Bringing Out The Dead
Watching Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead today, it seems insane that it’s not regularly recognized as a major work from one of the greatest American filmmakers of our time. And yet, even as once-overlooked projects of his like The King of Comedy and After Hours have gone on to receive critical reevaluation and praise in the years since they debuted, here’s one that remains a lesser-heralded title in his admittedly spectacular filmography, with even scholars who should know better too often relegating the film to little more than a cursory mention when discussing his work. We at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, on the other hand, feel it is a work eminently worthy of reappraisal and hope that after seeing it here—on miraculous 35MM, no less— you will feel the same way.
To be scrupulously fair, it should be noted that the latter part of 1999, when the film was released, was one of those rare periods that saw the release of one gem after another, many of them from exciting new cinematic voices. When Bringing Out the Dead emerged in the middle of such a period, many critics then busy with new names on their ten-best list seemed to treat it as little more than an afterthought. And audiences, presumably unenthused by an ad campaign that struggled to understand how to sell a film about a depressed Manhattan paramedic badly coping with feelings of guilt over those he wasn’t able to save, pretty much stayed away.
Based on the 1998 novel by one-time paramedic Joe Connelly, the 1990-set film follows paramedic Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) over the course of three long days and nights, which find him on the edge of total burnout following a long stretch in which he has not been able to save any patients. Following the failed resuscitation of homeless teen Rose (Cynthia Roman), whose apparition he now sees everywhere, Frank now ventures out into the increasingly surreal streets of New York City. Each night, instead of getting a long-overdue break, he tends to junkies who’ve OD’d on a new street drug and treats gunshot victims, each time with a partner confronting the pressure in their own particular ways. Larry (John Goodman) overindulges in food, Marcus (Ving Rhames) has turned to Jesus, and Tom (Tom Sizemore) has become violent. Early on, Frank and Larry tend to a man who has suffered cardiac arrest; while the victim lays comatose in the overcrowded, understaffed hospital, Frank befriends the man’s estranged daughter, Mary (Patricia Arquette), and tries to help her through a situation he has seen too many times in the past.
Watching the film again, one is struck by how closely it ties in with so many of Scorsese’s other films without ever feeling as if he is repeating himself. By telling a story entirely through the eyes of a burned-out loner who prowls the violent NYC streets each night in search of some kind of redemption or human connection, it most obviously serves as a companion piece to Taxi Driver and, indeed, both films were written by Paul Schrader. Like After Hours, Bringing Out the Dead plunges viewers into an alternately horrifying and darkly funny nocturnal nightmare, where things can go from zero to insanity in a heartbeat. As Frank yearns for some kind of salvation or redemption for his failures to act like God and bring the dead back to life, the film becomes a spiritual mediation and inquiry as compelling and profound as overtly religious Scorsese films as The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun and Silence.
From the chaos of the emergency room (informed by Scorsese’s own trips to care for his parents) to the surrealism of the city streets to the occasional, all-too-brief moments of quiet relief, there is simply not a single wasted scene or moment here. Scorsese directs with an energy that is both heedless and focused, aided immeasurably by the contributions of esteemed collaborators as cinematographer Robert Richardson and editor Thelma Schoonmaker in ways that, like Frank himself, never allow you to fully relax for more than a few seconds. The film is also blessed with what I firmly to believe to be the greatest performance in Cage’s long and strange career; in essaying the self-proclaimed “grief mop” that is Frank, he delivers a performance so alternately haunting and empathic, one free of the tics and twists he is (in)famous for, that he simply becomes him.
Practically from the moment it concluded its all-too-brief theatrical run, Bringing Out the Dead has been a film overdue for rediscovery. On its 25th anniversary, it feels like one of Scorsese’s most powerful and provocative works, one that goes for broke and takes huge chances in nearly every scene. It is a film that deals with hard truths about things that most people would just as soon not think about if given the chance, and ir does so in ways that are alternately terrifying, tragic, humorous, and deeply moving. Death may be hovering over virtually every frame of the film, but it nevertheless teems with life in such extraordinary and unexpected ways that it reminds of both Scorsese’s extraordinary gifts and the power of cinema itself.
Peter Sobczynski has been a programmer for the CCFF since its inception and is also a board member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He is a contributor to such sites as RogerEbert.com and The Spool, as well as his own semi-dubious Substack, Auteurist Class. He can also be heard discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing Network with fellow critic Erik Childress.