measure his walk on the wild side, the
relationship with Mary just never comes alive enough to leave us feeling that
she is the healer Frank needs.
This is territory Martin
Scorcese knows and enriches with a surprising humor. He moves along from
soul-numbing moment to soul-numbing moment, working against redemption, but
redemption is always there. The film captures New York City as it has rarely
been seen. Usually New York scenes are crowded, claustrophobic, but here the
streets stretch wide and empty, punctuated by a couple of hookers here, a fight
there. While sex and violence are never far beneath the surface, they
nonetheless stay pretty much beneath the surface, and the film’s R rating
seems to be more for theme and mood than for much that is explicit.
This is a film ultimately
about love and a film made with love. But Scorcese makes a few crucial mistakes.
He is working with an effective script and has the high-powered Nicholas Cage on
screen almost all of the film’s 121 minutes, yet Scorcese seems to trust
neither. He piles on distracting high-speed ambulance drives, weird lighting,
and MTV nuttiness to convey Frank’s deteriorating state, when all he needs is
a close-up of his main actor. There is a magical moment when Frank cradles a
character impaled on a cast-iron railing fourteen floors above New York’s
dirty pavements, and the character starts to babble about the city, the beauty,
perhaps the glow that Cage’s character has already spoken of. That is quite
enough, but as the welders begin cutting through the railing, the sparks
suddenly become fireworks, and I felt embarrassed for such a misstep by such a
great filmmaker.
Two films ago, in City
of Angels (a sad rip-off of the quirkily magnificent or magnificently quirky
Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders) Cage portrayed an angel who trades his
wings for a human heart. In his two films since then, Eight Millimeter
and now Bringing Out the Dead, he seems to be developing that theme,
playing a good man who for love or mercy sinks low into the conundrum of evil in
search of the salvation of love. In Eight Millimeter, he was admirably
restrained, so that when he let himself go for a few moments that still give me
goose bumps, he burned up the screen. In the new film, he starts off so far gone
that he has almost nowhere left to go to develop his character, but what I said
in the first paragraph still stands: he just may be on his way to being the most
talented screen actor of his generation. He has an almost telepathic connection
with an audience that transcends any movement or gesture on his part.
Twice in this film Frank
Pierce, Cage’s character, speaks of "bearing witness" for those who
have died, almost in the sense in which Holocaust survivors speak of bearing
witness, to keep the dead alive in memory. For me, the best films have a quality of bearing witness, and
as a reviewer, I would much rather bear witness for those films that have
touched me than indulge what I’m told is my talent for spotting and
dismantling absurdities. Since I review only one film a week, I try to do enough
research to pick a film that I can write a positive review of, so that I can
bear witness for something good. Of course, there is every once in a while a
film that challenges me to tell you that the emperor (like the leading lady) has
no clothes on. And, of course, sometimes I go into a film with high hopes and
find that I’m stuck in a disaster.
But, as much time as I
spend watching films (some of which never get reviewed here) and reading,
thinking, and writing about them, these reviews, like my favorite films,
ultimately are about love—my love for the complex human experience of
watching, enjoying, and discussing film. Lord Buckley, the great
comedian-philosopher, used to ask his audience if it would embarrass them if he
told them that he loved them. Embarrassing or not, let me ask a favor of you. As
you pay your money and take your chances at the megaplex, your dry feet sticking
to the floor of the theater, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your wallet
a few bills lighter, remember there is a love, at least our shared love for
film, that motivates me to write these reviews.
For a review/article that
emphasizes the respect that actors have for Martin Scorcese, look at this
excellent piece from About.com—
http://hollywoodmovie.about.com/entertainment/movies/hollywoodmovie/library/weekly/aa102299.htm
For an overview of the
highly stressful career of emergency medical technicians, consult—
http://www.careerexperience.com/workpl/shortpro/paramedic.html