In Which I Will Be Your Accident If You Will Be My Ambulance

In Which I Will Be Your Accident If You Will Be My Ambulance by alexcarnevale

February 7, 2008, 4:15 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

Our revolutionary series on Martin Scorsese continues, as Ben Mercer tackles Scorsese’s pre 9/11 collaboration with Paul Schrader. Check out previous Scorsese pieces here and here.

The Dispatcher

by Benjamin Mercer

Bringing Out the Dead

1999, 118 minutes

dir. Martin Scorsese

Bringing Out the Dead came out in 1999, a year when movies by younger filmmakers, many heavily influenced by Scorsese, garnered more attention from critics and audiences. I was 14 at the time, but I remember this all so clearly because I was an EW subscriber.

Part of my fondness for Bringing Out the Dead, a three-day cross section of the life of a burnt-out New York City paramedic named Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), no doubt stems from the fact that it was the first Scorsese movie I saw on the big screen. I’ve revisited it a few times since, though, and it has aged a whole lot better than many of those films that seemed so fresh and exciting eight years ago. The Matrix, Fight Club, Run Lola Run, and American Beauty come to mind in particular.

ebert on BOTD

With the exception of a few passages from Fight Club, these movies do not really look cool anymore. Quite the opposite. I suppose heavily stylized depictions of the contemporary moment don’t often stand the test of time, and so it helps that Bringing Out the Dead, which has its share of hyperkinetic visuals, is told as (recent) history.

Adapted by frequent Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader from a novel by Joe Connelly, Bringing Out the Dead takes place in early-’90s Hell’s Kitchen, which from Frank’s perspective might as well just be hell. A young patient who he failed to bring back from a drug overdose, Rose (Cynthia Roman), has begun to haunt him, and he struggles to meet each new patient he is called to attend. (Scorsese himself provides the voice of one of the dispatchers. Even within the action of the film, he’s the one directing the ambulance’s every move.)

Lame Drivers myspace

“Last Call (For Violence)” – Lame Drivers (mp3)

Frank rides with a different partner on each day. They are played by John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore.

This movie has plenty of problems. The humor is a little too capital-G Gallows. Some of it becomes annoying, as is the case with the character of Noel, played by a dread-locked Marc Anthony, a hospital regular who is constantly yelling for a cup of water.

There’s no real narrative to hold the whole thing together, and its slice-of-life frame is a little too crowded with compensatory recurring motifs. Even the rock soundtrack, usually a Scorsese specialty, has some jarring cuts (e.g., “These Are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs).

marty on the set of BOTD

At least there are plenty of camera whips. Bringing Out the Dead, shot by Robert Richardson, might not be perfect, but it is a genuinely stunning movie to look at. The majority of the film takes place at night, and much of it also takes place on the street, so there’s plenty of hosed-down pavement to catch the light. In a number of shots, Richardson and Scorsese make ingenious use of the ambulance’s various mirrors.

With so many reflective surfaces in play, the film sometimes seems drenched in the lights of the ambulance siren. This always brings to my mind the variegated flickering of the film stock breathing its last at the conclusion of The Last Temptation of Christ.

The one flashback of Frank’s futile attempts to save Rose is presented as a drug-induced hallucination. For this brief sequence, Scorsese reportedly had his actors learn their movements backwards, filmed them enacting them backwards, and then played it all back in reverse.

BOTD script

The trajectories of movements seem right, but they’re slightly jerky, not fluid in a natural way. Whites are also overexposed throughout, most noticeably on the uniforms of the paramedics. They go through their motions, but their spectral glow suggests they are hovering just outside their bodies, disconnected from their dismal work out of spiritual necessity.

I realized that my training was useful in less than 10% of the calls, and saving someone’s life was rarer than that. After a while, I grew to understand that my role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop. It was enough that I simply turned up.

Nicolas Cage is also really remarkable. His desperate, histrionic mock-charisma is present – he begs his supervisor to fire him (to no avail, the supervisor is too shorthanded) and to talk his gung-ho partners out of answering one more call – but the smug self-awareness that has marked so much of his recent work is not.

Cage communicates frayed nerves and spiritual duress through his every pose. He stands with a slight defeated stoop, and slouches when sitting in the passenger seat of the ambulance, trying to hide himself from the miserable world outside.
Bringing Out the Dead is a carefully calibrated mix of dazzling and dismal. Gritty, frenetic, and loaded with Catholic iconography, it is quintessential Scorsese. May it continue to age well.

Benjamin Mercer is a contributor to This Recording. He last wrote in these pages on the Tom Cruise-Meryl Streep epic, Lions for Lambs. He writes at Good Plot.

Scorcese talking about the movie on Charlie Rose:

“Post-Modern Sleaze” – Sneaker Pimps (mp3)

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

Reel Talk with Molly.

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Your jokes are always bad.

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