Being very intrigued and in parts fascinated with Beyond the Black Rainbow from a pure cinephile perspective, I was quite eager to see a new film by Panos Cosmatos. After learning about Mandy and what it was about, and seeing it being a bigger budget and more thought-out endeavour, I was of course very eager to see it. After finally watching Mandy it feels to me that Panos Cosmatos failed to deliver on the promise of his first film's virtues, and actually re-established his weaknesses as a director. Not that this is a negative opinion on this film overall. Just explaining how and why Mandy failed my high expectations. Take those sentiments as you will. Besides elements familiar from his first film, with very carefully stylized and mostly beautiful shots and scenes overall, a dreamlike, menacing and off-worldly setting, slow and meditative pace, Mandy also managed to surprise me on several levels. I really appreciated how Mandy, the character, was written and performed, like sort of a person who naturally dislikes and distrusts people. I think Andrea Riseborough did a brilliant job here, although physically, she appeared a bit anorexic to me. I don’t know if she had weight issues that year, and I usually don’t care about those things, but in this particular case her appearance felt a bit jarring to me. But I digress. Other things that majorly surprised me is how the cult was realistically portrayed (if we ignore the biker gang), for better or worse. It's like they were very purposely demystified, in every possible opportunity. And all that in the setting of mystification and stylistic painting of the world as fantastical, which confused the hell out of me. And nothing in this regard changes toward the end. The director, I feel, even chooses to emphasize on this more and more as the movie goes on. It's worth mentioning that Cage's performance, while excellent, was not "baroque", how he calls some of his wild performances, but very controlled, adding little to film’s unearthly atmosphere. Most importantly, Mandy felt like a film with huge problems in both pace and elements that are tonally very disjointed, while each of these elements separately is excellent (faux fantastical setting versus the ugly reality of cult members' character and actions). Also, the part with the chemist really breaks down the narrative, in my opinion. That segment almost feels botched on purpose, Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse style, which is one of the main things I disliked in their double-feature. Still, Mandy contains plenty of fascinating parts for the film to be worthy of re-watching, and is not dull or tedious in anyway. There is some point to Mandy’s fascination with pulp fantasy novels, and Red’s subsequent revenge portrayed as a fantastical quest, but this curious idea alone doesn’t help to liven up the film. Like I said earlier, this approach just doesn’t chafe well with the cult remaining a group of barely threatening and very flawed individuals. Especially given the fact Red managed to overpower a much more dangerous and menacing group earlier in the film. The movie simply fails to ramp up in any manner toward the end, while the story and style demands that. Finally, it’s just not the cult film I expected to see, and I think a lot of people felt the same, given the lukewarm scores. A kinetic, relentless, wild film, what it should have been. At least in its last third. It's just too...stilted. And sadly, I sense this is more a limitation of Cosmatos, than a strong, firm decision on his part. I am now much less excited after seeing Mandy about Cosmatos’ next film, and I think he failed to put himself on the map with Mandy. The future will show.
