Leaving Las Vegas

Gather 'round children and hear about a time when Nicolas Cage was considered to be a serious actor, a time before he was a joke, making ludicrously bad action films and earning fame for squandering his fortune on castles and yachts. Yes, back in the 90s he even won an Oscar for his work in Leaving Las Vegas, and made one of indelible performances as an alcoholic in movie history.

I hadn't seen the film since it was first released, and I'm glad I watched it again to remind myself how good Cage can be. He really hasn't replicated this since except for his dual role in Adaptation. In Leaving Las Vegas he is scary good--there have been countless drunks in cinema history, and they usually gather a lot of attention and awards, but Cage manages to play his role without sentimentality. He is what he is.

The film was written and directed by Mike Figgis (he also composed the jazz score), and he avoids traps all the way along. We really don't know why Cage's character is a drunk--we first see him whistling his way down the aisle of a liquor store, filing his cart. He makes a vague statement about his wife: "I don't remember whether I started drinking because my wife left or my wife me because I started drinking." We see a glimpse of that life when, after he is fired from his job as a screenwriter, he burns his possessions, and it includes a snapshot of a wife and son.

He heads to Las Vegas with the single purpose of drinking himself to death. He ends up meeting a prostitute, Elisabeth Shue, but instead of having sex he just wants her companionship. Perhaps engaging her nurturing instinct, she takes him in, but he makes her promise she won't ask him to stop drinking. He also gives her a magnificently played speech about how he knows he's a drunk and she's a hooker, and the two agree to love each other for who they are.

This could have been treacly tripe, the kind of "man redeemed by the love of hooker with a heart of gold," but Figgis steers away from that. Cage doesn't want to be redeemed, and Shue acquiesces. These are two broken people clinging to the same piece of wreckage, and sustain each other in the last throes.

Figgis also introduces what seems to be a subplot about Shue's Russian pimp (Julian Sands), but wraps it up before the movie is halfway over, as if saying, "The movie is about these two people and no more." When Shue is roughed up by some college boys, the part of our brain that expects a Hollywood response of Cage avenging her honor is not satisfied, and it's all for the better.

As Cage continues to make bad movies, presumably to stave off losing every house he owns, it's helpful to remember this film, which is a terrific one with an even better lead performance. One of the moments I had remembered even from sixteen years ago was, as he is being fired, his heartfelt apology to his boss. "I'm sorry," is the simple statement, yet it speaks volumes about the character and his situation. If only we could see Cage at this level once again.

I don't mean to give short shrift to Shue, who was also a revelation in this role. She also received an Oscar nomination, but since then her star has drastically dimmed. I've got a few more of post-Vegas films coming up in my Netflix queue, but clearly her potential has not been met.