Two Nicolas Cage Films: Butcher's Crossing and Dream Scenario

Nicolas Cage in Butcher's Crossing

John Williams' Butcher's Crossing is the most powerful and finely wrought of his four widely disparate novels. A novel about a buffalo hunting party stranded in the Rockies for the winter of 1874-5, the book is notable for its Hardyesque descriptions of a natural world that dwarves and brutalizes insignificant creatures like man. This would be difficult to translate into any film adaptation, but Gabe Polsky's valiant attempt falls well short of capturing the power and density of Williams' work. 

Fred Hechinger stars as Will Andrews, a naive Easterner eager to journey from innocence to experience. He falls in with and bankrolls Miller, played by Cage, who is eager to hunt buffalo in an obscure nook in the Rocky Mountains. This sojourn ends badly and Polsky's depictions of the deprivations Miller and his band face seemed bland and undefined to me. Miller is supposed to be an Ahab-like character whose greed and obsessiveness endanger his men. Despite Cage's best efforts, Miller here seems more peevish here than mad. The deterministic fury of Williams' prose never finds its way into this adaptation. Polsky manages to convey the ecological warnings contained in the novel, but little else. The finely etched characters of the book are not in evidence and the director's overreliance on close-ups works against the man versus nature theme that is central to the project.

Kristoffer Borgli's Dream Scenario is a better Nicolas Cage vehicle. The Norwegian director's first American project, based on his script. concerns a meek biology professor (Cage) who begins appearing in the dreams of random people. The professor is initially entranced by his bizarre celebrity status, but things take a sinister turn and the professor soon finds himself to be a pariah and scapegoat. Unlike Butcher's Crossing, enough space and context is given the players that they are able to render three dimensional performances. Cage is adroit and memorable in a role that requires him to underplay. Also effective are Julianne Nicholson, Tim Meadows, and Dylan Gelula.

Nicolas Cage in Dream Scenario

Borgli's hand on the tiller is not always firm. He oversaturates the film's colors in attempt to merge the film's reality and dream life, but the end effect is negligible. The film occasionally feels unwieldy, overladen with current baggage like cancel culture and media oversaturation. Still, this is a promising first feature and I am eager to track Borgli's progress. Cage had a bad patch in his career when he seemingly churned out four or five B Action flicks a year to pay off his debts. He has risen out of that slough to do some of the most interesting work of his career: Renfield, Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Willy's Wonderland, Color Out of Space, Mandy, Mom and Dad, Snowden, Dog Eat Dog, Joe. Not all of these films from the last decade are successful, but they do represent an effort by Cage to broaden his range and find work that reflects a quest for artistic stimulation rather than financial renumeration.