By SHAWN MACOMBER
Long before he stepped behind a camera, director Mauro Borrelli’s life was inextricably intertwined with visual transcendence.
A preternaturally talented painter from a destiny-tinged, near-impossibly young age, by his tenth birthday Borrelli found himself helping to restore the epic frescos in Italian cathedrals as an apprentice to a Franciscan monk before settling in Rome to train himself in the ways of the masters by planting himself down in museums and painstakingly painting reproductions of long-dead-yet-immortal heroes.
This led to conceptual art commissions in Hollywood for the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Gore Verbinsky, and Tim Burton then, eventually, his own features including 2017’s The Recall (with Wesley Snipes) and last year’s WarHunt (with Mikey Rourke).
All of this is an essential preamble to MINDCAGE, a clever synthesis of Seven, The Silence of the Lambs, and Angels & Demons, which is an immersive and singular vision that feels like a (successful) attempt to weave the individual impressive strands of Borrelli’s life into a single tapestry.
Mauro Borrelli
A tapestry that, among other things, is wild and vibrant enough to contain multitudes in the human polar forms of John Malkovich and Martin Lawrence. (More on that shortly—teaser alert!)
“Well, it all started with a desire to make a viable, commercial film,” Borrelli says with a chuckle of the tale he and screenwriter partner Reggie Keyohara III concocted. “A thriller, detective-type story. But then, of course, I had to put something of myself in it, so then came the fine art element and the religious element and the surrealist element and the dark fantasy element. A story which was once intended to be straightforward became not so straightforward. Which I probably on some level knew from the beginning is how it would turn out.”
This is where the painting background comes into play—the palette is not known for its absolute precision; the bristles of a brush cannot help but leave an individual signature. Borrelli comes from a world of what one might call happy accidents.
“All the time on this film, we found ourselves forced to change,” he says. “I don’t mind—I embrace it. Often in the moment of change you find new perspective—you find something better. For example, the script originally envisioned a cold, overcast metropolitan setting like Chicago. But then we find ourselves shooting in Arkansas. You’re tempted to say, ‘Where is my north, my cold, my subway?’ But if you embrace the change you find the beauty and the art in the mosquito noise and the hot and the sweating—in the things you never expected.”
And sometimes with a film like MINDCAGE, it is less beautiful but still as fitting and powerful.
“One of our angels was supposed to be crucified on a telephone pole,” Borrelli continues, as if this is the most natural statement in the world. “But you cannot just go around crucifying angels on telephone poles. Permissions are complicated. We were going to build one and put it in front of a green screen and…it just did not seem right. Then one day I am driving through Springdale and I see this train museum. I stopped and ask the woman working there, ‘This train—can we rent it?’ She said, ‘Oh, yes. We do that all the time.’ So, I put the angel on the train.”
Now, about that casting.
Malkovich was the first to come aboard. Borrelli got on a Zoom call with him and showed the Academy Award-nominated actor a painting he’d done of him with the white flowing hair of his messianic serial killer character.
For the detective opposite, Borrelli thought maybe Forrest Whitaker. A producer instead said, “I think we can get Martin Lawrence.”
At first, Borrelli hesitated— MINDCAGE existed virtually in a separate universe from Bad Boys and Big Momma’s House. But Lawrence was persistent and Borrelli could not dismiss his appearance—what if this was one of those happy accidents?
“Immediately, I liked his tone of voice,” Borrelli says. “It was very warm. For me, the tone of voice is very important. And I could see he was up to the challenge—he came in with skill and professionalism and, anyway, I knew someone who could hold an audience in his hand for two hours as a standup comedian could memorize our little script. But if we expected jokes, that was not what happened. Martin stayed in character the whole time with us—he was wonderful.”
That this trinity was rounded out by Melissa Roxburgh who earned her bones on films such as Star Trek Beyond/Diary of a Wimpy Kid only doubled down on the unorthodoxy—yet, in the end, who can argue with the results?
“Melissa was an amazing surprise,” Borrelli confirms. “I mean, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if I had been watching Manifest”—the hit Netflix supernatural series—”but at the time I wasn’t and I was really scared about [the Mary Kelly] role because I needed someone who had the authority of a lead investigator who could also show a very fragile side. When I saw her, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh—she has the perfect look, the perfect tone of voice, the perfect beauty.’ And then she exceeded all those expectations. I’m glad she’s on top of the world with Manifest now. She deserves it and more.”
But what about their “O captain! My captain!”?
For his part, Borrelli feels as if, with the MINDCAGE triangulation of psychological thriller, fantasy, and art, he is just getting to the borderline esoteric place in the creative process where he feels most comfortable.
“You know, those paintings into which I immersed myself in Rome had a mystical element that could go past your senses and touch your soul,” the director says. “I wouldn’t compare myself to those artists, but I do think to myself when making a film, ‘What if I can communicate a little bit of that mysticism to an audience, even if it’s just on the edges of perception?’ It doesn’t have to be explained. It can just be a feeling, you know? That’s more than enough.”
MINDCAGE is available now to stream on Digital and VOD.
