BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999)
Re-reviewed by Jerry Saravia
It has been more than two decades since the world had witnessed the frighteningly prophetic "Taxi Driver" and its vision of a hellish New York courtesy of director Martin Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader. Scorsese and Schrader revisited those same mean streets to tell us they are just as mean and almost as hellish. "Bringing Out the Dead" was the latest in the sin, guilt, redemption and paranoia of the gritty side of Scorsese's New York and its inhabitants and it left me feeling a little empty the first time I saw it. Seeing it many times since, it is often strangely compelling and spiritual but not nearly on the same par with previous Schrader and Scorsese collaborations. It is one hell of a film though - nightmarish, hallucinatory and difficult to stay with but there are rewards for those who stick with it.
The almost gaunt-like Nicolas Cage stars as Frank Pierce, an exhausted ambulance paramedic who mostly works nights. He has not saved a life in months, and is starting to feel weary and sleepless - he cannot function in this crazed city anymore (this story is set in pre-Guiliani New York). Frank sees visions of an asthmatic girl he could not save in the past - he feels he has killed her and sees her in the faces of others walking the streets.
Frank is haunted by these visions, and resorts to drinking gin and eating junk food on the job. He works with three different medics. One is a detached, overweight slob, Larry (John Goodman), the other is a Motown-Biblical-preaching individual named Marcus (Ving Rhames) who flirts with dispatchers and is high on saving lives, and lastly there's a vicious medic, Tom Walls (Tom Sizemore) who uses a baseball bat on drug dealers and lives on "the blood spilling on the streets."
There is one life Frank almost saves, an elderly man who nearly dies of a heart attack. The grieving daughter, Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), an ex-junkie, seeks consolation from Frank and hopes that her father will stay alive. This is the kind of news Frank wants to hear - the blood, the loss of lives (including a stillborn baby), the stench, the homeless are all reducing Frank to the level of a saint who lost his powers of healing. As Frank explains, "I was a grief mop." He can't even get fired from his job because he is needed, even in the midst of failure.
"Bringing Out the Dead" is based on an autobiographical book by Joseph Connelly (a former medic), and the film's episodic structure focuses on three hellish nights in Frank's life. As always, director Martin Scorsese knows these mean streets all too well and with cinematographer Robert Richardson, they create a New York of neon lights, red flashing sirens, sordid, shadowy environments such as unsanitized underground dwellings, punkish nightclubs, inviting drug dens, crazed, overcrowded hospital rooms, etc. In other words, this New York is not so different from the one depicted in Scorsese's finest film, "Taxi Driver." But whereas one felt that the New York of Travis Bickle's was an extension of his own paranoia, this New York feels strangely remote and listless, much like the title character who is slowly going mad. Initially, I felt Nicolas Cage turned in a mostly flat, restrained performance, bereft of any emotion or significance. Sure, his eyes gave the impression of being haunted but there is little to suggest a sense of individuality. Who is Frank Pierce anyway? Why does he cling to a job in desperation of saving lives when he needs to save his own? These are all complex questions but Cage's dignified stare in two hours running time could make the viewer wish Robert De Niro had been cast. Cage has some loopy moments and he does have moments of black humor with Rhames but the character is an endurance test. Of course, that is the point - he is tired and feels lifeless. Will he ever save one life? What Cage has are, again, those eyes that suggest a man who has seen too much death. He is haunted, pained, exasperated and exhausted. It is a performance of great anxiety and great pain.
I liked Patricia Arquette's performance as the frail Mary and her soft-voiced, angelic presence that seems almost magical in quality. There is a moment when Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker exchange a series of dissolves between Arquette and Cage that establishes a connection between them. I also like the final image of Cage's head resting on Arquette's shoulder while a shade of white fills up the screen in a reverential manner. It is a truly moving ending and the only time that Frank feels some measure of peace.
The best performances are by Ving Rhames, John Goodman and Tom Sizemore as the fellow medics with different takes on what a job like this entails. Goodman is credibly detached, Rhames is delightfully sweet and uplifting especially when he fakes raising a punk rocker from the dead, and Sizemore is creepy and nervously tense giving us goosebumps each time he appears. Other honorable mentions must go to real-life singer Marc Anthony as a Rastafarian drifter who drinks too much water, New Zealander Cliff Curtis as a suave, smoothly serene drug dealer (recalling Harvey Keitel's lizard-like smoothness in "Taxi Driver"), Mary Beth Hurt as a stern, honest hospital worker, Arthur J. Nascarella as Captain Barney, Frank's boss, and Aida Turturro as a nurse.
Stylistically, Scorsese also has employed new techniques in film grammar, which are more often seen in Oliver Stone's films. The fast-motion, stroboscopic, neon-lit sequences recall "Natural Born Killers," a technique Scorsese has never used before. It is no accident that the fast and loose cinematographer is Robert Richardson, who has lensed many of Stone's films.
There is a lot to admire in "Bringing Out the Dead," but it is not a fun or entertaining movie though it is illuminating (granted such subject matter doesn't lend itself to simplistic entertainment). Moments like the impaling of the drug dealer or Rhames's brief interludes with dispatchers and Cage evoke a power unprecedented in any film seen in 1999. I still feel "Bringing Out the Dead" is the kind of Scorsese film that makes you want to go and see a truly passionate Scorsese film that comes from the gut. "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver" felt like they came straight from the gut and were intensely personal. Scorsese puts his stamp on this unusual tale and it feels personal but not as urgent. Still, for matters of morality and guilt unadorned with irony (Scorsese and Schrader's major fortes), "Bringing Out the Dead" is powerful enough to warrant a viewing and several more for the Scorsese viewers who felt underwhelmed on the first viewing. It is a hellish experience.
