Day 266 of the challenge! Hate it or love it, Mandy’s an interesting watch to say the least.
The way I see it, Mandy is definitely one of the most over-hyped movies of the year. A midnight movie for the “crazy” Nic Cage crowd, Mandy deserves all the praise it’s receiving for it’s LSD laced art-house visuals, it’s mesmerizing camera work and editing, and the incredible soundtrack by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson (which I will no doubt be picking up), but all the 80s metal aesthetics in the world can’t hide how subpar and derivative the story at the center of Mandy is.
It basically sums up to Nic Cage avenging his fridged girlfriend (who’s more of a whimsical plot device than actual character) after she’s brutally killed by the least intimidating religious cult I have ever seen in a movie. There’s gore aplenty (which strangely did nothing for me), some seemingly pointless religious imagery, and demon biker cocaine, which you know Nic Cage totally takes a hit of for reasons.
On that, Mandy’s an incredibly hypermasculine film, and that’s problematic. While hypermasculinity in movies isn’t inherently a problem itself (Predator and First Blood are good examples of it working), the way Mandy uses it very much is. There’s a scene in the film where Nic Cage is wrestling one of the demon bikers with porn playing in the background that sums up it’s pointlessness pretty well. Couple that with Mandy’s constant abuse of all of it’s female characters, and you end up with a theme that’s just as dated as the film’s plot.
There’s zero character work to be found past the somewhat poignant opening minutes of the film, so any emotional investment for me was pretty much dead on arrival. I also can’t see where all the praise for Cage’s performance is coming from. He pretty much cranks up the crazy yelling like he always does. I could keep on going, but my main points have been made. I can see the appeal, but Mandy is not for me.