STACK #169 Nov 2018

FILM FEATURE

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A phantasmagoric revenge thriller with liberal doses of acid horror, splatter, heavy metal, and Nicolas Cage rage, Mandy is an insane movie experience the likes of which you’ve never seen before. Although if you’ve seen Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos’s psychedelic 2010 debut feature Beyond the Black Rainbow , you’ll have a good idea what to expect. This visionary filmmaker is adept at conjuring a nightmarish and hallucinatory experience, which has made him a favourite with cult movie fans. Mandy follows lumberjack Red Miller (Cage) on a crazed mission of vengeance against sinister cult leader Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache) and his followers, after they abduct Red's lover, Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough), and force her submission through a hellish cocktail of LSD- infused horrors. “I wanted to do a film that was a revenge movie, but one that orbited around the essence of the person that had been lost,” Cosmatos tells STACK . “In many revenge films, the person that dies is essentially forgotten in the film and it becomes more about the morbid fixation of man exacting his right to inflict unholy vengeance on everyone who has wronged him. “I watched all the Death Wish movies in a row, and over the course of watching them, I had time to meditate on the idea of making a film where the absence or loss of a person STACK spoke with director Panos Cosmatos about his psychedelic revenge thriller Mandy , featuring a Nicolas Cage performance for the ages. Words Scott Hocking

LEADING THE CULT

would be the core principle of the entire film.” Red is a role that Nicolas Cage was born to play, and his journey from reserved woodcutter to full-blown Charles Bronson with a chainsaw surely ranks as one of his most berserk performances – if that’s possible! However, in guiding the actor on his crusade against “crazy evil”, Cosmatos explains it wasn’t simply a case of standing back and letting Cage do what he does best. “There’s a very specific quality I want these performances to have, and Nic is a very methodical and thoughtful actor who does a great deal of preparation. People think of him as this Tasmanian devil, but behind all that is a great deal of modulation on how to achieve things.”

Standing out in a film dominated by one of Nicolas Cage’s most gonzo performances since Vampire’s Kiss might sound impossible, but Linus Roache gives us one of the creepiest cult leaders in the horror genre’s history. According to Cosmatos, the British actor (best known for roles on TV’s Vikings and Homeland ) drew upon a personal encounter to bring Mandy ’s mad messiah to life. “In his own personal life experience, Linus has encountered people like Jeremiah, and I think that was very important. In America, you encounter people like Jeremiah Sand all the time; a lot of European actors who read the script had no frame of reference, whereas Linus did, and that helped him connect with it.”

An incredibly stylish fusion of sound and image, Mandy could also be described as a heavy metal album cover brought to life. Indeed, Cosmatos reveals that his films are driven by the music that inspires them. “I thought of Black Rainbow

The things driving the tone of Mandy were like Black Sabbath – a throbbing, medium paced, unrelenting momentum

as like a 15-minute-long Pink Floyd song. The things driving the tone of Mandy were like Black Sabbath – a throbbing, medium paced, unrelenting momentum, but not sprinting. “Building and iterating the look and sound of the film starts very early for me. I don’t think of it so much as telling a story as creating this pop culture object from the ground up. I’ll come up with a title, taglines and posters for the film very early on, tones and images and a playlist that really inspires me. It all starts from a very audiovisual, arts and crafts kind of place.” Despite having directed just two movies in eight years, Cosmatos has cemented his position as a doyen of the cult movie circuit. But will his fans have to wait another eight

• Mandy is out on Nov 28

years for another psychedelic mind- melt? “I think it will be probably be about five or six years,” he laughs. “I have what my friend describes as a ‘morbid patience’. I never thought I’d make a second film. To be honest, I thought Black Rainbow would be it, so my goal with that movie was to make a pure representation of what I was all about at the time. It’s a miracle that Mandy exists!”

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NOVEMBER 2018

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