Yes, the career of Nicolas Cage has taken a serious nosedive in recent years. His frightening hairline has become the butt of endless jokes, his personal life is always a mess (he named his son Kal-El after Superman and he’s on his third wife), and his seemingly, take-a-paycheck career choices of late (“Bangkok Dangerous,” the “National Treasure” franchise, the unintentional comedy of “The Wicker Man,” “Ghostrider”) have made him an even bigger laughingstock (maybe the tax problems and reported ridiculous spending habits explain these terrible tendencies).
But if you stop to take notice and perhaps stop the cheap shot jokes, one can realize that the good far outweighs the awful in his oeuvre and while Cage might not even win an Academy Award again (“Leaving Las Vegas”), he is an Academy Award winner, and looking back on his body of work, it’s quite impressive and nothing to be ashamed of in the slightest. In fact, there are major classic touchstones here worthy of several plaudits.
With the slightly harmless, but forgettable “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in theaters this weekend (and sounding like it’s doing negligible box-office business already), we thought we’d take this opportunity to run down Cage’s idiosyncratic career and sometimes wonderfully unhinged performances.
“Wild At Heart” (1990)
“This snakeskin jacket is a symbol my individuality and belief in personal freedom,” is the oft-repeated maxim declared by Cage’s character Sailor Ripley in “Wild At Heart,” David Lynch’s swooning, sexy, creepy road trip to Oz, and applies to the kooky Cage as well (the jacket used in the film was his own). Could this be Cage at his peak? His embodiment of Sailor is sensual, menacing and just plain cool– but his smoking chemistry with Laura Dern is some of the hottest ever onscreen. The Elvis nut swaggers and drawls like the King himself, crooning his ballad “Love Me,” but brings a looseness and relaxed humor to the performance, a greater feat than the high-tension campy scenery chewing evinced by the rest of the cast. He turns in a highly stylized physical performance (a rare commodity in this day and age) and manages to ground the universe of wacky characters swirling around him, with a skilled nuance and real genuine emotion. In the special features, Dern describes her mother Diane Ladd as the perfect Lynchian actor (and she is truly amazing and transcendent in this), but it could be argued that Cage, with his laissez-faire theatricality, willingness to fully engage in Lynch’s absurd hyperreality, and commitment to the truth of character and story is, in fact, the real perfect Lynchian actor. Can we cross our fingers for a reunion? [A]
“Vampire’s Kiss” (1988)
While not as lauded as say “Raising Arizona,” god, Nicolas Cage was never better than he was in the late 1980s. Directed by Robert Bierman, most people have long forgotten this B-movie vampire comedy, but there’s one key thing to remember: it’s written by Joseph Minion, the man who wrote Martin Scorsese’s dark, strange and surreal 24-hour classic, “After Hours,” and tonally the picture is just as weird. The film centers on a douchebag yuppie publishing executive (Cage) who thinks that he’s turning into a vampire, when he has a random sexual encounter with a woman with a fondness for neck biting (Jennifer Beals). Of course it’s all in his head (or is it?) and he goes to bizarre lengths to prove to himself that he’s become a bloodsucker, including loosing his shit and torturing his poor assistant (Maria Conchita Alonso) with an impossible menial task. The role, notoriously known for Cage eating live cockroaches, is essentially a descent into madness and it’s Cage at his unhinged, manic best, but it’s well calibrated, knowing exactly when to pop like a madman and when to simmer like a deliciously semi-sane fruitcake teetering on the edge (oh and the Looney Toons facial expressions throughout are a laugh riot). [B+].
“Leaving Las Vegas” (1995)
In this loose, jazzy and affecting performance that won Nicolas Cage the Academy Award (and seemingly gave him the financial leeway to do tepid action movies for the next decade plus), he plays a surrendered man who has decided to completely bail out on life (and strangely happy with his decision); an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death, only to fall in love with a prostitute (played by a superb Elisabeth Shue). Just, you know, not enough to not drink himself to death. In the skilled hands of director Mike Figgis, he turns a prolonged, potentially hard-to-watch tragedy into something artful and heartrending. And thanks to Cage’s wet performance, which wonderfully sidesteps any potential parody (since “the drunk” is a cliche as old as Hollywood itself), you feel for this character, no matter how reprehensible or irresponsible his behavior might be. What happens in ‘Vegas’ breaks your fucking heart and it certainly convinced the Academy. [A-]