Is it possible that the brilliance of The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans may be due to a more observational relationship between Cage, as the famed eccentric, and Herzog, the famed documentarian? The possibility I bring forth to you is that Herzog simply allowed Cage, with his frightening intensity, to perform freely without restrictions. Perhaps Herzog's genius was simply in letting the cameras roll whilst allowing Cage to be Cage.
It seems that at least someone at the TIFF Bell Lightbox feels strongly about Cage's work, and about his retrospective potential. That is why, starting this Saturday with Valley Girl, Toronto's repertory behemoth will be commencing Late Night: Bangkok Dangerous: The Cinema of Nicolas Cage, a weekly programme of Cage-starring films.
While the titular Bangkok Dangerous has been snubbed, the programme hosts a wide breadth of Cage's movies. It starts with a teen comedy, where the actor’s career began, but the programme also features his experimental fare from the late 80s and early 90s (Raising Arizona, Vampire's Kiss, Wild at Heart), his two best Jerry Bruckheimer action blockbusters (The Rock, Con-Air, Face/Off), along with later genre films (Snake Eyes, The Wicker Man), and a sampling of the quality work he has done in the last decade (The Bad Lieutenant, Adaptation) when the actor is not turning out one mediocre low budget action film after another.
While an academic study of the appeal of Nicolas Cage has never been conducted and maybe never will, I truly do believe his unique style of acting deserves recognition. Just last year, while doing publicity for Drive Angry, Cage declared “I had realized that I'd developed my own style and process and school of acting which is called 'Nouveau Shamanic.’ That's the new style of acting and at some point I'll have to write a book.”
While his statement may be construed as self-serving, it is also true. No other actor in Hollywood will emote like Cage does, and even if you don't like his nose-turning attitude toward naturalism, you must admit that it does take balls to scream “Not the bees!” and still expect to be taken seriously.
