MANDY
After enduring the creatively bankrupt clump of compost that was THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS last week, I decided to swing for the fences and drive to North Van to watch MANDY this week.
It was an experience.
I am a huge, huge Nicolas Cage fan. I am an unabashed fan of (almost) everything he’s done, from the peaks of LEAVING LAS VEGAS to the valleys of GHOST RIDER. RAISING ARIZONA, SORCERER’S STONE, LORD OF WAR, 8MM, MOONSTRUCK, RED ROCK WEST… I love them all. DRIVE ANGRY is an unsung gem waiting to be discovered by the cult masses. You name it and I will most likely sit through it.
Except for THE WICKER MAN remake. Even my lowest common denominator can go so low.
In acting, Cage either plays nice or he plays rough. Sometimes you’re gonna get Captain Corelli and his mandolin, sometimes you’re going to experience Castor Troy from FACE/OFF. You lay down your money, you take your chances.
In MANDY, there is no other man alive who could quarterback the ball better than Cage. The movie has the barest whisper of a plot. Half of it sets up a husband and wife (Cage and the barely recognizable Andrea Riseborough as Mandy), as well as the Manson-like cult that sets their eyes on them. The second half focuses on Cage’s revenge against them.
The movie is all poetry and no prose. It’s as if the filmographies of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez shared a Cronenberg Telepod together. An acid trip of heavy metal iconography, horror film tropes, pop culture references, rotoscoped animation, and story beats from Conan the Barbarian — all made possible with every filter and after-effect DaVinci Resolve has to offer.
Sitting quietly in the theater, my inner-self absorbed it all with too much intellectualism. I came out not liking it. It was too scattered on logic, too thin on plot, riddled with too many plot holes. Of course, that was my problem and my own damned fault. I had failed myself in not just drinking it in for what it was.
It took me a car ride home — and more importantly DREAMING about it that night — to realize I really, really liked it. Like a lot.
Yeah, it was a bit long in the tooth as far as the pace (one too many fight sequences and drawn out shots) but that’s because I’m innately drawn to fast momentum. I had to remind myself that films are dreams. And this film is balls-deep in the Dreamlands. Yes, it has all the problems I mentioned above. But that’s not the point. Some movies like SUSPIRIA, METROPOLIS, and THE SHINING live in the poetry and damn the prose.
Between this, HEREDITARY and MOTHER!, I’m happy to see esoterica is still alive and well at the Cineplex.
