Film Flam

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Bark At The Moon

It’s more than just a little wonderful that Werner Herzog, a mad-man in his own right, made a film with Nicolas Cage.

In recent years, Cage has been mocked and ridiculed for the types of films that he’s starred in. The consensus being that the films he was in were either beneath him or he was inherently too odd for them and distracting as an individual. There’s probably more emotion than truth in those theories, but I never joined either camp. Part everyman silly Jimmy Stewart, part tortured existentialist James Dean, Cage was one of the few actors of his generation who aspired to something beyond celebrity. When I think back on The Rock — arguably a piece of Hollywood fluff - Cage imbue quirks and madcap zaniness that didn’t exist in the nineties outside of Coen Brothers movies.

Nicolas Cage is in a whole other canon of actors who are artists in their own right. Guys who will deliver to you what’s on the page — they’ll bring what you ordered but they decide how it’s cooked, and ultimately dictate what the lasting flavor of a scene will be. In Kick-Ass the task at hand for Cage is to deliver lines in a gravely voice. As an actor he’s handicapped by half of his face being covered up by a superhero cowl. But he’s Nicholas Cage, he’s not just going to give you what you want, he’s going to give you how he sees the world through the characters eyes. Camp. He does his scenes as superhero father Big Daddy with stilted verbal inflections, referencing Adam West’s characterization of Batman in the 1960’s television series.

Like Al Pacino in the late 60’s, Cage brings a focused intensity to his characters and his creation of police Lieutenant Terrence McDonagh is no exception. He’s really striving to channel that twitchy, live wire we remember from a decade ago. In Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans he seems to have a fascination with his voice, timbre and inflection. It’s all so wild and frayed. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans recalls the work of the man who could break your heart by destroying himself in the most ridiculous ways.

This type of performance is extremely compelling. Cage’s attempt to dig out something from the core of your his soul to display, regardless of how ugly, strange and uncomfortable it is provides a bitter kind of truth. In Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Cage/McDonagh needs the acid-bath of crack cocaine, gambling and sex to dislodge the demon living inside of him. He’s not isn’t interested in quieting the beast that lurks inside within — he’s trying to find a mountain to exhale the fire inside of him. His mountain is the street and on those streets he screams himself hoarse trying to exorcise what’s inside of him and protect what makes him human: his ability to love. Because he’s not all bad, not entirely. He is capable of love and dignity but gets lost on the way there. It’s this bouncing back and forth that makes Cage interesting to watch. Loud, yes, but always interesting.

Director Werner Herzog on the other hand is interested in the thin line between the two worlds in McKenna’s head. The madness and the teetering between reality and surreality. Herzog’s surrelism is a subjective one. He reserves it for the soundtrack; the screeching of harmonicas and the primal rhyhths of southern blues music. His surrealism is a the hyper-reality. He’s clearly interested in Cage’s posture, a vulture-necked hunching, always scanning for weakness and lurking in shadow. Herzog stirs out the animalistic in the film. Lizards, alligators and Nicolas Cage; demented reptiles moving through a city craving blood and power.

Herzog excels at creating frightening parallels between the raw carnality of nature and the mirror of that in the world. It’s a form of surrealism that isn’t Lynchian in it’s minimalism. It’s the kind of surrealism seen in night-vision footage of criminal surveillance videos or wolves attacking in the night. It’s the depth and clarity of what is instinctually recognizable, the indifference of nature. Herzog and Cage create a Darwinian madness that growls with ferocity, kills the soul, and feeds on empathy — all of this lurks beneath the surface of social contracts and fear of the inside of man’s heart, Cage and Herzog go deep into the bayou of both and comeback with profound ideas of power and forgiveness.

Data

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Release Date: November 20, 2009
Director: Werner Herzog
Writer: William Finkelstein
Director of Photography: Peter Zeitlinger
Running Time: 121 minutes or 2 hours and 1 minute

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