What with its ferociously turbulent and oft-unnerving narrative – not to mention hazy, LED-soaked scenes that prompt pained memories of hellish acid trips – Panos Cosmatos’s mythological horror Mandy has re-envisioned the tropes of the revenge thriller. Nicholas Cage plays the gentle lover turned blood-soaked avenger Red Miller, a surprisingly redemptive role for the actor.
While the Italian-Canadian director and writer’s first film Beyond The Black Rainbow dealt with the repression of his emotions after his parent’s deaths, Mandy is essentially a detonating emotive nightmare.
“I wanted to keep the trope of the revenge film, but [I wanted it] to feel more driven by the person that was absent,” Cosmatos tells the BRAG. In doing so, he reveals to audiences the depths of love, and the sheer intensity of despair one experiences after losing someone close.
Watch the trailer for Mandy here:
Not that this is some ordinary, docile dose of melancholia, mind you. The lines of the mythological and the real are so unconventionally, cleverly blurred in Mandy that at times it’s hard to tell whether the proceedings are unfurling in the real world, or some distant, determinedly strange alternative one. That’s the film’s power.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The BRAG: How are you feeling about Mandy’s release?
Panos Cosmatos: Relief – I feel good. I’ve worked on this one for a very, very long time. I started around the same time I was writing Black Rainbow.
Why did you decide to pick 1983 as the period for Black Rainbow and Mandy?
Panos Cosmatos: Well, when I was writing Black Rainbow I started to have this idea of a mythological 1983, which isn’t the real world. It’s a rendering of my own imagination as a child. [It looks] back on the past and the melancholy of what used to be [before] my parents passed away.
Was reading fantasy as a child a means of escapism for you?
Panos Cosmatos: I think it was, definitely. I was a very inwardly focused child; very quiet, shy. I felt a lot more comfortable alone in my imaginary world, for sure.
I read that both of those films function as a yin-and-yang examination of your own grief. Do you think these movies helped you process loss?
Panos Cosmatos: I think so. Looking back on it now I realise that Black Rainbow was dealing with repressing my feelings with my mother having died, and going to therapy I realised that I needed an antidote for that – and that’s how Mandy became that antidote. [That need led] to creating a more outward expression of these feelings, of purging and releasing these emotions rather than bottling them up, you know?
The scene where Nicholas Cage is screaming in the bathroom feels like a refreshing portrayal of grief.
Panos Cosmatos: I’m a little bit of a film reactionary, and at the time there were a lot of films coming out that were very, uh, I don’t know how I would describe them… The way that they dealt with the aspect of loss was very generic and corny. These films had someone in the shower crying with like, singer-songwriter music playing over the top of it.
There’s just one single tear falling down their cheek.
Panos Cosmatos: Yeah, exactly. [Laughs].
Watch the trailer for Mandy director Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond The Black Rainbow:
I read that you became really obsessed with revenge films. Were there any specific films that really moved you?
Panos Cosmatos: I mean, it was a very obsessive, a strange fixation, which brought on the idea to actually create a revenge film. For whatever reason I sat down and I watched every one of the Death Wish films in a row, and when you watch every movie of a particular genre in a row it allows a certain level of mediation on the mechanics of genre, and the essence of it.
And I became interested in this idea of making a revenge film that revolves around the spirit – not the religious spirit, but the essence of the person that’s being avenged – and how they inform the psyche and reality of a person that’s been left behind.
I was wondering, do you think Mandy would still love the man that Red Miller becomes at the end having participated in all that revenge?
Panos Cosmatos: Absolutely. I think she loves all of him, so this part is definitely a true part of them. And her too: I think she would have done the same for him.
I read that the film is meant to be exploring the male ego. What do you think lead you to explore that aspect of humanity?
Panos Cosmatos: Around [writing] Black Rainbow I started to become interested in this idea of the grotesqueness of the male ego and how fragile and dangerous it is when they feel threatened.
