MOVIE NOTES: Mandy

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: next in a series of brief notes on films I've recently seen. Also: SPOILER ALERT.] MANDY (2018) SUMMARY This is a vengeance movie. The leader of a group of "Jesus freaks" falls instantly in lust with a woman who lives in the woods with her man. The cult leader has her kidnapped, and when fantastically rejected, he has her killed and her man is left for dead. Well, he didn't die, and instead kills off the kidnappers and nearly all the cultists, and then burns their woodland sanctuary to the ground. The end. Before I left the cinema, I had summed up this movie as, Evil Dead 2 meets Conan the Barbarian. It even has a "Riddle of Steel" axe-forging scene. The only thing missing was Conan throwing Thulsa Doom's head off the temple steps. MEANING OF THE TITLE This was the woman's name. She's the "woman in the refrigerator," serving as the Maguffin to spur the man into action. What a let-down. The trailer left me wanting so much more. I was actually excited to see this film and was underwhelmed. MOST SIGNIFICANT REVELATION Cocaine (and in this case, also LSD) is a helluva drug. Okay, I won't leave it at that. I did like the creation of the world of the movie. In the beginning Mandy and her man (Nicholas Cage, though I didn't catch his character's name) have a discussion about the planets, and what is their "favourite planet." The film references Jupiter, and the fact that the atmosphere has been "ravaged by a storm for the past 1,000 years," and how the eye of the storm could "swallow the Earth." More about this later. BEST CHARACTER JOURNEY There are a lot of archetypes, and this film is pretty formula. The cult leader is goofy. The Maguffin girl can do no wrong (but she was definitely pretty cool, at least what we saw of her). The cultists are screwy, predictable, and/or disposable. The bikers are monsters-made-so-by-drugs. The hero of the picture becomes the beast himself "just this once" to defeat the evil. Linear and rather predictable. You knew the hero was going to win, no big dilemma there. It wasn't about him, though. The story, plot, and characters exist to bring out the scenery and set pieces. WORST TELEGRAPHED MOMENT There's a point where Nicholas Cage is handcuffed to a pipe leading to a radiator, that's just millimeters from becoming loose. He baits a demon biker to come near, then yanks at just the right time to swing it and hit the biker, so he escapes. UNSUNG HERO Mandy. I tried to think of someone else, but that's the closest I could come. I absolutely loved how she supremely dissed the cult leader in front of his posse. Too bad they offed her in the first third of the movie. ...Maybe the LSD manufacturer who had used so much of his drug that he had telepathic powers? Maybe him, too. CINEMATOGRAPHY This is what the film is about. That part up there where I was discussing the planets, and Jupiter in particular... Think of Mandy and her man's cottage in the woods as the Earth, and the descent of the cultists upon them as Jupiter swallowing it whole. The world the story plunges into has an atmosphere not of air, but of of thick, syrupy ectoplasm. Brilliant execution of lighting and camera-work make this one of the most visually-stimulating slasher action films I'd ever seen. Not to say that I liked the film (I think Mandy was a criminally-underused character), but it was a legitimate wonder to look at. All the saturated blues and reds lend a thickness and substance to all the empty spaces, and it's like the actors and fires are not walking, but are swimming. The planet of Jupiter crosses paths with woodlands of the Pacific Northwest. The gore present in the film was well done, technically speaking. But combined with the stupid-ass one-liners spouted by Nicholas Cage and a few cringe-worthy sight-gags-as-punctuation-to-a-scene (I'm sure there's a shorter word for that), it lent to immediate comparisons to Evil Dead 2. In this case, I don't intend that as a compliment. There was a nice scene where Nicholas Cage loses his marbles in the bathroom of their house, and makes the decision to kill off every-damn-body. Good work, Nicholas Cage. And absolutely FANTASTIC wallpaper in there.

I didn't understand the significance of the occasional titles, or the limited animated sequences. Perhaps to further solidify the connection between the sci-fantasy world of Mandy's favourite novels with the world in which the story takes place...? Theatrical, but kind of missing the mark here, personally. WHAT'S THIS FILM ABOUT? Mandy is a rollback to a simpler, less-demanding time in cinema. Dario Argento's Suspiria comes to mind, with a similar plot, climax, and visual style. The typical, A-B-C plot in Mandy doesn't take away from the tactile, tangible quality of the set and scenery (where I must admit it has Argento beat). Ultimately however, there's so much that's not explored like it could have been, so I'll have to settle for the film's "great look." I'm tempted to watch it again: with the sound off, and in slow motion.