Primal Cage

After a decade in the bargain bin, Nic Cage is back at his batshit best in MANDY, an infernal, mind-melting rock opera of revenge from cult filmmaker Panos Cosmatos. TF meets the team putting Cage Rage back on the agenda…

- Jordan Farley

I’m not interested in reality as it is,” chuckles Panos Cosmatos, the Canadian-Italian writer/director with a name nearly as good as his astonishing films. If you’ve seen Cosmatos’ visionary 2010 debut, psychedelic sci-fi horror Beyond The Black Rainbow, that statement will come as no surprise. Now, Cosmatos is back with Mandy, a film that blends ultra-violent B-movie revenge, extra-dimensional terror and an ’80s metal album cover aesthetic, while gifting Nic Cage his best role, in his best film, for almost a decade.

So specific was Cosmatos’ vision for Mandy that he waited eight years to get it made. “They say ‘don’t put your eggs in one basket’, but I did anyway,” smiles the director, who’s in high spirits talking to Total Film less than 24 hours after his film’s Festival de Cannes debut was greeted with ecstatic applause lasting the length of the credits, and beyond. A shy, softly spoken film geek turned filmmaker, you could imagine Cosmatos and Guillermo del Toro having conversations that would spill into the early hours. “It was a mad thing to do in retrospect, but I was like, ‘This is what I want to make next.’” Thankfully, Cosmatos found the ideal partner in Elijah Wood’s production company SpectreVision (The Greasy Strangler), who gave the far from commercial filmmaker the breathing space he needed.

CHANGING PLACES