Or when somebody has built up an imaginary bubble around themselves, around their own self-image, and how shattering that bubble can create a real monster, you know? I think it started when I was becoming real interested in the villains in Stuart Gordon’s films. They’d always be very perverted, controlling, delusional men, and that was Barry Nyle in Black Rainbow. I just got very intrigued and wanted to continue exploring it with Jeremiah.
It’s timely to explore that, especially after this year’s massacre in Toronto by a man who called himself an involuntary celibate. There are definitely a lot of young men who need to get that message about the delusions of entitlement.
Panos Cosmatos: I never in my worst nightmares imagined that it was going to match up so regularly that men would feel so entitled that they would go out and you know, start killing people. But I guess realistically it’s been happening forever in the form of relationships and men acting out violently in relationships, and when their wives leave them.
Watch Mandy director Panos Cosmatos talk Carly Rae Jepsen:
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while writing the script for this film?
Panos Cosmatos: The biggest challenge with writing is always just sitting in front of the typewriter. I don’t love the act of actually writing down a script in screenplay format, and after Black Rainbow when I basically spent years in a room going insane, one of the reasons why I wanted to work with my friend Aaron [Stewart-Ahn] was so it could be a bit of a more joyful process and less of a solitary nightmare.
Yeah, you’re trapped in your head. And writing a script like Mandy’s, that’d be next level.
Panos Cosmatos: There’s always this theme where you dread to write, because for some reason I feel that it’s going to be very emotionally taxing – there’s a scene in Black Rainbow where Barry essentially murders his father figure, and I dreaded writing that. I felt that it was going to crush me emotionally.
I think the most daunting thing to write in Mandy was the scene where Jeremiah’s in their home and Mandy starts laughing at him. It seemed like an incredibly daunting thing to write.
When you hit a roadblock in the writing process, do you have something you do to help move past that?
Panos Cosmatos: I wish. I generally just wait and I hope. [Laughs]. I don’t generally listen to music while I’m writing, but I’ve found that a lot of ideas will come while I’m listening to music, and that’ll put me in a very energised state of creativity.
What music do you listen to?
Panos Cosmatos: Oh, anything. I love all kinds of music.
What do you think was the most difficult shot to capture while you were filming?
Panos Cosmatos: Well, they all had their challenges. The density and the amount of stuff we had to [capture] was a huge amount in such a short period. Shooting the chainsaw scene was probably the most gruelling and arduous thing I’ve ever done.
Something that I wasn’t willing to compromise on in that scene was that I felt there needed to be an elemental aspect to the scene, of just smoke and wind blowing through the area. And when you have that little time, every element you add to that is just going to compound on top of you. The smoke machine kept breaking, the fan kept on breaking down. It was the most emotionally taxing, physically taxing night that I’ve ever had.
Watch the key cast and crew of Mandy interviewed:
How long did you actually have to film Mandy?
Panos Cosmatos: The shooting schedule was about 26 days, I think.
Oh my god, that seems so tight?
Panos Cosmatos: Yeah, if I’d known how tight that was going to be, I probably would have run away screaming. [Laughs].
What do you think drives you to make films?
Panos Cosmatos: Well, I’ve always loved them and when I went to therapy after my dad died I had this moment of clarity where I pictured myself in my room ten years later still having not made a film, and it really shook me. Because all I ever wanted to do was just make films and I was nowhere near achieving that goal.
That desire to just make one thing before I die is what really drove me to make Black Rainbow. The fact that Mandy [came about] is just icing on the cake – I never thought I’d make one, let alone two movies. I really thought Black Rainbow would be the first and last thing I ever did. But at the end of the day, what drives me is the love of creating, you know?
Mandy is playing in cinemas around Australia presented by those bloody heroes over at Monster Pictures for one night only on September 21. Notably, it will be playing Events Cinema George Street – but there are a whole bunch of other locations too. For a list of them, head here.
