Dying of the Light

Paul Schrader – 2014 – USA

I can hardly think of another major director, save only Terry Gilliam, who has the kind of miserable fortune that Paul Schrader seems cursed with.  Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) was taken away from him, and his alternate director’s version of the same film was widely panned.  The Canyons (2013) had to be crowd-funded and the finished film was bashed by its screenwriter and critics and then rejected by important festivals.  Now, Dying of the Light, apparently intended by Schrader to be a sobering meditation on aging, has been taken out of his hands by the producers and re-cut to make it as much of a routine espionage thriller as possible.  It seems the changes were so drastic that not only Schrader but the film’s cinematographer and even some of its actors have disowned it and publicly expressed their umbrage within the extent their contracts allow.  Why does this keep happening to him?  How can someone with such extensive experience in Hollywood be unable to get himself a deal where he can simply make the film he wants?  Is he on some sort of secret blacklist in the industry due to an intransigent personality that has left him without friends?  I assume that at some point – due to meager public outcry if nothing else – Schrader will be allowed to produce another director’s cut and it will probably be only moderately better received than this version; certainly not well enough to revive his reputation.  No less histrionic than he ever is, Nicholas Cage plays a veteran CIA man on the trail of a terrorist who once tortured him many years ago.  Meanwhile, his recently diagnosed dementia is making things difficult for him at the agency, where he is seen as an unreliable fossil.  It’s hard to imagine what film Schrader had in mind, but as it is, Dying of the Light is an intriguing but severely flawed film.  It’s strangeness may one day be accepted as characteristic of this peculiar stage in Schrader’s career and folded into his filmography without irony or apology.  Some time will need to pass before than can happen, though.