Nicolas Cage’s latest Shaman-like acting feat, this one is called “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” has a just-released trailer. It hints at a very meta performance from the actor, playing himself. In it, an obsessive fan forces Cage to re-create his most famous characters and scenes during a birthday party. It’s Cage’s 49th movie in the last 10 years. Is that a record?
This is a good opportunity to show appreciation for the legend.
Cage has no doubt had a rather strange acting career, especially the last decade or so where his film choices have gotten weirder and weirder. It's come to the point, sadly, where many movie fans just don't take him all that seriously anymore. Which is a shame, because this is the same Oscar-winning actor that, at some point in the late 80s to early 00s, gave us brave and exciting performances in films as diverse as "Adaptation", "Leaving Las Vegas", "Raising Arizona," "Wild At Heart" and "Red Rock West," just to name a few.
Yes, the 55-year-old actor sometimes does go back to his indie roots and makes, say, a potent indie like "Joe," or the batshit crazy "Mandy," ( I really don’t think Cage was acting in the latter. I believe they just put him in a cage, fed him cocaine and let him loose on set), but, through and through, Cage’s methodical approach to B-movie acting, which has, on-paper, done a great disservice to his reputation, and even made him a YouTube sensation, is actually quite revolutionary.
There is a reason why His B-movies are better than, say, the straight-to-VOD fare John Travolta and Bruce Willis have given us recently. It's because you can tell Cage is jumping into the role, fully invested and giving it all he has. It doesn’t seem to necessarily just be about the paycheck for him. That helps bring out the entertainment value to the nth degree. Sometimes, one doesn’t need the best writing or the best story, and just wants to have fun watching a film.
His gonzo-style acting, which he calls “Nouveau Shamanic,” is the kind of advancement of the acting art form that we haven’t really seen otherwise since probably Brando going method in the late ‘50s. Cage credits this style of performing as being inspired by the book The Way of the Actor from Brian Bates, which describes the parallel artistry between the ancient shamans and thespians. Cage has, more realistically, summoned up his acting style as a hybrid of German Expressionism and "Western kabuki".
If you watch Cage B-movie classics such as “Bad Lieutenant,” “Matchstick Men,” “Mom and Dad,” and, yes, even “The Wicker Man,” you watch a style of acting incompatible with the realism invading most films these days; it’s entertaining, charismatic and, I’m being subtle here, wildly flamboyant. It’s almost like it comes straight from another dimension.
Many critics have accused Cage of overacting, but they seem to be missing the point of it all. It’s a purposeful act in self-implosion, the notion that you can take a low-tier script, and fit the stagey troubadour performing of the late 1800s into it, thus creating art out of pulp. David Lynch has described Cage as “the jazz musician of American acting”. I love that description, because, much like Jazz, there’s an impromptu improv-like nature to the delivery of his perfomances that feels incredibly unpredictable and damn-near revolutionary.
Of course, we all know the rule: take these reactions with a grain of salt rather than treating them as gospel. Still, I will say that the film tested like gangbusters earlier this year, and Lionsgate clearly has confidence.