Pig (2021).
At the end of 2021, Nicolas Cage finally renounced the title of actor, preferring it to the more classical and, in many ways, liberating term of the thespian.1 This transition puts a lot in its place: the polyphonic structure of Cage's acting method (combining the high and the low, the tragic and the comic), his unorthodox approach to choosing films, and the constant incorporation of his personality into them. A casual glance at the recent filmography of the "once-great artist" reveals that the only key detail in it is Cage himself, mired in memes and internet tribute, but continuing to tell his story through the guises of the characters he plays.
It is customary in Hollywood to treat the acting profession with a frightening seriousness that Cage was always completely devoid of. The actor's dissimilarity to his older contemporaries, heavily influenced by the Lee Strasberg school of the Method, was bound to play a cruel trick on him sooner or later. For Cage, the option of a complete transformation into a character was impossible—it contradicted his inner disposition, an attitude toward the actor not as an empty vessel, but as a person who serves as a second level to the character being played. Cage ironically expressed his attitude to the psychological method in a recent interview: "Stanislavski said the worst thing an actor can do is imitate. Being a bit of a rebel, I wanted to break that rule."2 In essence, Cage aspires to the deep past, to the noble art of imitation, close to the ancient Greek theater or Medieval mystery play. Allowing for stylization in the acting profession and departing from the established norms of naturalism, Cage subtly reassembles the very idea of film acting.
This attitude helped his rapid rise in the late 1980s, when the young actor enthusiastically took on the most unexpected roles, which he made memorable with his innate extravagance. Extrapolating his image on screen, switching freely between two registers (Nicolas Cage, personality and Nicolas Cage, actor), Cage was later able to create popular images suitable for high-budget blockbusters (The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997)), weird cult indies (Raising Arizona (1987), Wild at Heart (1990)) and quiet chamber dramas (Red Rock West (1993), Leaving Las Vegas (1995)). In each and every one of the actor's strongest characters, there was always a glimpse of himself, such was the power of Cage's public face. He easily mimicked any image, flaunting his ego to the full—no viewer should ever forget that on the big screen in front of him was not just a tough guy, but a tough guy played by Nicolas Cage.
It also hastened his downfall. The eccentricity of a Hollywood star can lead to different places, but exile in the wilds of out-of-studio cinema is often the most frequent punishment for a guilty artist. Shooting cheap crime melodramas, forgettable revenge flicks, and works of ostracized directors (which, in the first half of the 2010s was Paul Schrader) over the past decade, Nicolas Cage has gone through all the circles of cinematic hell, holding his head as high as he could. Rapidly changing personas, Cage expanded his personal vocabulary of images, radicalizing himself to the Hollywood community and mainstream criticism, but elevating himself in the eyes of an internet crowd that worships him not for his acting credits, but for his over-the-top performances, uncompromising attitude to the profession, and unorthodox ability to generate new memes. The thespian himself by no means endorsed such fame—he repeatedly expressed his frustration with his image as an amusingly overacting actor, noting that even his funniest scream was carefully crafted and neatly built into the very fabric of the film.3 And that's what Cage is all about. No one but himself is capable of intelligently articulating the tasks and goals that he pursues.
So, who is Nicolas Cage in 2021? An ex-superstar wasting the rest of his talent on films of questionable quality, or an avant-garde artist misunderstood by his contemporaries and actively using the freedom of B-movies to develop his own particular view on the essence and tasks of a movie actor? The second position, at first glance, seems comically implausible. The last few years have so strongly shaped Cage's image in the eyes of everyday people that even such rare successes as Mandy (2017) or Color out of Space (2019) are considered first and foremost directorial achievements and only ones of acting. But a closer look reveals that it's the low-budget (or auteur) films that help Cage to reach his full potential, because they love and appreciate him precisely for his unpredictability. Working in the realm straight-to-DVD, Nicolas Cage gets rid of obstacles on his way to finding the absolute in the acting profession. A path, complex and winding at first, replete with dead ends and detours, in recent years becomes clearer and leads to a decisive and irreparable change in Cage's character. Such a positive dynamic does indeed take place—each of Cage's three films, released in 2021, occupies a necessary, and even illuminating, place in the actor's complex mythology.
