“No one asked you to suffer. That was your idea.”
Paul Schrader remains one of our most deceptively prolific filmmakers with a body of work so varied and unforgettable, that it’s hard to even picture the last few decades of film without him. His recent output saw him producing some of his strongest work through the unofficial Damaged Loner trilogy, which consisted of 2018’s First Reformed, 2021’s The Card Counter, and 2023’s Master Gardener. The trio of films wowed longtime fans of the writer/director and even earned him his long-awaited first Oscar nomination. Meanwhile, Schrader’s latest effort, the drama Oh, Canada, sees him reuniting with his American Gigolo leading man Richard Gere for this tale of a former draft dodger reflecting on his life in what looks to be one of the director’s most pensive films in years.
If Schrader has always been more of a cinephile’s filmmaker rather than a mainstream one, his ardent supporters continue to sing his praises, continuously revisiting his past films whenever possible. It’s therefore not so surprising that two of his most acclaimed titles from the late 90s, Schrader’s adaptation of the Russell Banks novel Affliction and the Schrader-scripted/Martin Scorsese-directed Bringing Out the Dead have been given new life on Blu-ray.
Affliction
In 1997’s Affliction, a deputy named Wade (Nick Nolte) finds himself at odds with most of the people in the small New Hampshire town he lives in. This includes his domineering father Glen (James Coburn), who has been a terrifying figure for him his entire life and greatly influenced the man he is today.
Affliction remains an incredibly American film thanks to its vast landscape, small-town sensibilities, and the story’s bleakness which comes across as salt-of-the-earth poetry with a decided edge to it. The film is full of broken people simply trying to exist and, just maybe, find some light in their lives along the way, not least of all Wade. Schrader’s film deals with the ghosts of the past, the ones that aren’t as evidently haunting, but which maintain a special kind of scariness. The increase in Wade’s temper and self-destructive nature with every subsequent scene begs the question: How much anger and pain can a man’s soul contain? Not even a loving relationship with Margie (Sissy Spacek) seems to help, despite her representing the chance to let go of the past that’s been holding him hostage and the father responsible for it. Affliction is hard to penetrate as a film at times, yet remains undeniably poignant throughout. The various story beats (each one more intense than the last) wash over as they would in real life, knocking the viewer back and reminding them of how a person’s world can change in an instant. While Schrader’s film almost becomes too hard to take with its levels of devastation, it’s still a searing and unforgettable portrait of the monster that lives inside of all of us.
Bringing Out the Dead
Schrader and director Martin Scorsese revisited New York with this gripping story of a paramedic named Frank (Nicolas Cage) who finds himself questioning his sanity thanks to the intensity of his job, the unpredictability of the city, and the various characters he encounters on a nightly basis.
If Affliction was Schrader exploring the monsters within us, Bringing Out the Dead, has him uncovering the ghosts inside of us. Underrated almost as soon as it debuted in 1999, Bringing Out the Dead instantly shows itself to be a film about those we feel have left never actually leaving. Scorsese brings Schrader’s script to life with very specific lighting that gives it a surreal edge, echoing the manic quality of the world Frank lives in. Meanwhile, the noirish narration provided by Cage only adds to the surrealness. Schrader’s New York remains just as haunted and isolating as ever. In Bringing Out the Dead, he paints the iconic city as a world full of death and despair. This is life for those who live in it, all of whom routinely treat the writer’s New York as if there’s no other world that exists beyond it. The environment in the film makes it hard to get a handle on the world because it’s so powerful and alien, yet still maintains compelling and fascinating elements about it. It’s such a rough world, that it’s hard to fathom that anything resembling hope can actually happen there and harder to recognize it when it does. This is certainly true for the mentally fragile Frank, who is forever longing for an atonement that will never come, existing as one of the most tragic figures Schrader ever brought to the screen.
Both Affliction and Bringing Out the Dead share more than a couple of similarities, not least of all is Schrader’s passion for each project. The deep compassion he shows for both of his complicated protagonists is surely felt in the way he presents the torturous nature of their inner selves in a manner that’s neither intrusive nor judgmental in the least. Wade and Frank are men who are desperately and hopelessly trying to find themselves again. While their respective journeys are compelling, the one theory that rises above all the others is that maybe the reason neither one can find himself is because they were both always lost.
Affliction is now available on Blu-ray from Shout Factory. Bringing Out the Dead is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures.
