When I first heard that star actor Nicolas Cage was in town for an extended stay to film one of his new movies, it didn’t take too much of a deep dive to discover that the film and its protagonist takes the name of Parish, which made me think it had something to do with things post-apocalyptic and churches, like some of his past flicks.
(Spoiler alert: It actually is not a parish in the sense of the name of a church, but has that end of the world and eternity vibe, as it’s about a man who decides to hole up in his adapted 19th century farmhouse, (in reality), as a refuge 30 years after the world has ended elsewhere from nuclear war. The movie is filmed with the set largely at two Stillwater-area farms transformed into a compound, parts of them is the parts, next to Axdahl’s Greenhouse, and spending time a bar named Cozzies, a search soon revealed. One of several haunts the main film crew has developed a hankering to hang out at, sits less than a block away from me, the Smilin’ Moose, and they actually bunked at a couple of Brook Fleetwood’s pink places, not much further away.)
Still, considering Cage’s past projects — which have included a 2025 Gnostic role as Jesus’ father, not the Holy Spirit but the earthly one, as in Joseph — when I dug into it I couldn’t help but think of St. Michael’s Parish in Stillwater, a great big stone building standing basically alone in height on a great big hill. Since, the logical question, why in God’s name pick Stillwater above all others for virtually all of the filming. St. Michael’s namesake and patron is the bad-boy-doing-good archangel who is famously pictured in religious art with an evil-doer succumbing beneath his feet, with his mighty sword to the poor soul’s throat. It is a somewhat polarizing image in the Roman Catholic Church, and Cage was raised Catholic. St. Michael’s is well-known for such an overtly conservative bent, and people come there from miles around, even well into western Wisconsin, forsaking other Catholic parishes closer-by and sometimes even the other one in the city to take in their ilk. St. Michael’s would be an apt setting, even if just a few images, for such an apocalyptic flick.
For his part, Cage has a soft spot for projects of a spiritual nature, and has said in interviews that he at times in his life has spent long periods of time in deep meditation concerning such things. However, he keeps his religious views close to the cloth and does not discuss them in the public forum, adding in interviews it is a sacred thing between he and God. Both his decidedly apocalyptic and non-apocalyptic movies have an often graphic nature befitting an avenging archangel about ready to rip apart a sinner’s throat.
This is not Leaving Las Vegas. But the veteran actor was here for almost all of October portraying a holed-up recluse and may still be enjoying the fall colors — or another malt as a favorite local spot. But he will be elsewhere very soon, unless shooting takes longer than expected, as he has several projects in the works. But Minnesota film buffs were happy to have at the heart of it this kind man bringing here the first major movie project in a long time, after an earlier run of success.
This time, the choice of the name Parish ups the ante. (But even zombies can, conceivably, go to heaven if they repent, unlike one of Cage’s roles as a man left behind in a setting like The Rapture.) But his role as the Biblical Joseph is based on a contraversial ancient scripture that did not make it into The Bible, which includes accounts of a very young Jesus coming into a full understanding of his divinity, and killing at least one person who rebuked him as he played out his holy role. These are some of a group of writings collectively known as the Gnostic Gospels, and some come from his own disciples, although they have been largely discredited — though what’s popular is not always what’s true.
Sounds like St. Michael the Archangel. But this time around, the movie is apparently centered about keeping far afield from cannabalistic zombies, at all cost to all others, but how saving one with a child could be a change of ways to redeem the reclusive main character.
Down the line, as I walk the line, will be a deep analysis of some of these ancient passages and their modern interpretations, in art such as that featuring Cage.