Bring Out The Dead
Starring Nicholas Cage
Directed by Martin Scorsese
At Cinemas Everywhere
ÌýREVIEW BY STUART MUNCKTON
One Sunday afternoon when I was feeling a bit down, I went to the cinema to watch whatever was on in order to distract myself for a while. What was on was Bring OutÌý The Dead. To be honest, it didn't make me feel much better.
ÌýBring Out The Dead is a film set in hell, also known as New York City. It is set in the early 1990s and stars Nicolas Cage as an ambulance driver who is very close to the edge. He works night shifts and wades through New York's underbelly. He is depressed. He hasn't saved a life in months.
The film opens with Cage and his fellow ambulance driver, played by John Goodman, rushing a heart attack victim to the nearest hospital.
The scene at the hospital is one of chaos. The staff are overworked and stressed out, there are sick people left on trolleys in the corridor and a police officer is preventing desperate people from entering. The hospital looks like it belongs in an impoverished underdeveloped country, not in the heart of the wealthy industrialised world.
The staff don't want to know about the heart attack victim. There are no spare beds. Desperate pleading is the only thing that prevented the victim from being left on the sidewalk to die.
The film rips the veil from American society and shows the ugly reality of life in “the land of the free”. Life for the ordinary person in New York is depicted as a struggle to survive, resulting in widespread drug abuse and insanity.
The consequences of the lack of funding to public health are shown in all its horror. Sick, even dying, people are unable to get any assistance and doctors walk around poking themselves in the eye because they are doing a double shift. The film shows the strain this places on those, like the ambulance drivers, who have to deal with it every day.
Cage's character cannot cope with this any more. He is haunted by the ghost of a woman whose life he failed to save. He is drinking heavily.
He wants to quit, but there is no one else to do his job. His superior refuses to fire him no matter what he does. “I'll fire you tomorrow night, I promise”.
The great weakness of the film is that no explanation is given for the descent into virtual barbarism. With no reason given and no alternative offered, the result is a very depressing film. If this is all life has to offer, why bother?
For those of us in a country like Australia the film is more than depressing, it is frightening. The economic rationalist policies of the major parties are taking us down the same path. Bring Out The Dead shows us what the future holds for us, if we allow the ruling class to get away with it.