“I’ll go on record”: the one movie Nicolas Cage called a masterpiece
Nicolas Cage is arguably one of cinema’s most interesting actors. He started out in the 1980s, appearing in various comedies and romantic movies. The star found acclaim when he played the lead in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona alongside Holly Hunter, which was soon followed by the rom-com Moonstruck, starring Cher. Early on, Cage proved he had what it took to become a Hollywood sensation, but it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that he truly became an icon of the silver screen.
The actor has always shown himself to be a versatile talent, able to imbue his performances with everything from effortless humour to sheer terror. While his performance in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart allowed him to channel campiness and sheer ridiculousness, he then became an action star, appearing in movies like Face/Off and Con Air.
His career has constantly fluctuated, and it is sometimes hard to believe that the same man who won an Oscar for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas also lent himself to the terrible reimagining of The Wicker Man in 2006. It’s safe to say that while Cage has appeared in many fantastic films, he has also starred in his fair share of bad ones. He might have racked up a considerable amount of Golden Raspberry nominations, but he has also won an Oscar, a Screen Actors’ Guild Award, a Golden Globe, and various other miscellaneous accolades.
There are certainly a few movies that Cage has starred in that critics have labelled masterpieces, with movies like Pig, Raising Arizona, and Adaptation all receiving significant praise. However, there is one that Cage himself has called a “masterpiece”. He picked a more recent release, Dream Scenario, which came out in 2023. It was directed by Kristoffer Borgli, and the movie earned Cage a Golden Globe nomination.
“I’ll go on record as saying I think it’s a masterpiece,” he told The Guardian. The movie follows Cage as a professor called Paul Matthews, who begins to appear in countless people’s dreams, turning him into an unconventional celebrity. However, he is forced to reckon with this bizarre phenomenon when the events of these dreams start to turn sour. Alongside Cage, Micheal Cera, Julianne Nicholson, Dylan Baker, and Tim Meadows also star.
Cage took on the role because he found himself relating to Paul’s character, having also experienced an unconventional kind of celebrity that goes beyond his acting. The star has been used in online memes and is often talked about as a unique and bizarre kind of Hollywood icon. Thus, when he read the script, he thought he could use his own experiences to influence his performance.
He told Deadline, “So, when Dream Scenario came along, I quickly thought I might have, in some strange little way, the life experience to play Paul’s dreamification, because what he’s going through is not really unlike that: People start dreaming about him overnight and then they start talking about their dreams and it goes viral. And I thought, I can make it real for myself and real within the performance because of my memeification.”