A former cook living as a recluse in the woods with his beloved truffle pig, a dangerous bandit on a search for the missing daughter of a powerful post-apocalyptic city leader, and a tramp in an expensive car forced to spend the night as a janitor in a damned family entertainment center—for Cage these are not just scripted roles to get into and portray credibly before the camera, but an invitation to talk about himself, to refract his own personality through a scripted prism. Each character (the main one, it's worth noting: Cage doesn't trade on secondary roles that limit his creative experimentation) of these films serves as a kind of avatar for his star, which can be reduced to three archetypes—the recluse, the craftsman, and the outlaw.
Michael Sarnosky's debut film, Pig (2021), fell victim to marketing at the time of its presentation to the public—John Wick, but replacing Keanu Reeves and a dog with Cage and a pig. The trailers, which advertised the film as a realistic thriller with a touch of postmodern insanity, promised a curious thrash about a pig-herder, but no subtle drama about the acceptance of trauma and the right of a broken man to rehabilitation. And yet that's exactly what the film is about: a man named Rob, who went off into the backwoods after an unexplained event that destroyed his once fine career. And the kidnapping of the truffle pig, the sole companion of Cage's frumpy, dirty, beastly hero, serves not as a catalyst for staged fights, stunts, and other features of revenge films, but as a beginning of the hero's doomed quest to return to the world of the living. And it is a quest not only of the character, but of Cage himself, who has known both glory and its loss. Nicholas Cage, secluded in the low-budget thicket of genre cinema, but eager to leave it for the rosy prospects of a late-career renaissance.
Pig provides such perspectives with more than enough to back them up. The melancholy landscapes of Portland and its suburbs, filled with greenery, restaurants, and beautiful houses, are drawn with a fine touch. Isn't this the landscape of modern American cinema, ennobled by luxurious indies and prestige dramas? It is through this idyll that the intimidating Nicolas Cage wields not his fist, but his word: the film's promisingly punchy setup gradually falters, giving way to tense conversations and the frighteningly strange monologues of the main character. While there are plenty of oddities in the film that contradict the seriousness of what's going on (like the underground fight club of Portland restaurant workers or Rob's conspiratorially charged speech about America's fate after the giant tsunami), they don't undermine the narrative at all, but rely on Cage's innate otherness to expand the horizons of the acceptable in film.
Not surprisingly, Cage also acted as the film's producer—it seems to be the first time in recent years that at least some director has looked at Cage as an actor and a man of fine mental constitution, rather than a generator of questionable memes. And such trust from Sarnowski fully pays off. Cage plays at his best, reclaiming the long-dusted techniques of subtle, nuanced acting. It's his central performance (material and quiet, autobiographical and imitative) that takes the film from the territory of passable indie to the rarely attainable plain of real cinema. If the film's finale paints an unpleasant, albeit fair, future for its protagonist, Cage's own future seems more promising than ever—the wide critical and public acclaim of Pig marks a radical change in attitude toward the artist's upcoming films.
That is why Nicolas Cage's second 2021 production seems so surprising. It is strange to imagine that Cage, determined to reassert himself as a serious actor, decided to take such an active role in the production of Willy's Wonderland (2021), at first glance a banally kitsch film. The main protagonist, stripped of his name and background, finds himself in a backwater American town by chance—his luxury Mustang stumbles upon police spikes, obligingly placed at the entrance to the settlement. Citizens, who come to help, give the injured "Janitor" (this is how Cage's character is aptly identified in the credits) a hefty check for fixing his car, regretfully informing him about the malfunction of a credit card terminal. Deprived of the opportunity to pay, the hero is instantly offered a convenient alternative—a night shift as a janitor in an abandoned recreation park, which, according to the law of the genre, conceals many dangerous secrets. In the hero who unquestioningly accepts the strange conditions and starts the hard work, it is tempting to see Cage himself, stuck, by the mid-2010s, in the limbo of low-budget filmmaking. However, agreeing to participate doesn't imply desire. Cage doesn't utter a coherent sentence in the entire film, using only facial expressions, gestures, and animal charisma to develop (or rather, to reveal) his character.The film is an allegory of the disenfranchised position of many former A-listers, forced to participate in the game of movie makers seeking to make a quick buck on their former glory. Only in this project, Cage pulls the strings, which means the game will develop by his rules.
