Prisoners of the Ghostland Review: Nicolas Cage conducts a Western Ballsy

Some movies don’t seem inevitable until they’re made. Most absurd thing about Sion Sono’s “Prisoners of the Ghostland” – a psych-western sukiyaki that casts Nicolas Cage as a criminal on a mission to save a girl on the run in a post-apocalyptic wasteland before the bombs attached to his balls didn’t explode – was that he didn’t already exist.

This is the first film Sono has shot (mostly) in English, and the first film Cage has shot with a (mostly) Japanese crew, but “Prisoners of the Ghostland” leaves no doubt that these two men savages speak the same language. If this cross-cultural mix of gonzo pulls more ideas than it gets skin on its bones, well, it’s easy to forgive Sono and Cage for being a little over-excited about meeting up to the first time around (perhaps it’s worth noting that Sono suffered a heart attack during pre-production that scuttled plans to roll in Mexico and put the project in jeopardy until Cage suggested moving all in Japan.)

All aspects of “Prisoners of the Ghostland”, except the most ad hoc, elicit the thrill of seeing two artists totally independent of their will share a vision. Even though nothing else in the film makes sense, the unbalanced ethos of its own creation leaves a clue with the clarity of a chalked body outline. The same goes for the title of the movie: while it’s a story about anything, it’s about breaking the chains where you came from and finding new strength in people. that you meet along the way. There are perhaps too many times this story is told more convincingly behind the camera than in front of it. But there are also other times when Cage watches the howling sky as he stretches the word “testicle” the length of a tune.

For those who do not know the emeritus poet of ero guro nansensu (lit. ‘erotic grotesque nonsense’), Sono emerged from the sewers of Japanese underground cinema as an irrepressible rat king who ballooned the punk energy of Oshima Nagisa, the perverse nihilism of Tsukamoto Shinya and the renegade chaos of Suzuki Seijun in a coherent work that continues to mutate in wonderfully unexpected ways. A random, reductive sample of Sono’s films could include a four-hour epic about the overlap between organized religion and upskirt photography (“Love Exposure”), a grand guignol rap opera about gang warfare that erupts after the discovery of a mafia gift. a micro-penis (“Tokyo Tribe”), and a romantic epic about a heart-sick musician whose pet turtle turns into a giant kaiju after throwing it down the toilet (“Love & Peace”). In other words, collaborating with Cage – an actor you may have known since he was 57 years old as Nicolas Cage – might be the most predictable thing Sono has ever done.

Their collaboration is a meeting of minds that immediately fulfills its orgiastic promise, as the outlaw Hero (Cage), a shotgun carrier, bursts through the doors of a half-empty bank shouting “Banzai ! to terrified Japanese customers. Not very heroic at all! To make matters worse, Hero isn’t alone: ​​he’s joined by his massive crime partner Psycho (“The Notebook” director Nick Cassavetes), who does a much better job living up to his name. Welcome to another day in the border town of Samurai Town, a two-horse anachronism that feels like running along the border between Westworld and Tokyo Disney.

The scenography of Sweet Peach Street is a sight to behold, as Sono transforms a studio backlot into an electric fusion of people, cultures and eras. There is a cherry blossom tree on each sidewalk and a cowboy hat on each head. Classic Japanese architecture is adorned with electronic tickers in English, the local kid’s pal with a creepy Frenchman in a bolo tie, and the only street in town appears to be a dusty cul-de-sac that ends in a huge cuckoo clock full of disembodied heads that arise to sing disturbing poetry. Is it even a clock, or just vaguely reminiscent of a clock? Who could tell. Either way, he’s anticipating a film that – in its abstruse way – is preoccupied with the stagnation of time and the oppression with which it holds us under its command (not just in our time, but also in the time of which we inherit).

