Jaxon Safian's Film Reviews

Bringing Out The Dead, Scorsese’s adrenaline-soaked hangout-thriller, may be his best in terms of raw style. It toys with some of the psychedelic unreality he would later adopt in Shutter Island, only here it’s less severe. Its murky tones are immersive, but still colorful enough to be visually engaging, unlike The Departed‘s gritty greys. Best of all, it features Nicholas Cage as something of a maniac, which is always a pleasure to behold. 

As per Scorsese, there are many allusions to Christ throughout the story, mainly through Cage’s character, EMT Frank Pierce, a man who puts himself through intense physical and emotional suffering to save people on the job. On the poster, his face is shown through the silhouette of the red cross, his own personal crucifixion. He sees himself as a kind of martyr, sacrificing his own well-being to help his patients, but in reality is engaging in an extended form of self harm through a mix of insomnia, substance abuse, and regret. One of the many people he brings to the purgatory of the hospital is Mr. Burke, the father of Mary Burke, with whom he strikes up a tentative relationship. Mary takes the role of the biblical prostitute Mary Magdalene in relation to Frank as Christ throughout the first half of the film; Frank saves her from her wicked ways, and begins to rehabilitate her. However, after Frank catches her relapsing, and indulges in her drug of choice (a downer, notable in contrast to his high-speed EMT work) at the midpoint of the movie, their roles are reversed and she takes a more nurturing position in his life. She becomes Mary, mother of Christ. In the final shot of the movie, after Frank has learned to stop punishing himself, Mary holds his head against her chest as the light in the room seems to brighten and intensify – Frank has sacrificed enough, and he is now allowed salvation. 

Following this allegory, Bringing Out The Dead appears to be a critique of the actions and teachings of the catholic Christ. Frank is shown berating a suicidal man for his ungratefulness, encouraging the malpractice of his coworkers, and being generally unhelpful when people are mistreated in front of him. However, this is all more or less a result of his occupational burnout, and the often mitigating circumstances surrounding his misdeeds; he errs in moments of extreme pressure. Aware of his instability, he wants to be fired, but he cannot quit, because he feels he has a certain responsibility over the lives of the city. Perhaps, rather than a critique, the story is a defense of the modern-day Christ’s flawed nature. Perhaps the film intends to posit that Christ had no choice in his power, no say in the creation of the world, that he is a victim of his own omnipotence, a victimhood from which his shortcomings stem. How can a man be a messiah in such a chaotic, vast, suffering-filled world?

While these ideas certainly began in the screenplay, I can’t help but feel that they were communicated mainly as a result of Scorsese’s mastery over his subjects (Scorsese’s long-standing pattern of humanizing, even humbling Christ recedes here into the subtextual, after his previous, more literal takes on the theme, The Last Temptation and Kundun; meanwhile, his man-trapped-in-hell motif becomes less abstract compared to Taxi Driver and After Hours; these two focuses of his would not converge in one film again until Silence). The screenplay itself is serially unsubtle, often opting for unlikely conversations or hallucinations to clumsily exposit themes, and rarely able to capture their emotional nature. Frequent Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader’s story formula feels well-worn in 1999, and he’s writing these godforsaken things to this day. Here’s how it goes: a man, generally in New York, sees something wrong with the world and the people around him, a societal virus that is personified in an evil but complex antagonist. The man comes to the aid of a pure and innocent woman, typically much younger than him, who he comes to have a somewhat one-sided romance with. Things get worse for the both of them throughout the story, and he is pushed by his circumstances and inner demons to do something drastic and morally grey. 

This formula, while shocking on a first viewing, effective on a second viewing and enjoyable on a third, becomes stale after it is repeated over countless films (most, admittedly, Schrader’s own). Where Scorsese is directing it can be overlooked, but on paper, separate from the images on the screen, there can be no denying that Bringing Out The Dead’s screenplay does too little with its tired material. Despite this, Scorsese manages to make Schrader’s then-twenty-year-old ideas seem fresh and exciting. Scorsese makes the predictable appear surprising, the fragile appear sturdy. Few directors have had as precise an understanding of each and every element of their own movies as Scorsese has of his. Each of his films is a continuation of the same exploration, in the practice of Bergman and Fassbinder – only, where they were searching for their answers, Scorsese seems to possess his already, obscured from us behind some hospital curtain.