Monday 4 March 2019

THE CAGE AGE


















I've just watched two Nicolas Cage films in a row. I don't normally do this sort of thing, and I don't know exactly why I did it tonight. But instinct is not something you understand, it’s something you feel, and I felt it, I felt it very strongly indeed.

Nicolas Cage is known for three things; his lack of professional and personal restraint; the elaborate and ever-changing methods he uses to disguise his baldness, and his inability to stop making films, even for a moment.  

In 1993, Cage won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his extended drunk act in Leaving Las Vegas. I don't place much stock by awards, but Oscars tend to be given to people who give outstanding performances, give surprising performances, or have simply been around long enough to merit some recognition. Cage’s win was an anomaly, seemingly meeting none of the criteria. It didn't do him any good either, as within a couple of years he began to slide into b movies.

There is an enigma to Cage, a series of questions to which answers may not exist. He most often gives not poor performances, but inappropriate ones. As they are mainly in pretty nondescript films, this may not seem to be anyone’s business, but it does matter. What is it with Cage? What does he think he is doing? Why doesn’t he just act like other actors; like other people? Whatever the role or the context, no matter how necessary or suitable it is, Cage gives a bespoke interpretation of what the material (not the character) needs. He is not a good judge of what is needed. Early in his career he made a big deal about the method, then this evolved into cramming quirky tics into every nook and cranny of his performance. Now, he seems to have given all that up. He's not looking for authenticity anymore, and in most of his films he isn’t even concerned with acting. He mainly gives the impression that he’s just looking to get by and stay ahead of the IRS.

In one of the films I watched, Drive Angry in 3D, he was fun: dressed all in black, laconic and unstoppable, catnip to the ladies, a pasty looking ghost of the Elvis impersonator he used to resemble in some of his better films. In the other, the execrable Left Behind, he plays a commercial airline captain with so little conviction and energy that he doesn't even look he knows where the pilot sits.

At this stage in his career, thirty five years since his first appearance, he has his own genre: a Nicolas Cage film is a Nicolas Cage film. When he appears in non-Cage films he seems like a cartoon character in a documentary: weird and out of place, like his teeth used to look in his younger, thinner face: too big to be real. Cage is a genre that transcends style, era, tone, other actors. Whether his co-star is Cher or Ron Perlman, they are just temporarily in his orbit, as we all are. He pays no more attention to them than he does carpet or dust or the spent cartridges that ping out of his hot shotgun.

Just a few words on Drive Angry and Left Behind, the double bill that prompted this post: Drive Angry is a film about a deceased criminal called John Milton, who is temporarily released from Hell in order to rescue his infant granddaughter from a Satanic cult who plan to sacrifice her (it turns out that Satan isn’t a bad guy, and he hates stuff like that). There’s very little that’s good about this film, but it does have bang and balls, and Cage is wide awake for most of it. In the most striking scene, he murders a dozen men whilst in the midst of sexual intercourse with a waitress. It’s really offensive, but it is memorable. His air of unreality lends itself to roles like this: we can believe he is an immortal wraith much more than him being anyone normal.

Left Behind is Christian propaganda disguised to the extent that it becomes totally bland and misses its message. Cage is a pilot who is on his way to London when The Rapture happens, and many of his passengers disappear, suddenly and unexpectedly ascended to Heaven. It’s an odd film, not least because it is so very boring. Cage hardly bothers to raise his eyebrows. The end sets up for a sequel that is clearly never, ever going to happen.   

Lest this seem like a complete shoeing of Cage, let me also state that he can be great in films, but only films that have a Cage shaped hole in them or where the director (Lynch, Herzog, Cosmatos) is more interesting than he is. His performance in Mandy, my favourite film of last year, is perfect, and it is unthinkable that any other actor could have essayed it with the same amount of commitment and raw energy. 

I have hopes for Cage. Hopes that the Cage genre might improve, and that he’ll make a run of wild and inventive movies in which he really comes into his own. He’s good at revenge and violence, so he could do that, like a surreal Liam Neeson. I don’t need to see another film where he plays someone with a normal job. I hope he makes more films like Mandy, just because I wish more films like Mandy existed. Most of all, I’m just glad he’s out there, doing stupid things, wasting money on ridiculous hats and pop culture ephemera, agreeing to play Tarzan or Mother Theresa or a 15 year old black basketball player. While he’s doing this stuff, nobody else has to. In Nic Cage’s head, it’s a Nic Cage world, and it’s going to be like that for a long time. If anyone could be the first cyborg movie star, it’s Cage.    

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