Nouveau Shamanic Acting: The Confusing Greatness (?) of Nicolas Cage

The man, the myth, the meme: Nicolas Cage.

What is it about the 57-year-old actor that makes him so compelling, even after he’s accumulated more terrible B-movies than Segal, Schwarzenegger and Stallone combined? Why is Cage’s onscreen presence so inherently compelling, regardless of how good or bad the film is?

Ethan Hawke, a two-time Oscar nominee, has been quoted as saying that Cage is “the only actor since Marlon Brando who’s done anything new with the art.” That’s high praise. But Hawke certainly isn’t alone. Legendary director David Lynch calls Cage “the jazz musician of American acting.” Sean Penn gave Cage a shout-out while accepting his Oscar for Mystic River. Over at The Guardian, film critic Luke Buckmaster says, “In Cage’s hands, cartoon-ish moments are imbued with real emotion and real emotions become cartoons. Everything – from individual scenes down to single lines of dialogue – feel like they have been embraced as opportunities for creation. Cage is usually interesting even when his films are not. He is erratic and unpredictable; he is captivating and he is

capricious.”

Cage himself has remained coy in interviews. Like many actors, he spurns many attempts at looking deeper into his performance or the film itself, preferring that they speak for themselves. In a February 2011 interview, he stated that he developed his own style of acting called nouveau shamanic, citing a book called The Way of the Actor by Brian Bates. Since then, Cage has invariably called his acting “Western kabuki” and “German expressionist.”

Touché, Mr. Cage. Touché.

Much like his fellow meme-worthy actor Willem Dafoe, Cage is someone who has the charisma, wit and screen presence to play leading-man roles, but often rejects that in favor of experimental indie films that allow him to be himself. Another actor who frequently chose creepy, quirky or weird supporting characters over classic leading-man roles was the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

But both Hoffman and Dafoe came from the theater world, where understanding of a character takes place over a long period of time. Cage, of course, comes from filmmaking royalty, as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, one of the greatest American filmmakers to ever live (he famously chose the surname of Cage to avoid charges of nepotism).

As Buckmaster describes it, “Cage is clearly attracted to grotesque characters and is celebrated for his wild and unhinged approach to them. He has the presence of a leading man and the eccentricities of a character actor.”

Cage is a man who sometimes goes to extremes when it comes to method acting. When preparing to play a PTSD-stricken Vietnam vet in the film Birdy, for example, he infamously ripped out two of his own teeth without anesthesia and spent multiple weeks with his face covered in bandages. In an interview this past July for Variety, Cage said that he feels disillusioned about the Hollywood industry due to a number of factors, not the least of which were “commercial constraints” that forced him to rein in his performances. Now, he claims, he prefers to star in smaller indie features where directors give him more room to experiment.

I’ll admit: I’m not above enjoying a few of Cage’s films for the meme factor alone. I can get plenty of ironic humor out of his eccentric, cunning domestic terrorist character in the cheesy 90's action flick Face/Off, for example. As a teenager, I enjoyed the wit and wry charm that he brought to conspiracy theorist historian Ben Gates in National Treasure, and I’ll admit he had solid on-screen chemistry with veteran character actor Justin Bartha. I don’t, however, recommend many of Cage’s other films during that time period (despite all the funny memes, I hated the horrible 2006 remake of the classic British horror film The Wicker Man).

On the flip side, Cage might be unfairly criticized, since he’s most definitely an actor who needs to work with a talented director in order to truly shine. Of course, Cage did that in his Oscar-winning role as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas (directed by Mike Figgis) and in his Oscar-nominated turn in Adaptation (directed by Spike Jonze). In many of his other films, however, Cage is plain bad (Mom & Dad, Dog Eat Dog and USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage). But again, even someone like the undeniably talented Mark Wahlberg can be great when Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson directs him — and terrible when he’s directed by Michael Bay or M Night Shyamalan.

Why has Cage, in retrospect, gotten so much respect from the acting community while simultaneously becoming a living meme? On the one hand, Cage is known for being a genial, good-humored guy who works well with directors. Away from the set, he’s also known as one of Hollywood’s most generous philanthropists. Buckmaster claims that Cage’s well-cultured background — growing up in the shadow of his uncle — gave him a bit of a rebellious streak, choosing weird characters and weird scripts while breaking some of the rules that Hollywood’s leading men are supposed to follow. That may or may not be true, but one thing’s for sure: at this point in time, Cage is saying yes to every script he can.

A quick Google search can tell you that — thanks to a wide variety of dumb financial decisions — Cage currently owes quite a bit in property taxes to the IRS. If you want to truly look at the man’s eccentricities, look no further than his purchases: a castle in Germany, a haunted hotel in New Orleans, a multi-million dollar dinosaur skull, a beachfront mansion in Rhode Island and a Lamborghini that once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Thanks to a couple of expensive divorces and bad property investments, Cage needs the cash. And with that, comes lots of B-movies that inevitably end up in the straight-to-Netflix graveyard.

“At this low point in his career, Cage is taking roles in rote, medium-budget thrillers as every-men, usually cops or morally justified criminals, and he is self-consciously reining in his excess to give these roles a level of gravitas that often seem out of place. He should be flying way over the top in the mediocre movies,” laments Alex Peterson of SpectrumCulture.com, while still praising Cage’s fearlessness as an actor.

That tag of every-man has been both a blessing and a curse for Cage. I’ll be honest — for an actor who’s never been good at picking scripts, Cage has nonetheless found some intriguing characters to play. I was pleasantly surprised at his stirring performance in Mandy (you can find my review here), a psychedelic horror film where he hunts down the Manson Family clones that murdered his girlfriend.

Cage has also challenged himself with roles like 2013’s Joe, where he plays a tormented man who must rescue a teenage boy from his abusive dad. The 2009 film Knowing flopped at the box office, but Cage got solid reviews for his portrayal of an MIT professor who discovers a mysterious time capsule at his son’s elementary school. He also played a conflicted assassin who has a change of heart in 2008’s Bangkok Dangerous, and teamed up with Jared Leto to play international arms-dealing brothers in Lord of War.

So the charge of “Cage always plays the same character” isn’t entirely accurate. The problem is having to sift through so many boring, lame movies to truly appreciate the guy’s talent. With that said, in the right context, and with the right director to harness Cage’s raw edge and wildness, he can be surprisingly good. I guess what makes Cage so fascinating is that — much like his old friend Johnny Depp — you never know what film he might make next. He might just create his own category of movie: the Good, the Bad, and the Cage.