Samurai Town may appear to be playing by the rules of its own timeline, but its inhabitants serve at the mercy of a man called “the greatest and mightiest clock.” It would be the Governor (Bill Moseley), a white man in an even whiter suit, and some people don’t like living by the ticking of his watch – neither does his adopted granddaughter Bernice (star of “Climax Sofia Boutella, always ready to get weird), who rides hot rod in a sedan with friends and flies through the death-infested wasteland beyond. To retrieve her, the governor enlists the help of the only person who might be desperate enough to pick her up before it’s too late.

This is where Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai’s storyline really starts to think outside the box. Hero is your basic, ironic badass with a heart of gold – imagine Nic Cage doing a little more talkative Mad Max and you will almost be there – but his circumstances are… unusual. On the one hand, he is forced to wear a leather bodysuit rigged with explosives and designed to “recognize the impulse of a man ready to strike a defenseless woman”. For one more thing … well, there really doesn’t have to be anything else when you have a time bomb sewn into your nuts. The governor, it seems, really does not want anyone to “dirty his property”. Hero has three days to collect it (tick-tock, tick-tock) and all the motivation a man could need.

From there, “Prisoners of the Ghostland” follows the journey of a hero who has been origami in almost unrecognizable form. In about five minutes flat, Hero peels Bernice from a mask of sewn-on flesh (everyone wears it in Ghostland – it’s part of their mutant chic). This gives Sono so much time to throw new things into the pot that his film begins to feel like it is cooking into an allegory for itself.

What follows is a tough pivot from “Escape from LA” to “Beyond Thunderdome” – harsh even by usual Sono standards – as Hero is greeted by outcasts as a savior, and soon finds himself at the head of a motley army of mutants and savage children in a rebellion against the corrupt forces of Samurai Town. It’s a battle that seems secondary to Sono’s interests; the director’s work after Fukushima has been haunted by images of abandoned humanity and atomic disintegration, and “Prisoners of the Ghostland” spends large portions of the film forcing Hero to face the grim absurdity of life among people who have been left for dead on poisoned earth.

The conflict between Hero and his villains is so finely sketched that it may seem incidental, but Sono has the time of his life to dig into a storyline that fuses American and Japanese cultures thanks to the terrible power of their shared nuclear bond. Is there a significant relationship between Hero and the War Bride that makes him dangerously excited? There’s no. Is there a sense of narrative momentum as the decisive (unusually nonchalant) confrontation approaches? Not a drop.

But is there a winged “Rat Man” whose modulated voice makes him sound like a Muppet who played in toxic waste, a prophecy of a “thick red blood” man who will be the salvation of the Ghostland, and a dramatic read from “Wuthering Heights? »Of course there are! The film is never more surprising than when Sono deigns to fill in some of the blanks, as his only unallied exhibition scene is inspired by the pre-emptive protests carried out outside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial each August, and moving for the way it allows the ridiculousness of Ghostland to reflect on the horrors of our own world.

“Prisoners of the Ghostland” might lose you during some of its less emotionally lucid moments, but even in the hero’s confusion, Cage still seems to know where he is and what he’s supposed to be doing. He’s the unstoppable engine behind a strangely calm film that often feels like it’s running on steam; Maybe it’s just the fact that his character’s testicles are going to explode from his body if he doesn’t shake things up, but the actor never lets us forget that the clock is ticking.

Working with a director who complements his destabilizing energy (instead of just tolerating it) has become the obvious secret to unlocking the full potential of Cage, and Sono – just like the author of “Mandy” Panos Cosmatos or the director of “Dog Eat Dog ”Paul Schrader – has the galaxy-brain vision to film his star so that he feels like a natural expression of the film around him. “Prisoners of the Ghostland” is a film about a fallen world that will be lost in time until it can escape the chaos of its own creation. Hero can only hope to earn his name and save his testicles if he finds a way to turn this chaos into freedom. Luckily for the wretches of Ghostland, Sono and Cage have forged an alliance that shows the world how to do just that.

Category B-

“Prisoners of the Ghostland” premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. RJLE Films will release it in the United States later this year.

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