A kindred spirit: the actor Nicolas Cage endorsed as “totally shamanic”
There’s nobody who does acting quite like Nicolas Cage, which makes it quite the lofty accolade for him to praise somebody for endorsing the shamanic qualities that are distinctly his own.
The positive side of Cage being the only person in the industry who approaches their craft in the way that he does is that he gets to call it whatever the hell he wants, and in typically eccentric fashion, he settled on ‘Nouveau Shamanism’ as the ideal way to describe his unique style.
Drawing inspiration and influence from across centuries, Cage has lifted elements of his performative nature from German expressionism, kabuki theatre, the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood, and his own family members, distilling it down into an inimitable maelstrom of finely-tuned chaos.
His decade spent in the straight-to-video doldrums aside, it’s worked out very well for the member of the esteemed Coppola dynasty. He broke through as the enigmatic wildcard of independent cinema, gained fame for his no-holds-barred approach to every role, reached the peak by winning an Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, and then starred in three of the greatest action movies of the 1990s back-to-back-to-back in The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off.
Cage isn’t quite as enamoured by his current status as Hollywood’s marquee meme generator, with the star left bristling by his entire career and life’s work being reduced to brief clips that showcase him losing his shit in spectacular fashion, although he did bring that upon himself by doing it so well so often.
Describing his style to NME, Cage explained how the shamans of old “would go into a trance mode to search for answers to help whatever was wrong in the village,” and by extension, he goes into a trance of his own to find answers that help him unlock the puzzle of whatever character he’s currently playing.
Bizarrely, though, he pointed to Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story as embodying the shamanic for the way it “answers questions for people who may be embarking on a divorce.” However, the second spiritual successor makes a lot more sense, and it came from somebody he knew very well after they co-starred together in Joel Schumacher’s 1999 crime thriller 8MM.
“Then there’s Joker, where Joaquin Phoenix is totally shamanic,” he marvelled. “That film is looking at something which is an issue today; that mental illness is rampant and the government is cutting funding.” It was a performance that made him the second actor after Heath Ledger to win an Oscar for playing the ‘Clown Prince of Crime’, but that was instantly shunted down to second place in the list of accolades.
What’s better than winning the most prestigious prize in the world of thespians? Being dubbed “totally shamanic” by Cage, of course.
