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Bringing Out the Dead #10 Best Film of 1999 Directed by Martin Scorsese
Frank (Nicolas Cage) is a paramedic for Our Lady of Misery Hospital in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. He works the late shift, the hours between eleven and seven in the morning. His inner-city route is challenging, encompassing the ghetto and low-income districts, which has its lion-share of drunks, loonies, street dwellers, whores, drag queens, and drug dens. But he wouldn't work anywhere else. This is the place he knows. This is the neighborhood he grew up in. And this is the place where he administers to the bodies and spirits of those in need. "These spirits were part of the job. It was impossible to pass a building that didn't hold a ghost. Eyes of a corpse; the screams of a loved one." Frank used to love his job, serving the poor and needy and saving lives. "Saving someones life," he said, "is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwords, you walk the street making infinite whatever you see. For a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth. Everything I touched became lighter. Horns played from my shoes. Petals fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed for you. And for a moment, God was you." But something has changed for him and he has been unable to save anyone for six months. Because of this, he hasn't been able to sleep or eat. He's seeing the ghosts of those he has not been able to save. He has lost hope in his ability (or power) to save, though he commits at each new call that this patient will survive. This is Frank's perspective when we meet him, when he gets the call to an apartment to revive a man who has suffered a cardiac arrest. Getting into the apartment, he finds the family hysterical, pleading him to bring their dad back to life. So he starts working on him, Mr. Burke. But Frank is troubled by the situation. Does he save him for the family? Does he save him to crawl out of his six-month slump? What about Mr. Burke. Does he even want to come back? While jump-starting the heart, Frank said: "In the past, I came to believe in spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back, spirits angry at the awkward places death had left them. I understood how crazy it was to think this way. But I was convinced that I could turn around and see old man Burke standing, watching, waiting for us to finish." In the next three days after reviving Mr. Burke, Frank mulls over these questions while dealing with his sense of hoplessness, guilt, and the ghost of Rosie, a young woman who died in his arms six months ago. Her face has begun appearing on every woman he'd see. Her voice would be the voice he'd hear. "I used to block it out." he said. "I used to forget. But she wouldn't let go. And now she's come to bear witness for all of them, for all who had been lost." The climax of the film occurs when Frank quits his job, ends up at a drug den (with blood red walls) to retrieve the woman he has fallen in love with (Mary), and takes a drug to help him sleep. Rather than a restful sleep, he dreams of the streets and of Rosie. He's lead down dark streets and spirit after spirit begs for his assistance. He reaches down and pulls one out of the street, then moves onto the next one, and then to the next without a chance to rest. Before long, the street is populated with spirits, spirits that now are saved go about saving others. Like the Apostle Peter who denied Jesus three times, more out of an instinct for survival, and felt the pain from that denial for the three days his cherished friend laid in the grave, I see the image of Frank. He accuses and torments himself for Rosie's death even though it isn't his fault. The result of this is a man more concerned with himself than his mission of being the caretaker of bodies and souls. Selfishness takes away the certain sense to know the will of the patient he serves, the ability to grant mercy to those souls too humiliated to forgive themselves. Just as Christ is said to have risen on the third day and visit Peter, Rosie appears to Frank through Frank's girlfriend Mary. "I'm so sorry I didn't save you," he cried. "It's not your fault," Rosie replied. "No one asked you to suffer. That was your idea." Masterfully written by Paul Schrader, based on the novel by Joe Connelly, Bringing Out the Dead is a bleak, dark, and ugly film. People are gray as ghosts, walking from building to building like shadows. Many offer their bodies because there's quick money, sense of feeling wanted. Many are dirty, smelly, and ill because they don't have clothes or a home or health benefits. And many feel lost and drown themselves in the pseudo-salvation and acceptance found in drugs. This is a realistic depiciton of life and the human condition. Personally, I love the similes between Frank and Christ. Both worked among the poor and afflicted, not amongst the well-to-do or clergy. On this same level, I appreciate that Frank is human, imperfect. Life is full of dark streets and souls, and every once in awhile there is someone who raises us from the dark street and shows us the hope and mercy to live on. |
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