While “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” basically put Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader on the map as massive cinematic forces and “The Last Temptation of Christ” continues to have a strong cult following, as well as an early Criterion Collection release (Spine #70 to be exact), their final collaboration, 1999’s “Bringing Out the Dead,” starring Nicolas Cage and Patricia Arquette, still has yet to receive the praise and recognition of their previous works.
Paramount, the studio behind the film, seems to want to change that this upcoming September, as they plan on giving the psychological drama a 4K UHD Blu-Ray release to coincide with its 25th anniversary. In reappraisal of this unfairly maligned capper to a multi-decade partnership, IndieWire lists our reasons for why “Bringing Out the Dead” is worth bringing out of the shadows.
A Spiritual Sequel to “Taxi Driver” That’s Also Nothing Like “Taxi Driver”
At the time of its release, “Bringing Out the Dead” may have been unfairly handicapped by its narrative and visual similarities to Scorsese and Schrader’s first project together, “Taxi Driver.” Like the 1976 masterpiece that preceded it, “Bringing Out the Dead” focuses on a seedy, neon-lit New York — this time during the early 1990s — and the driver rolling through its hellish landscape. Transplanting a taxi for an ambulance, Cage plays paramedic Frank Pierce, who, like Travis Bickle, performs an inner monologue as he sleeplessly speeds through the city, knowing someone out there needs his help.
And that’s about where the similarities end for the most part. It might be hard to look past them, but if you’re going to view “Bringing Out the Dead” against “Taxi Driver,” you might as well put it against a good number of Schrader’s films including “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter.” On its own, however, it stands as a stunningly rendered artistic examination of faith in crisis and the forces that push you towards your better angels. Cage’s Frank is, in fact, the antithesis of Travis Bickle, someone reluctantly compelled toward helping others through pain, knowing his own won’t be healed until theirs is.
A Film About People at Their Worst Moments and Those Who Come to Their Rescue
As with all of Scorsese and Schrader’s work, religious undertones and overtones abound in “Bringing Out the Dead,” with Frank serving as a saint of sorts and all the figures around him — his partners (John Goodman, Tom Sizemore, and Ving Rhames), the hospital staff, occupants of the city, families of those he’s brought in — serving as various kinds of angels, good and bad, heartless and emotionally vulnerable, drawing him in directions he only follows as a way of avoiding what he’s truly called to.
Scorsese himself related his sentiments on the film to Roger Ebert during an interview in 2004. He said to the late critic, “I had 10 years of ambulances. My parents, in and out of hospitals. Calls in the middle of the night. I was exorcizing all of that. Those city paramedics are heroes — and saints, they’re saints. I grew up next to the Bowery, watching the people who worked there, the Salvation Army, Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement, all helping the lost souls. They’re the same sort of people.”
One of Scorsese’s Best Vocal Performances
If you love a good easter egg, listen closely to the male dispatcher (the female one, Dispatcher Love, is played by none other than Queen Latifah) who calls out emergencies for Frank and his partners to rush to. Scorsese has been known to appear in his films, playing the lighting guy during the club scene in “After Hours,” a photographer in “Hugo,” and most recently appearing at the end of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but his voice alone is featured in his work just as much. In “Bringing Out the Dead,” his voice operates as both director and conductor, pushing Frank further and further into the madness and suffering of his lot in life.
The Soundtrack Slaps
A display of Scorsese’s wide-ranging taste and influence, in capturing the sound of the early ‘90s he relies heavily on alt rock groups like R.E.M., Jane’s Addiction, and 10,000 Maniacs, while still infusing classics from previous eras like Frank Sinatra, Martha & the Vandellas, and Stevie Wonder. The film was also scored by famed composer Elmer Bernstein, who had collaborated previously with Scorsese on “Cape Fear” and “The Age of Innocence.”
Nicolas Cage Thinks It Deserves A Second Look
Cage gives one of his best performances in the film, marrying the edge he displayed in “Leaving Las Vegas” with the strained humanity he’s able to find in films like “Con Air” and later “The Weather Man.” Speaking to Deadline earlier this year, Cage even acknowledged how “Bringing Out the Dead” still has yet to be given its full due.
“The movie was marketed in such a way — probably because I had been making adventure films — that people thought it was going to be an ambulance action/adventure movie. Well, that’s not what it was,” Cage said. “It was a very painful character analysis of a burned-out paramedic, based on a very good book by Joe Connelly. But it was misunderstood, and I think that movie, maybe when it goes to high definition, will get another breath of life.”
Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait to long. In addition to the 4K UHD transfer, bonus materials in the physical media release include interviews with Scorsese, Cage, Schrader, and cinematographer Robert Richardson as well as on set videos featuring the entire cast. Check out the new poster for the release below.
