Mandy (2018 film) = Finished

COSMIC

COSMIC

COSMIC

Drench me in color. Make every shadow I cast a kaleidoscope. Create legend out of the broken potsherds of sin's deadly reign. Give Nicolas Cage a fricking Oscar.

Mandy is two hours long. It does not feel like two hours have passed.

Mandy has some of the best dialogue I've heard in a movie. There is almost none of it.

I am exhausted. Physically.

Mandy creates this entire twisted reality that feels real...and doesn't...and...

Okay, let me collect myself.

I feel drained by Mandy. Not because of what it does, but because of what it reveals I've been missing. It throws color around like it's nobody's business. Heck, I feel drained because it feels like those colors have been taken out of me, and smeared across the screen. Violently. Meticulously. Like a Wes Anderson film filtered through LSD and a crucible of fire.

The movie is split into two halves. One is dreamlike and peaceful, rising to a crescendo of pain, and another sees that pain and awful vindictiveness inflicted on an unsuspecting world. Each is traumatic in their own way. Nicolas Cage turns in a career-best performance. Mandy's presence is haunting from minute one. Yadda yadda yadda. It's good, okay? It's really good.

I can point to thing after thing about this movie that is just excellent. Individual moments that shine out like stars in a dark, whirling firmament--until you realize the dark is just made of more stars. The flashing of colored light on artifacts of varying moral alignment. The effect of drugs on a character's eyes, and the horrible toll it continues to take on them long after a dose. Mandy laughing at a naked, pathetic man, masquerading as a god. This movie doesn't flick the 'right' switches in my brain. It flicked all of them. Off and on, like a rebellious toddler who's been told to go to bed.

That's why I can't say I love it.

That's why this movie hurts.

After the events of the movie, Cage's character imagines that Mandy rides with him in the car. He remembers who he used to be, when they met, when she first looked at him with love. Then, he imagines her now. Turning to see her husband transformed into this bloody beast with wild eyes and a revved engine with no destination.

He drives off into an alien landscape, but there's no happiness here. No hope. Just the acceptance of what has been done, and a hint of regret. A subtle dread at the back of your brain that says there's no coming back from this.

That's where I am.

There's no coming back from Mandy.