Being essentially an unofficial adaptation of the horror game Five Nights at Freddy's, wildly popular among younger audiences, the film advantageously transforms the laws of the original to suit its star. Whereas in the game, the player assumed the role of a defenseless character, able only to hide from the animatronics (the main villains of both projects) and follow them around on surveillance cameras, in the movie, Cage, armed with a mop, mauls the once terrible monsters with surprising ease. The filmmakers are not trying to scare the viewer, and use horror elements only to create the atmosphere that Cage must shatter. "The Janitor" seems like a foreign body in this world—he's simply too cool for it. And that coolness, coupled with the silent confidence, is most likely what attracted Cage to the project. By mimicking such a common Hollywood trope as the tough guy and distorting its image with excessive silence and foreignness to the events taking place, Cage expresses one of the boldest protests to the stereotypes of American cinema. But by using a popular image (in this case, the computer game universe) and wedging himself into it, Cage remains emphatically discreet, giving no reason for new internet memes to emerge. Perhaps it was this restraint on such fertile ground for madness that served the lack of any interest in the film on the part of audiences eager for more Cage antics.
Fortunately, there was no point in expecting anything but brain-bursting madness from the collaboration between Nicolas Cage and Sion Sono, the main joker of modern Japanese cinema. Their tandem is a match made in heaven. Or so it seemed. For the first third of the Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021), everything worked to confirm the viewers high hopes: Cage in a loincloth fighting dozens of post-apocalyptic samurai, impressing innocent girls with the length of his penis, participating in a bank robbery, and even going to a nuclear wasteland in pursuit of a missing girl (Sofia Boutella). The madness of Sono's genius reigns all around: strange shooting angles and mysterious characters, pagodas, non-trivial gags and constant flashbacks.But going further, one realizes that Sono is not interested in Cage as a person, just as an instrument. He is needed only as that weird American screaming "Not the Bees!" Two auteurs clash and that breaks the film.
Deprived of the ability to spontaneously choose the registers of the played character, forced to bend to the ambitious plans of the director, Cage goes into a deaf defense, portraying on the screen what is expected of him: comic madness. He loses his testicle with the guttural growl, gives a rousing, threatening speech worthy of printing on a T-shirt, but never creates his new great meme. Not tuned in to Cage's wave, Sono tries to create his film without the main character, replacing him with a soulless model. And this, unfortunately, is a frequent fate of Nicolas Cage—he is too complex and multifaceted to adequately adjust to given norms. He's an outlaw.
These three recent films give the distinct impression that Nicolas Cage is trying to create his own meta-universe populated by the ghosts of his characters. Like any other projects of this kind, it is impossible to avoid certain problems. Not every project is successful, but each one opens the veil of mystery of one of the most enigmatic heroes of modern cinema. A critical reappraisal of his work is only a matter of time—in the age of the internet, it is the public that reigns supreme. And what Cage certainly has is a wide, if somewhat one-sided, love of his audience.
1. Riley, Jenelle. “Nicolas Cage Doesn’t Consider Himself an Actor: ‘I Like the Word Thespian’”. Variety, 30 December 2021, https://variety.com/2021/film/news/nicolas-cage-pig-face-off-podcast-interview-1235144614/.
2. Ibid.
3. Pulver, Andrew. “Nicolas Cage expresses 'frustration' with Cage rage internet meme”. The Guardian, 19 September 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/19/nicolas-cage-rage-internet-meme-mandy.