Martin Scorsese Week: Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

1 year ago

Martin Scorsese Week: Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

THE FLIP SIDE OF TRAVIS BICKLE’S COIN

by Richard Retyi

Bringing Out the Dead offers one of the bleakest views of New York City in a movie not featuring Snake Plissken. Director Martin Scorsese is at an interesting point in his career. Both his parents are recently deceased (his father in 1993 and his mother in 1997) and a pair of recent documentaries (the four-hour A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies in 1995 and My Voyage to Italy in 1999) suggest he’s looking backwards. Casino is four years old and Scorsese’s Tibetan drama Kundun (1997) wasn’t well received by his fans. He’s 56 and hasn’t shot a New York picture since Goodfellas (1990). Scorsese gets back to his roots and brings one of his most nightmarish portrayals of New York City to the screen.

Bringing Out the Dead reunites Scorsese with writer Paul Schrader who worked with him on Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Together, they travel to the darkest corners of Hell’s Kitchen with tormented EMT Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) as their puppet - the flipside of Travis Bickle’s coin. Both characters are plagued by insomnia and sleepwalk through empty days before coming to life at night. They each work the graveyard shift - on the clock, patrolling the streets of New York City. Travis ferries the living in a taxi and Frank ferries the dead and dying in an ambulance. They ‘re both troubled individuals haunted by disturbing thoughts which they confide to coworkers, who, in turn, tell them everything will be alright. Travis and Frank have voice-over narration in the film but where Bickle wants to sort out the dirt and filth of New York with violence, Frank wants to save everyone. Travis does pull-ups and practices drawing his gun in the mirror while Pierce fantasizes about rescuing the people of New York by literally pulling them from the concrete. They both want to play God but for a different purpose:

“Saving someone’s life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn’t feel the earth - everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you’ve become immortal, as if you’ve saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there - why deny that for a moment there, God was you?” – Frank Pierce

“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up.” – Travis Bickle

Cage is also in at an interesting part of his career - four years and seven films after Leaving Las Vegas. He’s coming off two commercial flops (Snake Eyes and 8MM) and he’ll star in four more stinkers before Adaptation reminds us he can do good work. Cage’s much-discussed hairline is well-receded at this point and his long wispy bangs pushed to the side open up his forehead like a drive-in movie screen. Chalky complexion, uneven stubble, dark eye sockets. In press photos, Cage already looks like someone who hasn’t seen natural light for weeks - perfect for this role.

In the best scenes, Scorsese drags Frank belly first through the streets of New York which are made to look like a hallucinatory nightmare. Frank is constantly haunted by the face of a young girl named Rose who he failed to save on a call late one night. He sees her face on every prostitute, every punk, every passerby. Rose talks to him sometimes and once in a while, Frank answers.

Over three nights, Frank encounters prostitutes, crazies, the homeless and the hopeless, but all he wants is an easy call: difficulty breathing, a broken hand. All he gets are cardiac arrests and visions of Rose. For two of his three graveyard shifts, the voice on the ambulance radio is actually Scorsese’s, pushing Pierce and his co-pilots (alternately, John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore) from call to call, from horror to horror. Overdose. Virgin birth (twins!). Failed suicide. Man impaled on iron fence. There’s no rest in Scorsese’s New York. Even when Frank saves someone, something defeats his salvation. A heart attack victim brought back to life codes at the hospital 13 times in one night and has to be shocked back to life each time. When twins are delivered in a rundown apartment complex, Frank cradles the stillborn while his jubilant partner holds a healthy baby boy. Even the hospital (Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy) is a place of chaos, guarded by a hard man in sunglasses (Griss) and staffed by characters named Dr. Hazmat and Nurse Constance.

Frank’s co-pilots progressively contribute to his mania. Larry (Goodman) cares about food. Marcus (Rhames) spreads the word of Jesus. Tom Wolls (Sizemore) is a lunatic. Pierce’s solace and salvation comes in the form of Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), the daughter of a heart attack victim Pierce shocks back to life early in the movie. Between calls, Frank returns to the hospital to connect with Burke, offering brief moments of rest. His extended attempts to escape the streets and to save Mary (and eventually himself) are met with sleeplessness and panic. Even at “The Oasis”, Pierce finds only nightmares.

Camera work, lighting and editing wreak havoc on Cage’s face as much as they do NYC. His campy facial contortions are further disfigured giving him a grotesque mask for much of the film. In the final night’s ride, Cage out-crazies Sizemore – no small task opposite an actor who prides himself on crazy and a character that beats an ambulance with a flashlight.

The final night is where the film hums. The despair of Frank’s life drives him to the edge – to channel the cariacature of Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Oxygen mask over his face, IV drip in his arm, Frank rides shotgun while Tom cackles and screams about blood in the streets. Like sharks, they need to keep moving to survive. It’s exhausting. Scorsese leaves everything on the table in the final 30 minutes bringing the nightmare to an end.

There is no grand redemption. Frank can’t save Mary. He can’t save her father. He can’t bring back Rose. He just needs a few slow nights followed by a couple days off. But he probably won’t get it.