Movies Of My Life # 30: 8mm
An occasional series here at Off The Tracks celebrating the movies that I love and have thought about most often throughout my life.
Here’s an altogether more lurid one than is usually the case in these celebrations, but I watched it again just recently to ensure its place on this list.
Lately, I’ve been working through some of the thrillers of the 90s, the really dark ones; the ones concerned with murder and violent sexual assault. The grim ones, so bleak as to be on the edge of having no real humanity about them whatsoever.
I can really think of no finer example – in terms of all that and yet still being made and released in the main stream (big name cast, director, studio) – than 8mm. I loved it when it was released. If that’s the right word for it. I was fascinated by it. I rewatched it to make sure. And, yep, this film sat with me. I recommended it to a few people and they thought I was crazy.
Online, you’ll see it didn’t review particularly well – and time has probably not been kind to thoughts around it since a wave is in place crashing down on things from the past. Rightly so in some cases. But we must never forget it’s a case-by-case basis when you are separating art from artists, when you are reappraising, applying the lens today to films from last century.
8mm sneaks in to the last millennium and, alongside Bringing Out The Dead, was the reminder that we hadn’t quite lost Nicolas Cage to hokey action-star status.
He's doe-eyed and sleepy-voiced here as a private investigator that must go deep into the porn world to see how a snuff film is made. His employer for this story is the widow of a rich businessman who seemingly had a snuff film made for his own amusement; it’s in the safe with some money and the usual rich-guy stuff.
Cage finds out the girl in the film is real, is really dead, and the people that made the film are depraved and dangerous. To help him into that world he employs the services of Joaquin Phoenix’s porn-store clerk. Joaquin is superb here. Not quite the full blown star he would become, but it’s clear to see it was in the post.
Cage is good too. Or he’s terrible. It’s such a fine line and it never really matters. He’s there. And that’s what matters.
Tony Soprano was already a thing, but the show wasn’t quite at its zenith, so James Gandolfini was still doing his character-work in movies as a thug/bad-guy. He’s so good in these roles. As is Peter Stromare. He has that Euro-trash weirdness he adds as an extra edge to his depravity.
The two big takeaways for me from this film – and I think about them a lot – are the reason for the rich guy owning a snuff film that he commissioned. His faithful servant who is trying to throw Cage off the scent, tells us all the reason: Because he could. It’s chilling, but feels even more likely in this day and age, even more real. And the snuff-film porno masochist called “Machine”, a masked dough-boy bully perv, tells Cage’s detective that there’s no trauma in his life, he wasn’t abused, nor neglected. He had a normal upbringing. He does the things he does – torture, rape, murder – because he ‘likes’ doing them.
That’s it.
Those are the justifications for the evil at the heart of this film.
You might say there is no heart to this film. But it’s there. It’s there in the way Cage pursues the knowledge of the events for the women left behind: The mother of the porn victim, and the widow of the rich jerk. It doesn’t bring either of them happiness. But it announces a closure.
Can Cage’s character move on? We never get to know. But he does return to his family – Catherine Keener in a supporting role, as the wife, and mother to a brand-new child. Private Investigator Tom Welles is forever changed. We feel that. He’s been through a wringer. But it's nothing like the torment the other characters endure.
It's a nasty, cold film – too cold for many, I’m sure.
But I’ve always loved it. Thought about it often. And watching it just recently I was still compelled by it. Flaws and all. It’s telling that the film was written by the same scribe that penned Se7en, another that I’ve recently rewatched. I didn’t know the connection at the time, but it’s easy to see the crossover in the subject-matter; why it might appeal to the writer. It’s clear to see what he was trying to do. Maybe he was ahead of his time pointing out that such evil exists because there are some sick people out there that crave such evil, out of boredom or because of privilege, or both.
There’s no happy ending in Se7en. No chance. And though there’s slightly less trauma for Cage in 8mm, than there is for Brad Pitt’s detective in Se7en, both men are ruined. They tried to find the truth and couldn’t comprehend just how evil it was.
I like those kinds of stories. They’re instructive. And I believe there is in fact a deep slice of humanity that drives them.
8mm has sat with me since I first saw it. And though it’s no party-film at all, and it’s best watched alone, I still think of it as one of the great movies of my life. Grim. Grey. Depressing as all fuck. But aren’t we kidding ourselves if we think life is all roses, all colour, all happiness?
