Bringing Out the DeadIn Dante Alighieri's "The Inferno", the entrance to Hell is marked with a warning which reads, "abandon hope all ye who enter here". This is the beginning of Dante's witness to the tortures and sufferings of a world of undeath, where the unfortunate are made to suffer forever. Bringing Out the Dead is a similar parable, a journey through the half-world that exists between the time when the sun sets and when it rises again on the streets of New York City. It is a long and exhausting journey that--like Dante--Frank Pierce (Nicholas Cage) endures, suffers, and inflicts upon himself, his personal passage through purgatory.
|
|
Bringing Out the Dead is a film directed by Martin Scorsese, who is no stranger to portraying the shadow world and expressionistic, "funhouse mirror" version of "The Big Apple". But this film--even more than Taxi Driver, also written by Paul Schrader--is set within a version of this city which is genuinely nightmarish and in a constant state of emergency. It is a Hell where the calls for emergency paramedic support is not an exception, it is the status quo, and hospitals like Our Lady of Mercy/"Misery" are bursting with folks in panic and are so overloaded, they require the assistance of a guard to keep those without life-threatening emergencies from storming the gates. Frank has three tours of duty in three nights, never eating, but drinking heavily, he tries to block out the ghosts from ravaging his mind--and he is losing badly, and appears so pale and disheveled that he might just be a ghost himself. He is haunted by one in particular, a young girl named Rose (Cynthia Roman), whose face overtakes those around Frank when his grip on reality weakens more than usual. No one plays unhinged quite like Nicholas Cage, and his harrowing marathon of saving and losing lives in high-stress scenarios is roadmapped on his face. Frank's introspection about the nature of souls not wanting to return to their bodies becomes the basis for his hallucinations about a man he saves at the beginning of the film, who he is convinced did not want to be saved. Frank befriends the daughter of this man, a young woman by the name of Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), who he talks to between stops back at the hospital home base. Mary is struggling with her own demons, and is torn by her feelings of resentment toward her father and the fear of losing him. Mary's crisis mirrors that of the world of Bringing Out the Dead, where she is stuck in-between and unable to cross over to one resolution or another, and straddling the line is tearing her apart. Mary also suffers from her past drug addiction, the craving leading her back to a dealer named Cy (Cliff Curtis), just as Frank is hungering for the same kind of euphoric rush that he experienced when he was able to save lives, something he has been desperately without for months. Frank is looking to save lives to fulfill some inner need and craving he cannot find elsewhere, and the self-denial is similarly tearing him apart. The role of a paramedic in Bringing Out the Dead is not so much tasked with saving lives, but to prevent the souls from escaping this purgatory, this netherworld where death is a luxury that is dispensed with by prescription only.
Many of Martin Scorsese's films have dealt with not just life in New York City but with the cultural and spiritual essence of Catholicism running through them. Frank suffers until he is able to confess his "sins" to Mary--who wears the face of Rose as that time comes--and ends cradled in her arms not unlike the Pietà--a depiction of the Virgin Mary cradling the body of Jesus Christ. And when Frank responds to an emergency in a dilapidated flophouse only to find a young Puerto Rican couple, the young woman begins to give birth; the husband professes that they are both virgins, who thus concludes that the birth is a miracle. Mary and Frank recall their childhoods growing up in "the neighborhood", how they both went to Catholic schools, and Frank indicates that he's often told he looks like a priest, which is fitting when Mary confesses her "sins" to him, opening up and sharing parts of her past. Frank talks about imagining that the spirits of those he is supposed to save are hovering, lingering just behind him, looking on and not wanting to be returned to their bodies, like Mary's father, whose body is kept alive over and over by means of a defibrillator, not really alive and not really dead. Almost everyone in Bringing Out the Dead exists in a moment of fatigue, the stress of their existences has stripped away the pretenses of social artifice. Doctors treat junkies by guilt trips, implying they should not receive treatment because they did it to themselves. Frank's boss indicates that he won't fire him because he needs bodies in the streets to work, not because Frank isn't constantly late; he knows how to push Frank's buttons just so. And Frank's three compatriots in the claustrophobic ambulance--Larry (John Goodman), Marcus (Ving Rhames), and Tom (Tom Sizemore)--all have their own idiosyncratic quirks from apathy, zealotry, and even anarchic rage--like a demented parallel of the three wise men in the story of The Nativity. But, like Frank, it's less likely that they don't care as much as they have simply become inured to the madness of their existence, and have become a part of its hellish machine. Death is all around Frank, from the devastating drug being pushed around bearing the gothic name of "Red Death", to rashes of suicides; there is even a literal pale horse dwelling beneath the underpass sheltering the homeless. Frank's tribulation is to emotionally cross over, and allow himself once more to step into the light.
Recommended for: Fans of a wild and strange vision of New York after dark, where the world of a paramedic appears as one of constant madness and shattering stress. Bringing Out the Dead deftly walks the line between a psychological drama and dark comedy, and moves at high-speed, sirens always blaring, like a jolt of adrenaline to the heart.
Many of Martin Scorsese's films have dealt with not just life in New York City but with the cultural and spiritual essence of Catholicism running through them. Frank suffers until he is able to confess his "sins" to Mary--who wears the face of Rose as that time comes--and ends cradled in her arms not unlike the Pietà--a depiction of the Virgin Mary cradling the body of Jesus Christ. And when Frank responds to an emergency in a dilapidated flophouse only to find a young Puerto Rican couple, the young woman begins to give birth; the husband professes that they are both virgins, who thus concludes that the birth is a miracle. Mary and Frank recall their childhoods growing up in "the neighborhood", how they both went to Catholic schools, and Frank indicates that he's often told he looks like a priest, which is fitting when Mary confesses her "sins" to him, opening up and sharing parts of her past. Frank talks about imagining that the spirits of those he is supposed to save are hovering, lingering just behind him, looking on and not wanting to be returned to their bodies, like Mary's father, whose body is kept alive over and over by means of a defibrillator, not really alive and not really dead. Almost everyone in Bringing Out the Dead exists in a moment of fatigue, the stress of their existences has stripped away the pretenses of social artifice. Doctors treat junkies by guilt trips, implying they should not receive treatment because they did it to themselves. Frank's boss indicates that he won't fire him because he needs bodies in the streets to work, not because Frank isn't constantly late; he knows how to push Frank's buttons just so. And Frank's three compatriots in the claustrophobic ambulance--Larry (John Goodman), Marcus (Ving Rhames), and Tom (Tom Sizemore)--all have their own idiosyncratic quirks from apathy, zealotry, and even anarchic rage--like a demented parallel of the three wise men in the story of The Nativity. But, like Frank, it's less likely that they don't care as much as they have simply become inured to the madness of their existence, and have become a part of its hellish machine. Death is all around Frank, from the devastating drug being pushed around bearing the gothic name of "Red Death", to rashes of suicides; there is even a literal pale horse dwelling beneath the underpass sheltering the homeless. Frank's tribulation is to emotionally cross over, and allow himself once more to step into the light.
Recommended for: Fans of a wild and strange vision of New York after dark, where the world of a paramedic appears as one of constant madness and shattering stress. Bringing Out the Dead deftly walks the line between a psychological drama and dark comedy, and moves at high-speed, sirens always blaring, like a jolt of adrenaline to the heart.