Bringing Out The Dead (1999)
Film Review
This film made me sick. Perhaps, it should be categorised as motion sickness, instead of a motion picture. Not just because Nicolas Cage is playing the lead, as an insomniac paramedic, but the entire film is a drag. Scenes that reflect the sickness of New York City, in the 90s. Mostly, suicidal, overdosed or patients suffering from cardiac arrests, being saved, from people, who are suffering more than them. I literally threw up, after watching 15 minutes of the film. It is pure disappointment from Paul Schrader, who apparently had the never to write the script and handed it to Scorsese. When you have watched films such as ‘taxi driver’, and ‘raging bull’, you expect something that stands out.
There are a few moments that make you empathise with the characters, sometimes the dialogues give you a comic relief, and you forget the the film is reflecting a serious issue. As a viewer, one can tell that the script has been vulgarised to suit the taste of the masses. Never expect a great screen writer or director to create something that will turn out to be a cult, every time they attempt to make a film.
Unfortunately, the mainstream cinema is a business first, and then an art. Bringing out the dead will successfully “bring out” the traumas buried inside of you, although it seems like a black comedy. If you managed to watch the whole film, without the need to visit the emergency room, then you should feel lucky.
The second half is slightly fast paced and makes the film more engaging, as it escapes from the rut of under-privileged citizens of NYC, living like zombies. The focus is more on Frank (Nicolas Cage), who’s soul has been decaying from the guilt of not being able to save an 18 year old young woman, Rose. He hallucinates and sees her at every corner, believing that her ghost is lost. The man is unable to forgive himself, but imagines that the premonitions of his past are haunting him, as a revenge from karma.
A lonely man, who transcends his suffering by trying to save the ones around him. His destiny transforms, when he comes across a woman, Mary (Patricia Arquette) from his neighbourhood, who’s father, she resents, yet has sympathy for, is fighting for his life, lying in a state of coma, in the I.C.U. This serendipity, an attraction between two wounded souls, assists in soothing each others pain. The film climaxes, with Frank cuddling in Mary’s arms, in her bed, while light shines upon his face. The saviour has been saved, as he clears his conscience, by easing the suffering of Mary’s father.
