Mandy is a must see movie for action horror fans with a taste for a metal, fantasy aesthetic. It is about a couple whose isolated reverie is disturbed by a Manson like cult that crosses the titular character’s path. This highly stylized revenge period piece is incredibly graphic and violent, but expresses a tastefulness and restraint in its handling of real world violence against women by mostly playing it straight during those scenes or not showing every offense. It expresses its disgust at perpetrators and the scenarios faced by such women and children as Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard before returning to the gleeful gore in the vengeful second half.
Don’t dismiss Mandy just because Nicholas Cage is in it. Sure he stars in anything, which can mean slogging through a lot of garbage, but because there is no discernable rhyme or reason to his role choices, he will choose projects that most household name actors would summarily dismiss, which would then exile a good movie into obscurity and eventually out of circulation. Mandy may be the second most audacious film of 2018 running neck and neck with Sorry to Bother You except even more surreal with a dream logic that brings it closer to visual poetry than the radical prose of Boots Riley’s vision.
Mandy detractors could dismiss Mandy as a psychedelic drug trip with gratuitous violence, but I see a lot of movies, which means that I see a disproportionate amount of dissatisfying, dumb horror action films. I usually have to squint to find the good in those films. What was most satisfying about this film is it felt as if it was made by someone who actually watches movies in the genre that he chose, learned what he liked and didn’t like, made thoughtful choices of what he wanted to show and tell and collaborated with the actors to put flesh on the characters in counter instinctual ways that in another person’s hands, would not work and fall flat like a bad soufflé. It felt as if we travelled in the same popular culture circles, but unlike Damon Lindehof, when Cosmatos leaves moments up to the viewer to fill in the blanks, it feels as if he still has his hands on the wheel and is not clueless while hoping that we don’t notice and mistake its shallowness for depth. Even when I don’t get it, I get it on a visceral, emotional level. For a perfect example, when you get to the scene with the tiger, you’ll know what I mean.
Panos Cosmatos’ vision is completely unique, but if I had to theorize whose work resembles Mandy’s director, I would suggest early Michael Mann such as The Keep or the denouement of Manhunter with a dash of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, particularly Roy Batty, and a page ripped from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Bargaining episode (the Hellions) with a Clive Barker upgrade. Unlike most movies that try to provide two explanations for the surreal events on screen, but fail to present a single credible narrative, Mandy works from a purely supernatural reading or a real world reading as provided in Bill Duke’s exposition fairy scene. There are points in the movie that feel as if the boundaries between the spirit and real world are thin and the characters have completely crossed over, but the spiritual realm feels tangible enough to be our world. The Pacific Northwest is a bit of untamed wilderness left on our continent, which early pioneers would have howled that the devil is in those woods, or it could just be the wildness of the untamed west providing freedom for paradise or chaos depending on the Rorschach test for those who inhabit that land. One could write an entire essay devoted to the religious themes in this film as the cross intersects with the pyramid. Perhaps he also was inspired by Kenneth Anger?
A lot of movies like to promote themselves by claiming that it is equal parts about the relationship and action, but actually feel as if they failed to serve two masters. Cosmatos’ deliberate pacing can not only truthfully make that assertion, but Mandy can go one step further I providing complex, three-dimensional women characters who don’t tidily fit tropes while existing within them. Cosmatos simultaneously sets up an obvious revenge narrative trope without falling into the misogynistic elements of that trope by creating a disposable, highly sexualized, ideal woman who has no existence outside of her man. There is very little dialogue or fetishization of Andrea Riseborough’s titular character, the star of the first half as a credible real woman.Because she was the opposite of that disposable woman, I actually began to doubt my initial suspicions of the narrative’s trajectory, which were correct. Riseborough’s take on her character felt very organic and raw in a refreshing unadorned take on what could have been an archetype as opposed to an authentic character. Her second to last scene is one of triumph in the face of erasure and objectification, and her final scene is a balm of poignancy to the orgiastic violence, which reminds us of her innate worth. She tethers the movie to the real world, and I believed the love story because Cage’s character saw and remembered her as she existed-a woman with scars, not through rose colored glasses or some sunshine overexposed laughing flashback.
Intellectual considerations aside, once Mandy goes off the rails, it stays there and goes careening out of control. The movie teases certain confrontations early in the film then delivers a payoff with interest. We have Chekhov’s chainsaw. Would you like a unique weapon with light gleaming off of its shiny surface? Cosmatos masters the images that will stay with us long after the movie ends. I most appreciated that unlike most people, Cosmatos never equated women with good or victim. He makes it very clear that some women have it coming and are accessories or accomplices. He sees the 53%.
You know that Mandy is great when Cage isn’t the chief scene chewer. You don’t know Linus Roache, but if I had to award the second coming of Rutger Hauer, he would get the prize. He is rarely recognizable, and sometimes he appears in dreadful movies such as The Chronicles of Riddick, but is having so much fun that it is almost worth your wasted time. Most people may recognize him as Jack McCoy’s successor in Law & Order, and occasionally if I want to get hyped up, I’ll watch the denouement in Season 20 Episode 16 titled Innocence when he just goes full verbal Spartan on a defendant. He is more restrained in the second season of Vikings as King Ecbert. He is so transcendent as the cult leader, equal parts pathetic and powerful, able to turn on a dime, repulsed by his fawning followers, but unable to stand real interactions. After seeing him in Mandy, I realize that if they remake The Stand, he would make a perfect Randall Flagg. He is thoroughly postmodern, but nails a 70s strangeness embodied by his character and sets the pace for his minion costars. I did not think that when I first saw him as the understated, closeted titular character in Priest, he would show such range and fearlessness in his approach to each role.
Mandy is best suited for theatrical viewing, and it is currently playing at the Brattle Theater though it is also available on DVD. After I saw it at home, I would have immediately seized the opportunity to see it on the big screen because some of the darker scenes don’t translate well to a smaller screen experience and lose resolution, but I’m injured so I have to stay home. I immediately added Cosmatos’ first feature film, Beyond the Black Rainbow, to my queue. He has definitely become a must see director.